Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Most Comprehensive Writing Guide

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway

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  Teaching writing has introduced me to so many resources that would have been beyond helpful when I was bumbling around as a stupid twenty-something trying to figure out how to write. I guess it’s better late than never. My mentor introduced me to Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction, last semester, and good God, if only I had had this book ten years ago…. Broken down into comprehensive chapters on everything from point-of-view, setting, characterization, and revising, Burroway takes a no-holds barred approach to guiding young writers […]

Perhaps Better as a Text Book

Do I Make Myself Clear? by Harold Evans

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Best for: Writing classrooms. In a nutshell: Longtime writer and editor Harold Evans offers lessons to improve writing. Worth quoting: “We are more likely to understand the argument if we know where we are heading.” “Anything that goes wrong will always be wordier than anything that goes right.” Why I chose it: I’m always looking to improve my writing. Review: In the first few pages of this book the author speaks well of both Churchill (racist) and Kissinger (war criminal), so I did have a […]

Scribotherapy

Writing to Save Your Life: How to Honor Your Story Through Journaling by Michele Weldon

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Writers love reading, writing, and reading about writing. If you ask any writer to name some impactful books that have encouraged their craft, I guarantee you they will be able to pound out a list of 3-5 books immediately. My personal list includes If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, On Writing by Stephen King, and any Jack Kerouac poem (they’re not usually specifically about writing, but always about living, and writing is about living, so I count Kerouac). I’m not quite sure where I found out […]

What makes a writer?

Just Write: Here’s How! by Walter Dean Myers

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#cbr11bingo #birthday  Myers birthday was August 12, 1937.  Just Write: Here’s How! is a non-fiction practical guide with easy tips, accessible language and perfect examples for the teen who wants to learn how to write. In fact, this book maps out these tips so well, adults could benefit from them. Just Write could easily be adapted for classroom use or used by the individual writer.  However, I read the ARC from 2012 and wondering if any updates have been done between then and his death or […]

The Elements of Style: The Sequel

On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Zinsser

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A professor once threatened to boot me from his course for my crimes against the English language. My breezy essays were careless, inexact, perhaps even terrible. In his mercy Dr. Wright —a white-haired taskmaster in tweed jackets who frequently referenced “the war” (World War II)—gave me some advice: “Read Strunk and White every morning while eating your Wheaties.” If William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style is the life vest keeping your head above water, William Zissner’s On Writing Well is the Coast […]

Sort of a Lost Art

Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey

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Best for: Those who like trivia about everyday life – in this case, about handwriting. (For example, did you know that a typical pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long?) In a nutshell: Author Burns Florey takes the reader on a trip through the history of handwriting, from the very beginning, through those gorgeous (though illegible) tomes produced by monks in the middle ages, up to strict penmanship training in the early 1900s, and ending with contemplation of how handwriting fits into the digital […]



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