From First Word to Last–“Shut up and write.”

From First Word to Last

by Arlene F. Marks

247 pages, $19.95

Publisher: Legacy Books Press Reference

A behind the scenes look at writing risks spoiling the magic trick (at least in my experience teaching high school and adult students), but for a writer it is essential learning.  My technique emphasizes the dynamics between characters in scenes, but many of Arlene Marks observations hold. This is what we need (at least the first three-quarters of the book, then it starts to seem pedantic).

The Dog Lived (and So Will I) – “Focus on the Cookies”

The Dog Lived (and So Will I)

by Teresa J. Rhyne

Sourcebooks

276 pages, paperback $14.95

This was a very difficult book for me to read for personal reasons. My favorite dog, the Coon Hound Zelda, died unexpectedly of cancer and a few years later I went through treatment for prostate cancer.

And now, through this painfully candid account I come to emotional terms with what had happened to me. Perhaps nothing in my life could be more important, or more challenging.

THE LONG DRUNK – “Lit Noir”

The Long Drunk by Eric Coyote, 2011

Kindle, $2.99

This is the gritty story of a homeless alcoholic who must solve a murder in order save his dog’s life. If that turns you off…wait.

When I first started out as a graphic illustrator I thought maximum contrast meant black and white. Gradually I discovered that gray makes black seem blacker and white whiter.

Walden – “Once More with Love”

How many times can you read a book. Well, I have read Walden so many times I can’t believe some of the ideas in it did not originate with me. Anyway, Bob, a good friend, suggested my doing poems on books instead of critiques. Drop whatever you are doing, or think you’re doing, and read Thoreau’s classic, but for a teaser, here is my poem:

Order Walden directly from amazon for only $3.50. Click: Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)

PRETTY GOOD JOKE BOOK – “Here They Come, Radio on or Not.”

Keillor’s Pretty Good Joke Book

by Garrison Keillor

High Bridge, 2011, 5^th Edition

$12.95, 400 pages

There’s a reason good sales people are good joke tellers. As Keillor points out in the introduction to this book, “It’s a way to get to know people in a short time.” And how do you review a joke book? You don’t. Readers want some examples and if they don’t laugh, forget it.  If they do it’s A Pretty Good Joke Book.

1. “Veni, Vidi, Velcro”—I came, I saw, I stuck around.
2. If a cow laughed, would milk come out of her nose?

THE BEATLES, THE MUSIC AND THE MYTH — “Strawberry Fields Forever”

The Beatles, The Music And The Myth

by Peter Doggett & Patrick Humphries

Omnibus Press

$14.95, 194 pages

If you watched the PBS special on John Lennon, this book is everything that production was sorely missing. The TV show reached for some simple psychological melodrama, but The Beatles were anything but simple. Doggett and Humphries document the complexity of every song, every album, every concert, every recording session in a way that is enjoyably profound.

THE NEW YORKER STORIES – “Greatness within Grasp”

The New Yorker Stories

by Ann Beattie

Scribner

$30, 516 pages

Beattie’s stories (then and now) articulate certain confusions and disappointments that often haunt the reader not as fiction but as things that have happened in real life. Now when I look at a short story writer, I am most concerned with what I, as a writer can learn, and pieces by Hemingway, Faulkner, even my favorite, Raymond Carver,

LADY GAGA – “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich”

Looking for Fame, the Life of a Pop Princess, Lady Gaga

by Paul Lester

Omnibus Press

$17.95, 154 pages

Since “Just Dance” nearly two years ago, she’s had six top 10 hits and has almost single-handedly revived the waning art of music videos. What did we talk about before we had Lady Gaga to talk about? She owns pop culture these days.

BUILT TO SELL – “This book may be the best investment a business owner will ever make.”

A must read!

Built to Sell
by John Warrillow
flipjetmedia, 2010
160 pages, $25.95

     This is a book every entrepreneur must read, whether or not they are going to sell their business. Years ago I read a book stating that there are people good at starting an enterprise, those who can make it profitable, others who excel at sustaining it and finally, a unique few individuals who can figure out how to profitably get out from under it. A business needs all four. This book…

THANKS, BUT THIS ISN’T FOR US – “More how-to advice for writers.”

Sorry, Jessica, not for us!

by Jessica Page Morrell

Tarcher/Penguin, 2009

358 pages, $11.53

     Subtitled “A (Sort of ) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected,” I do think the tone is sympathetic. The how-to advice is directed where it should be—not how to trick publishers and agents into liking what you do—but making what you do appealing to readers (including publishers and agents). I love the emphasis on scenes, and the book’s…

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED & IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS – “One great, one terrible.”

Two Books by Tim O’Brien

     The Things They Carried is the most powerful writing about Vietnam or about any modern war. In the Lake of the Woods, by the same author, is one of the worst.

     How can that be? In the first book the ator takes tackles the subject head on. Anyone who has ever lived and re-lived that war (as I have) knows O’Brien has expressed the impossible. His chapter “How to Tell a True War Story,” that first appeared in Esquire,…

Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets – “Five Terrific Business Tools.”

Warren Buffett’s Management Secrets by Mary Buffett & David Clark

I read something in the first chapter of this little book that I have been thinking about for days: “Pick the right business to work for.” It seems simple, but means the difference between a high-paying career and a life of drudgery. Yet most of us, at least when the age we are first looking for a job, take anything. We don’t feel we deserve choice. In a nutshell, that is the most amazing quality of this compendium of five simple principles for personal and business success, it empowers the reader…

Sex & Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll – “A generat-ional thing.”

 Brand new from our friends at Omnibus Press

Raw Footage

ISBN: 9780711941311

Price: $24.95

Height: 12, Width: 9

Pages: 192

Binding: Paperback

Publication    9/1/2009  

The cover promises “X-Rated Photos” and there are plenty of bare breasts and occasional limp penises, but this piece of pop history is interesting for other reasons depending upon who you, the reader are…

Dog on it: A Chet and Bernie Mystery – “A New Game”

My old dog, Kafka.

Dog on it: A Chet and Bernie Mystery

by Spencer Quin

Atria Books

305 pages, $15

Right from the beginning of this series, I though Quin was on to something. A literal-minded narrator, the dog Chet, who tells us more than his human partner knows thus creating real suspense. I love them both, but this is the first book that builds a dramatic arc, that pays off in a terrific finish. There is also a very sophisticated mirroring of Bernie’s relationship with his young son (Bernie is divorced and the son has material things with the ex that make Bernie feel inadequate) and the case, a missing teen-aged girl also of divorced parents. Emotionally this reaches a new level.

Not that we don’t already love Chet: “Bernie grabbed the rubber bone and flung it through the open window. I dove out after the bone, raced across the backyard, snagged it, spun around, and jumped back inside. A new game, and what a game, indoors and outdoors, running and leaping—this one had it all.” I felt worse when, after escaping being captured by the villains, Chet was scheduled to be put down by an animal shelter, than I did later when Bernie was taken prisoner

This is a fully realized novel that will keep you turning pages well into the night (I read it on my Kindle). As much as I enjoyed the previous books, with this one Spencer Quin, Bernie and Chet have arrived. My number one, stranded-on-a-desert-island choice.

Buy directly from Amazon for $11.50. Click: Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery (Chet and Bernie Mysteries)

Sparky and the Dipshit – “Having a Big Brother”

Sparky and the Dipshit

Rod Russell-Ides

Fireside Publishing

284 pages, $17.95

I love the title of this book, Sparky and the Dipshit. I wish it were mine. As a matter of  fact I do have a movie review site that is pretty damn close. It is: www.SpankyAndJohnGoToTheMovies.com.

Can’t believe this is Rod’s first book, though he admits to help from his writer wife and editor (plus others). He baits the hook then allows us time to squirm while he spins a drama-building back story (his doctor father was a philanderer, his mother somewhat alcoholic, and, of course, there is the Midwest vs. the East Coast dynamics which people like me, from Wisconsin, love). Yet certain chapters, like the one on the death of Uncle Marion, are very moving.

I admit to having had an older brother, and therefore connected with the story line immediately. But there are elegant passages, too, that put real meat on the bone:

Exploring the abandoned dreams of Kansas farmers, I discovered a harsh land. It seemed some lives lead nowhere, dried up with the wind that harried the grasslands, leaving traces of something having come this way and passed on. In one old house, I found clothes still on hangers in a closet. A broken doll. Old letters held together with yellowing string.

This book is a product of the publishing revolution. Why should we wait twenty years for someone (like us) to tell a story we want to hear (our story). Sure a lot of the Kindle and publish-on-demand stuff is crap, but so is 90% of everything else.

This book did find a traditional publisher and thank god, a reader (me) who is inspired by it. As Rod Russell-Ides says he is a true believer in “the mystery right side the door.”

Way to go, Dipshit!

Order directly from Amazon, click: Sparky and the Dipshit

The Big Clear – “Burnout”

The Big Clear

Christopher Harris

Short Cipher Press

275 pages, $12

A former Special Forces sniper is now a slacker detective trying to find a kidnapped child on the weekend the US invades Iraq. This is neo-noir where the parts fit, like they did in the originals though the plot is confused and scenes (ultra credible) seem to lead nowhere.

I don’t like the title, Austin Texas (the novel’s locale) means nothing to me (even though Bat Bridge is kind of neat), but the back story is mine

Immediate Fiction – “Want, Obstacle, Action”

Immediate Fiction

Jerry Cleaver

St. Martin’s Griffin

275 pages, $15.99

This book reminds me of a section in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in which the author is putting together a barbecue grill manufactured in Japan. The first number of the instruction says something like “1. Be in the right frame of mind.” That, it seems to me is what this book does for wanabe writers, puts them in the right frame of mind.

The Start of Everything – “What is Mystery”

The Start of Everything

by Emily Winslow

255 pages, $26

Publisher: Delacorte Press

A teenage body floating near Cambridge, England. But wait a minute, we are getting the details from an autistic narrator. No that’s just in the first chapter, narrators rotate. As do murders. As do people’s identities. There’s a difference between the mystery of genre and the mystery of mystery. While trying for both, The Start of Everything succeeds only at confusing the reader.

The Book of Illusions – “Beneath the Surface”

The Book of Illusions

by Paul Auster

321 pages, $10.98

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Paul Auster

I’ve been on and off about this author. I read The New York Trilogy, a few of his other novels and I actually heard him read at the Wisconsin Book Festival a number of years ago. I always thought he got caught up a bit too much in his own games.

Until now. The Book of Illusions probes the mystery of a silent film star/writer/director who disappears.