Tag Archives: book review

What I Think About When I Think About Running

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Or when I think about exercise in general with some thoughts on my writing process thrown in.

I’m not sure who told me about Haruki Murakami, but I’m glad they did. I first read his novel “Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” which was a great read. I have had his other books on my list, but finally decided to read his memoir “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” next instead of his fiction (although I have one of his novels waiting on my to read shelf).

“Running” is a memoir about running, but moreso about how it fits into his overall life which – of course – includes his life as a writer. Almost two years ago I posted a sort of an essay on the blog about my inability to “run.” But, even before picking up this book I had been toying with the idea of trying to start running again. Running, for me, is like the epitome of fitness and I’ve never been (even when thinner) particularly “fit.”

In this memoir, Murakami basically says one day he decided to start writing novels, and one day he decided to start running. What does that say about himself as a writer and athelete versus what I think of myself as a writer and never-been-an-athelete self? What does how we take care of our physical say about our ability to also be artists?

These are some of the questions I found swimming (working in a change from the writing metaphor) in my head as I read Murakami’s book. Coincidentally, I reached this book in my pile a few days after I decided to try the Couch to 5k app. I liked it. I was sort of jogging with walking thrown in as the app said, but I wanted to hurry the process along. Everything I read says to take a rest day in between a day of jogging, but as an avid walker I don’t like to do that. I feel antsy when I take days off (although I pretty much always take Sunday off from everything). The things I do well on seem to go that route. When I decided to start writing again I just started and worked out the kinks as I went along. Working with the app has made the process of running boring for me, especially since I am overweight and slow. What if I just went back to my old mode of operation and simply ran until I was tired and then revised that process the better I became?

This morning I got up, tired, after an hour walk yesterday but not a good eating day. I had a decent breakfast and I’m working away in my office. I have meetings to attend today so I’ll have little time for exercise and certainly not to change out to run because I’d also need to find a place to shower. Instead, I’ve scheduled in an hour to walk. I don’t think it will proclude me from finding time to jog/walk again, but like my writing I don’t want to force someone else’s schedule on myself. I have to find my own path.

Remembering to chart your own way is perhaps the best thing I took away from Murakami’s book. There are no life changing quotes I can pull, but just know I’d highly recommend the book to anyone if – for nothing else – to peek into someone’s elses relfective process. Isn’t that at the heart of our endeavors? The chance to do something and then to look back with the power of recall . . .

Review: Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief

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Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief
Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief by David Starkey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really loved the opening of this book and overall its approach to teaching the 4 genre in one semester scenario of early creative writing. I, however, was a bit dismayed when I came to the example poems in the poetry section. The actual essays about literary terms and “how to’s” on poetry were better – to me – than the actual selections.

This made me pause and I almost didn’t finish reading the book. But, I decided to give the other genres a try. I’m glad I did. The examples in the short fiction, non-fiction and play section are really good! Since the other sections are quite good, and since poetry is my main area of focus I could just supplement with other poems right?

Finding one textbook to use, especially go cover this many genres, is not an easy task, but this is one of the most complete (especially given its slim and un-intimidating size). I think I would teach it out of order though and start with non-fiction. I’d also weave in some discussion of graphic novels to the stage/screen section.

So would I use this book for a class? It would be high on my list. There is another book I really like, but it is almost a bit too advanced for the level of class I would be teaching (100, very entry level). Neither book is the perfect solution, but this one comes very, very close. Is there ever a perfect textbook?

I’d also suggest this one for anyone who just wants a good resource for literary terms and basic reminders on formatting your work.

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Review: Tar Heel Dead: Tales of Mystery and Mayhem from North Carolina

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I may not be teaching mystery to my students after all, but reading a mystery collection has made me more interested in the differences that exist within the genre. Ah genre theory – how I love to study thee :)
Tar Heel Dead: Tales of Mystery and Mayhem from North Carolina
Tar Heel Dead: Tales of Mystery and Mayhem from North Carolina by Sarah R. Shaber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had the idea that I might teach the concept of mystery writing for the literary analysis portion of my composition classes so I borrowed this book from a friend. The fact that I don’t really read a lot of mysteries makes it difficult for me to really review this collection from writers with NC connections (and stories often set in NC).

Out of the 18 stories collected, I found about 5 particularly compelling especially “Maniac Loose” by Michael Malone. I do love the diversity in this collection. You have stories with a sci-fi edge to them along with your more traditional who done it. There is even the wonderfully written “Spilled Salt” that deals more with a mystery of the soul rather than a typical crime related mystery.

If you are a fan of NC writers, NC settings and/or the mystery genre then I’d recommend this as a nice read. I didn’t find enough to push me towards teaching mystery this term. I’m back to focusing on poetry :)

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Review: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

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Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a hard one for me to review as I haven’t been reading a lot of “business world” type books in the last few years as I moved into a more academic world. That being said, I used to read a lot of these.

The point of the book is to point out possibilities for small changes that can make big differences. The authors (brothers) use a lot of examples from the corporate world, but I could see parallels (and some writing topics) that could be pulled into academea.

This is a pretty quick read (as a good business book should be). The only negative I’d really say about this one is that it is a bit of a compilation, which is fully acknowledged in the copious notes. The authors were pulling together a lot of buzz words/topics from around the self-help business industry. I guess that isn’t too different from any “anthologizing.”

Not as strong as say “Freakonomics” but an interesting read.

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Book Review: Voices Through Skin

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How would your skin speak? Would the words appear as marks, tattoos? Or are the voices more literal, merging from your lips? What about the skin that covers lips? What about the skin that coats your fingers, that allow you to pick up the pen, to type? These questions, explanations, ideas came to me through the powerfully spoken poems in Theresa Senato Edwards’ first collection Voices Through Skin.

Edwards’ collection (2010, Sibling Rivalry Press) opens with a performance poem titled “Back Seat, 1965 Forward Back” in which the reader can tell (without the helpful note at the back of the book) is intended for two voices with one forward and one back perhaps in stage planning (as is suggested) as well as in a more metaphorical sense. The placement of this poem is spot on as it sets up a sense of poetic discovery with a hint of danger: “She looks through the top edge, / the new Ford Galaxys’ back window fixates / on moving light white balls.”

Voices Through Skin is a provocative collection which starts with the cover art and does not let up as it deals with hints of mental illness, abortion and suicide. Edwards gives voice to some of the very topics “we” may be afraid and/or reluctant to address. For example, in “Lady” we meet, “My friends mother” who “ gropes a metal grocery cart, / yells at sidewalks, flails her broad arms to the moon.” This mother, this homeless apparently mentally ill woman is given a dignity. The woman “takes to the streets, / salvaging small, coarse garbage / . . . ‘The river’s skin,’ she repeats to damp air.” The reader is invited to see a new kind of beauty through this lady’s eyes.

I found myself noting so many of these poems as fearless although I did mark a few with question marks because the endings seemed to be just a bit forced such as “River. Snow.” where Edwards writes, “Today my mother prays for peace, / my father shovels for peace, / my son creates peace along the hearth of the fireplace.” This long poem had so much to say on its own without needing to be so direct at the end, but perhaps that is the author’s desire to speak and to be understood. To again have and give a voice.

I don’t want to give too much away about the collection because I want you to read a copy of your own, but Edwards has written a terrific debut collection that concludes with a nice circling back to the poem that opened the collection which is why my hand, pen, skin, keyboard were thrilled to speak/write a review on behalf of these poems.

And to hear Teresa read one of the poems stop by YouTube!

Guest Blog: Scott Wilkerson Reflects on Paper House by Jessie Carty

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I know that this might be a bit strange but I thought it would be fun to post a review of Paper House that was just forwarded to me. I’ve never posted a review of my own book on my blog before, but I’m thrilled to have this review.My regular readers will remember I spoke about Scott’s (the author of this review) fantastic poetry book Threading Stone recently. Here is yet another reason to pick up his book because he really “gets” poetry :)  

Paper House
By Jessie Carty
Fold Word Press, $12

At the center of Jessie Carty’s fearless and charming new book, Paper House lies the problem of an experiment in a poem quite rightly title “An Experiment.” Let me quote it here in full:

in a glass
celery
blue food coloring

vegetable veins
from green to blue

not death
magic

pigment resisting

gravity

before crunch
swallow
dye inside

Here we have a kind of glyphic code for reading through the Cartian poetic, which, despite the quaint appearance of the poems, is a program of immense lyrical energy transmuted into narrative force precisely in that decisive “gravity / before the crunch.” It is our privilege here to discover a poet mapping her own vast cosmology from the dappled light of her domestic life.

Carty’s daring project here is nothing less ambitious than to excavate, or even to exhume, the dim philosophies that get buried with family history and social polemics. I find her synthesis of the personal (a vanishing art) with the historical (an increasingly fraudulent or otherwise quixotic masquerade) to be honest, powerfully evocative, and artistically sensible. Jessie Carty, to be clear on this point, has extraordinarily good instincts or, rather I should say she has admirably good intentions, and her poetic reflexes are strictly nonpareil: everything carefully observed, elegantly articulated, and unfailingly revealing.

There are poets, who shall not be named here, who spend entire careers fumbling for the exigent consolations of a stable aesthetic, but Carty does exactly that in 83 pages. And her findings are as exquisite as her methodology. Indeed, the poems of Paper House do not, as most, collapse under their own papery weight or drift away on the unforgiving convections of insubstantiality. Rather, these poems demand your attention, your conviction, your time, and your gallant love. I am an unrepentant habitué of the avant–garde, but great poetry is just that. So, too, is Paper House an exemplar of the best kind of poetic investigation: unafraid, unashamed, and unparalleled in its authoritative vision of this strange and beautiful world.

Scott Wilkerson, MFA, teaches at Columbus State University and is the author Threading Stone and the forthcoming Ars Minotaurica, both from New Plains Press

Image Grammar: A Book Review

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Earlier this summer I attended an orientation for the UNCC Summer Writing branch of the National Writing Project. As part of this orientation we had to pick out a book (they had so many to offer!) that we were to read and then report back on. Since my Achilles heel is grammar, I was immediately drawn to Image Grammar: Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing by Harry R. Noden.

I’ve been slowly reading through the book and taking (probably!) far too many notes. I finally finished my reading last night and this morning I sat down to play with the CD that is also enclosed. Quick note on the CD: decent resource but it is a bit dated. There is a newer addition of the book that I just now ordered off Amazon.

The book itself is a fantastic resource that I can’t wait to implement in my classroom. I do not actively teach grammar in my composition or creative writing class. I will note universal issues for students to focus on and I push them towards self-study, but I am very reluctant to do grammar drills. I have two reasons I avoid grammar drills: 1 – I don’t think they are the most effective way to teach grammar (rote memorization) 2 – I don’t have all the rules memorized myself so how can I teach that to a class?

Image Grammar, on the other hand, is what I realize I have been almost doing with my classes. This book takes you through teaching everything from verbs to appositives through context. There are exercises that have you cutting up your papers and working on individual sentences (always looking for those run-on sentences!) to checklists that you can take back to a piece of fiction you are working on to make sure your form and content are cohesive.

Besides the slightly dated CD (ah technology that out paces us all the time!), I do wonder a bit about the organization of the book. The first part jumps right into appositives whereas I think it would be better to start with simple adjectives, active verbs etc to start out. But, that is just my opinion.

I’m looking forward to implementing many of these exercises into my future composition classes. While this is a book that is geared towards teachers, I think it could be useful for writers who do struggle with their own grammar. Who couldn’t use a refresher on that old enemy: the passive voice?