I’ve always wanted to write. It took years to get started, and after working in the library and information technology fields for over thirty-five years, I quit the day job routine in 2011 to write full time. I've learned two valuable lessons since I started writing which have been of immense help. The first is a quote from writer and activist Mary Heaton Vorse, who said, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." The second is from novelist Rachel Basch, who told me that "the story has to move down, as well as forward." Both sound simple. Neither is.
Smiley classifies and defines the novel and provides a primer of supportive instructions to the struggling writer. She explores the reasons why some novels succeed and some don’t. She provides the reader with a list of 100 books she has read, from thousand-year-old texts to recent bestsellers, offering her own insights and assessments of each work. Smiley provides a glimpse into the creative process and gives writers and readers new ways to be aware of what goes on between the lines. This book contains important and joyful advice for aspiring writers and is a gift to lovers of literature.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes an essential guide for writers and readers alike: an exhilarating tour through one hundred novels that "inspires wicked delight.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
From classics such as the thousand-year-old Tale of Genji to fiction by Zadie Smith and Alice Munro, Jane Smiley explores the power of the form, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its magic. She invites us behind the scenes of novel-writing, sharing her own habits and spilling the secrets of her craft, and offering priceless advice to aspiring…
I’ve long been interested in what different traditions have to say about how to live our best lives. While a graduate student, I naturally drifted towards studying both Stoicism and Buddhism and wrote my MA dissertation on a comparison of both (which ultimately, much later, became the basis for my book). During my time as a Ph.D. student, I was actively involved in the Modern Stoicism project. As well as running the blog for the project, I was also involved, along with a team of academics and psychotherapists, in creating adaptations of that ancient philosophy for the modern world. I also draw on both philosophies in coping with chronic illness.
I think this is probably one of the most interesting, albeit lesser-known, books about the modern Stoic revival. Modern Stoicism is a dynamic movement that comprises many different voices and potential applications of the philosophy.
I love how this varied collection of essays, under the skillful editorial eyes of Greg Sadler and Leah Goldrick, has us thinking one minute about how Stoicism and mindfulness can intertwine and the next about what a Stoic would make of Jordan Peterson, all the while never losing sight of the power of the philosophy for personal transformation.
I highly recommend this book, a comprehensive ‘snapshot’ of all the different ways Stoicism can enrich our personal and collective lives.
To create innovative, collaborative, and high-performing organizations, we need a new leadership model.
Speaker, consultant, and former Silicon Valley executive Minette Norman is committed to inspiring leaders by sharing some of the most important things she learned over the decades she spent in the corporate world, such as: every human…
I have always loved children. I love tiny babies just discovering the world around them. I love elementary-age kids who are taking pride in developing new skills and learning how to deal with challenges. I love teens who are questioning and rethinking the things they thought they knew. I also love the science and practice of psychology (my profession for over thirty years) and, I love books. To date, I have written nine books. My audience ranges from preschool to high school and topics include strategies to understand and cope with problems as well as psychology as a topic of study.
What would the world be like if flowers were all black and white? If everything looked the same in a colorless world? A mixed-race girl learns about all of the colors of the world and the colors within her family. The message that not everyone has the same skin color, even within a family, is presented in a warm and positive light.
The world is full of different colours...hundreds of colours, everywhere. People are different colours too. Our colours make us beautiful and unique. Mommy says it is part of our culture and the big word diversity - diversidad.
Marvelous Maravilloso is a story from the point of view of a young interracial child about what color means within the dynamics of race, ethnicity, and culture. This sweet, simple story discusses the colors of the world and the colors of the people in a family-all of which make the world beautiful and unique. Includes a "Note to Parents and Caregivers" about celebrating…
We’ve had the privilege to be part of a profession that has developed beyond all recognition. Both of us worked in senior public relations roles and know how difficult leadership can be in this context. A desire to combine what we’d learned with the best research resulted in us becoming professors in a university business school. Our aim is to provide a bridge between practice and academia, an ambition that has led us to work with inspiring practitioners and researchers around the world. We’ve had a great time and as you’ll see from our ‘book picks’ we draw on many perspectives to inform our work as authors, educators, and researchers.
What is public relations actually all about: the good, the bad, and the ugly? I found this book by Lee Edwards to be one of the most thoughtful texts ever written about an increasingly important profession. Taking the stance that public relations is not only used by organisations, but is deeply embedded in our society and culture, this book provides a comprehensive overview of how it shapes our lives and societies in all kinds of ways. It’s a powerful and challenging read.
This book argues that public relations is not merely an organizational tool, but a powerful influence on social and political life. From carefully considered communication by multinational corporations, to government campaigns that manage public opinion, to the self-promotion of celebrities via social media, public relations is central to our individual and collective lives.
Understanding Public Relations introduces a socio-cultural approach to public relations as a way of analysing the growing importance of public relations in its social, cultural and political contexts. Encouraging a deeper and more critical understanding of its influence on society, Lee Edwards:
I’ve always been curious about people and the way they interact. When I was a small child, all our neighbors had their back doors wide open to catch the summertime breeze; they’d get the sense they were being watched… by my small face pressed against the screen door, listening and learning. My parents would get called..” She’s doing it again.” As an introvert, a performing artist, and a coach, I’ve learned to tune my ears to the messaging beneath the words—the unspoken truth in the interaction. And I truly believe that if we can learn to be more effective and compassionate listeners—our world will change for the better.
One of the most powerful benefits of skilled listening is building trust. Empathy is essential to creating trusting relationships. Jamison is a trained actor, and deep listening and empathy are essential to the craft of acting.
This book spans her experiences, from her work in medical training to her research on incarceration, reality TV, and street violence. I was struck by the heartfulness and clarity in Jamison's writing about what she has witnessed and experienced. She pulls no punches.
The stories in this book provide a clarion call for our species to regain our empathy for each other through skilled and intentional listening to connect, extend understanding, and ensure our survival.
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 2014
Beginning with her experience as a medical actor who was paid to act out symptoms for medical students to diagnose, Leslie Jamison's visceral and revealing essays ask essential questions about our basic understanding of others: How should we care about each other? How can we feel another's pain, especially when pain can be assumed, distorted, or performed? Is empathy a tool by which to test or even grade…
I’ve been fascinated by celebrities and heroes ever since I was a child. That compulsion became something I wanted to understand. I got my chance as the head editor of People magazine. Over the years, I met more than my share of celebrities – Ronald Reagan, Tom Hanks, Malcolm X, and Princess Diana, to name only a few. I began to take notes about my brushes with fame and think about celebrities in history and why they have recently become so dominant in our culture. Celebrity Nation is the result. Enjoy it!
When I decided to write about celebrity, I knew from the beginning that I would depend on Richard Schickel’s His Picture in the Papers. Schickel was the former movie reviewer for both LIFE and TIME magazines,and I used simply enjoy his perceptive insights when I also worked at TIME. Schickel uses the case study of the charismatic Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. to show how his celebrity was generated by his image reproduced in movies, magazines, and newspapers.
Schickel later wrote Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity in America, which further discussed how celebrity images have replaced the value of ideas in American culture.
Serendipity is a magical story told by a grandmother to a granddaughter, introducing us to the traditional way of living of the Scottish Travellers and their Cant language.
A fantasy tale for children of 8 years old and older inspired by three real places in Scotland. Serendipity takes us to…
William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.
Largely recognized as McLuhan’s first major work, this book provides a trenchant analysis of 1940’s popular culture in the United States, with particular reference to print-media advertising. To this end, it consists of x chapters, each of which consists of an image culled from newspapers and magazines, accompanied by an insightful—and often ironic—text. Dismissed by some as lacking in direction and coherence, the book actually has a tightly woven narrative that sheds considerable light on the gender issues, technology, and power structures of the day.
OURS is the first age in wruch many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is the object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention. To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect of many ads and much entertainment alike. Since so many minds are engaged in bringing about this condition of public helplessness, and since these programs of commercial education are so much more expensive and influential than…
I became fascinated by the highest achievements of human intelligence while a graduate student in philosophy working on the discovery and justification of scientific theories. Shortly after I got my PhD, I started working with cognitive psychologists who gave me an appreciation for empirical studies of intelligent thinking. Psychology led me to computational modeling of intelligence and I learned to build my own models. Much later a graduate student got me interested in questions about intelligence in non-human animals. After teaching a course on intelligence in machines, humans, and other animals, I decided to write a book that provides a systematic comparison: Bots and Beasts.
Richard Nisbett is one of the most influential social psychologists in the world, and we collaborated on the 1987 book Induction. His book on intelligence gives a good introduction to the psychology of intelligence and an incisive critique of attempts to use dubious research on a genetic basis for intelligence to explain racial inequality.
Who are smarter, Asians or Westerners? Are there genetic explanations for group differences in test scores? From the damning research of The Bell Curve to the more recent controversy surrounding geneticist James Watson's statements, one factor has been consistently left out of the equation: culture. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, world-class social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett takes on the idea of intelligence as biologically determined and impervious to culture with vast implications for the role of education as it relates to social and economic development. Intelligence and How to Get It asserts that intellect…
This is a beautifully written memoir by a
prominent First Nations writer and theatre creator. I was left with so many
stunning images of life on the land, of growing up in the North, of growing up
in a healthy and loving family.
The book changes every preconception you have
about First Nations communities and culture. It doesn’t have a narrative or
chronological arc, rather it’s like a series of short stories – anecdotes that
become almost Thuberesque in their idiosyncratic characters.
At a time when we are
trying to come to grips with the legacy of residential schools, the book is
honest, optimistic, realistic, and profoundly uplifting.
My imagination has always been captivated and fired up by reading traditional myths and fairy tales, as well science fiction. Growing up in the ’80s, I was particularly steeped in cinematic masterpieces such as Bladerunner and The Road Warrior, but I also loved reading classic sci-fi, as well as British literature, particularly the Brontes and Jane Austen. I enjoy and write speculative fiction because I believe it offers some of the best, creative ways to explore the timeless, universal truths underlying the human experience. Whether that exploration happens in subtle scenes of interpersonal interactions, or in the epic events woven in threads of dark and light across the tapestry of history, it’s all valuable and relevant.
I really loved Willis’ multilayered presentation of the narrator’s past and present. Masterfully, Willis creates a deceptively simple, haunting setting, where the common but painful event of the loss of a pet becomes a symbol for the banality of extinction itself—whether of a species or entire culture. Made me think about how, even though inevitable, loss never gets easier.
