From a random review:

Get new posts by email:

About the blogger:
Debra Hamel is the author of a number of books about ancient Greece. She writes and blogs from her subterranean lair in North Haven, CT. Read more.

Note: As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Navigate the site:
Click here for a complete list of books reviewed or select below:
Search the site:
The ratings:
5 stars  excellent
4 stars  very good
3 stars  good
2 stars  fair
1 stars  poor

Blog stats:
BOOK REVIEWS: 625
BOOK NOTICES: 275
2003: 50
2004: 68
2005: 66
2006: 75
2007: 58
2008: 88
2009: 81
2010: 57
2011: 48
2012: 27 | 1
2013: 0 | 35
2014: 1 | 25
2015: 0 | 17
2016: 3 | 22
2017: 0 | 24
   2018: 0 | 14
2019: 0 | 34
2020: 0 | 25
2021: 0 | 35
2022: 0 | 8
2023: 1 | 17
2024: 1 | 12
2025: 0 | 6
2026: 0 | 0
2027: 0 | 0
2028: 0 | 0
2029: 0 | 0
2030: 0 | 0
2031: 0 | 0
2032: 0 | 0

Updated 5-3-25
[Reviews are longer and have ratings. Notices do not have ratings.]


My books:


Book-blog.com by Debra Hamel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 License.





Darnton, John (ed.): Writers on Writing

  Amazon  

3.5 stars

Writers on Writing is a mixed bag of essays, edited by journalist John Darnton, that were originally published in the New York Times. The authors of the forty-some pieces that comprise the volume are all celebrated writers (though I confess I was not familiar with all their bylines), a good many of them household names: Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Hoffman and John Updike and Scott Turow and so on. The authors were charged with writing about, well, writing, and they manage to do so, surprisingly enough, without ever stepping on one another's subject matter: each essayist approaches the topic in a manner peculiar to themselves.

Some of the essays, those that had the least to do with the task of writing, left me cold: it is a shame that the collection, which is organized alphabetically by author, begins with a particularly weak contribution. But there are far more worthy essays than not in this volume. Among the most interesting of the lot are Kent Haruf's piece on the peculiar way that some writers, including himself, write, and David Leavitt's fascinating reminiscence of his early insistence on order in the unlikeliest of places:

"I didn't like it if there were more songs on one side [of a record] than the other; the songs had to be at least three minutes long, with a title that appeared in neither the first nor the last line. (If the title appeared in both the first and the last line, I would remove the offending album from my shelf.)"

Writing, Leavitt explains, was a means for him to impose order on ordinary life. There is, too, a very amusing piece by Ed McBain on crime writing, and David Mamet writes of the joys of genre fiction, and in particular of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin series (now a major motion picture!). Readers should find something to like in these pages, and may indeed discover among them a handful of new authors to add to their shelves.

Comments

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them.

If you have a TypeKey or TypePad account, please Sign In