Book Reviews

The Elements of Style

I recently bought The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. Asserting that one must first know the rules to break them, this reference book has been touted as a must-have for any student and conscientious writer. Intended for use in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature, it gives in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style and concentrates attention on the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated.

Listed in the top five books all writers should own I was pleasantly surprised when I received it. Unbeknownst to me at the time I ordered the illustrated edition. Paintings by Maira Kalman appear every three or four pages throughout the book and draw the reader's attention to the rules themselves. Each painting has a subtle humour about them and infuses invigorating colour into, what is essentially, a book of rules. Along with the red cloth-bound cover, the illustrations have added to the pure pleasure of reading this classic little book.

Indeed You Can

Perusing through Kobo’s online bookstore I came across a little gem of a book called Indeed You Can by Elleta Nolte. At age 71, Elleta Nolte enrolled as a freshman at a prestigious university from which six of her nine children graduated, earning a Degree in General Studies at the age of 89 (she is still contemplating on whether to pursue her Masters or not). Elleta, a writer of regional history, held onto the adage that she wasn’t a finished product and that you are never too old to test new ground and gain new knowledge. “Do not place your mind on hold, but place it on roam to set new goals and follow new paths, to add a little daring to your life, a few what ifs...what if I …”

Graduating with her granddaughter Rebecca, Elleta reflected on the many steps she had taken that led to this day, steps she describes as sheer pleasure of learning and the joy of fulfilment, “I could have spent the days in trivialities, in actions of little importance or value; instead I exchanged those actions for these productive days of my life. I could also have withdrawn earlier in the face of defeat, but my path did not lead in that direction.” And to those who lament that they just don’t have the time she objects quite strongly, “School takes too much time? Oh, come on now, I won’t touch that - the lamest of lame excuses.” The point, Elleta writes, is if you desire change in your life, only you can make it happen. If you’re looking for a new direction, a path to follow to affect the rest of your life, then plant that first step down your path.

Similarly, when people complain that they have no time to write, Elleta says baloney, you have the time to do about anything you really want to do. “I wrote my first book with nine children at home. I took the story with me wherever I went and I wrote. Once hiding in bed with the light out, knees propped up, flashlight focused on my writing underneath the covers, all the time thinking ‘this is ridiculous‘.” Even whilst studying, Elleta wrote two histories, researched her latest book, edited a monthly newsletter and made six oral presentations to the West Texas Historical Association, as well as, travelled to Europe three times, toured Canada and took a hot air ballon over West Texas. When asked whether she was an over achiever, she remarked, "No. We are each given the same amount of time in a day and a choice of how to use it. We set out own bar."

On a final note, Elleta writes that if you develop a passion for learning, you’ll never be bored. “The opportunity for increasing our knowledge is all around us, for we live in a world that hangs ripe with fascinating facts. All we have to do is reach up and pluck them off the ample trees of knowledge, if only we are curious and motivated to keep learning.”

 

Bird by Bird

A fresh new blog I cannot go pass mentioning my favourite how-to book, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Although, in truth, it is not so much a how-to book as it is a humorous, insightful, no-nonsense guide through the writer’s world, reminding us the reasons why we write in the first place: to tell the truth, to live from the heart, and to share our gift with others.
Using personal ancedotes with a touch of self-depreciating humour, Lamott distils what she's learned over the years of trial and error. She reminds us that it's good to write really bad first drafts, invaluable advice for one such as myself who often finds the need for perfectionism the main obstacle between me and that first draft, even a shitty one.

Lamott also writes that we should worry about the characters, not the plot. Plot grows out of character. ''If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen''. Lamott argues that characters should not, conversely, serve pawns for some plot you've dreamed up.

Though her most invaluable advice for those times when the task before me feels like trying to scale a glacier: just take it paragraph by paragraph, one small scene, one memory, one exchange at a time. She tells the following story that helps her get a grip when the task seems insurmountable.

''Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write [it] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'''

In the end Lamott writes that its okay to feel neurotic, negelected, vengeful or self-doubting, as long as you keep writing.

 

Kate Sedley

Last month I mentioned my addiction to the Amelia Peabody series written by Elizabeth Peters. I have come across another great series written by Kate Sedley, an English historical novelist. Set in the late 15th century, her whodunnits feature Roger the Chapman, who has given up a monk’s cell for the freedom of peddling his wares on the road. The series intially reminded me of the historical murder mysteries Cadfael written by Ellis Peters, centered around a Welsh Benedictibe monk living at Shrewbury Abbey in the first half of the 12th century. However, unlike Cadfael who spent most of his life on Crusade before becoming a monk late in life, Roger the Chapman left the church after the death of his Mother at the young age of eighteen.

The first novel in the series, Death and the Chapman, Roger has left the Benedictine monastery for the road with London being his objective. His first investigation is into the disappearance of two separate gentlemen and the second's servant while their bags were left behind. Both men were carrying a good deal of money, but their bodies had never been found. Full of history and details of everyday English life in the late 1400s, Sedley’s descriptions engage your senses. The young Roger is a likeable character who comes across as someone with the nose for detection but without the street-smarts of Cadfael to temper his energy. Having read seven books in the series so far I’m absolutely hooked. All of these historical whodunits is giving me the urge to study history at university, but something tells me that it will not be nearly as interesting or fun.

 

The adventures of Amelia Peabody

Okay, I admit it, over the last month I’ve become absolutely addicted to the Amelia Peabody series written by Elizabeth Peters, trawling library catalogues for any of the books I can get my hands on. A mystery series so far containing eighteen novels, it spans a period of thirty-eight years from 1884 to 1923 and is primarily set in Egypt. The first installment of the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank, was first published in 1975. By the late 1990s, new books were published at the rate of one annually, with many of the later books in the series appearing on the New York Times Bestseller List for fiction. The latest installment in the series, A River in the Sky, will be released this month.

The series first began with Amelia Peabody’s first trip to Egypt in 1884, accompanied by a young woman, Evelyn Barton Forbes, who, like Amelia, found a career and true love in the Land of the Pharaohs. They married brothers, Amelia accepting the hand of the distinguished archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson, and Evelyn that of his younger brother Walter. Amelia’s love of Egypt almost equalled her love for her hot-tempered husband, joining him in his annual excavations, which, except for a few brief hiatuses, continued for the entire thirty-eight years. Amelia Peabody, a female Indiana Jones, is incredibly smart and witty. Her husband, the handsome Radcliffe Emerson, with his dark sense of humour, strong sense of chivalry, with just a touch of arrogance, is her perfect match.

Usually a reader of fantasy fiction, these books have been a breath of fresh air, catering to my love of history and adventure. Elizabeth Peters herself is an extraordinary woman. Born and brought up in Illinois, she earned her Ph.D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago's famed Oriental Institute at the age of twenty-three. She was named Grand Master at the inaugural Anthony Awards in 1986 and Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America at the Edgar Awards in 1998. of speech and the world around us, manipulating our readers’ breathing responses and reading pace through the sounds, punctuation and spacing we use. We’re also encouraged to use action verbs to create a sense of movement. These connect with our visual memory and our body’s memory.”

But she goes on to argue that we should not underestimate our sense of taste and smell, two of the most evocative senses. “They can bypass logic and trigger the deepest of associations, longings and memories, bringing any piece of writing to life. For me, fragrance, like music, can connect straight to the soul.” Similarly children’s writer J.L Martin writes, “In the first creative writing class I took, my instructor talked about the one sense that writers consistently forget to use. It’s smell. When we deal in words on a page, in the shuffle of voice, dialogue, and plot it’s easy to forget to use smell. But smell is so important. It can inspire you to write and help you to create memorable characters and stories.”