Book Review -- How Literature Works by John Sutherland

John Sutherland is a literary critic and columnist for the Guardian. The sub-title of his book is "50 Key Concepts" and it's organized into 50 4-page chapters. Fancy that. I read a couple books a year on writing and occasionally read books on literary criticism. Literary criticism tomes tend to be esoteric and assume the reader already has broad knowledge about the subject. Sutherland's book is concise and written in clear English any layman can understand. I read these books to improve my writing and most of the time I need to wade through lengthy jargon-laced verbiage to find nuggets that are helpful. Sutherland's clarity, short chapters, and headings make this task relatively easy. I find what I'm looking for or move on to the next chapter.

If you're a writer, reader, or like to study literary criticism, How Literature Works is a fun find. Besides, most academic books on the subject require a new mortgage while Sutherland's perfect-bound paperback is only $11 on Amazon. The Kindle version is $9.50.

If you're interested in writing, be sure to check out my Writers and Writing pages on this blog.

Large Print Edition of The Return Now Available

The large print edition of The Return, A Steve Dancy Tale became available in March. Center Point Publishing has released all four Steve Dancy books in large print.  (The Shopkeeper and Leadville are sold out, but used copies are available at Amazon and other booksellers.) As of this writing, The Return has 30 Amazon customer reviews for 4.9 stars. This fourth novel in the series has also received good reviews from Western Writers of America, Bookviews, Examiner.com, and Brandywine. 

Libraries continue to form the core of large-print business, but these library-bound editions also make terrific gifts. Books as gifts provide hours of pleasure and an ability to write a personal message on the flyleaf that won't be discarded like most greeting cards. 

Honest westerns ... filled with dishonest characters.

Creative Librarians

Book Riot has published a piece on Finding Libraries in Unexpected Places. There are some great pictures and an interesting narrative for each. There are some nifty ideas here that might help libraries remain as a place to check out books—real books, printed on that stuff they call paper. I would hate to see libraries turned into book museums, or internet portals for the digitally deprived. I prefer librarians information savvy rather than technology chauffeurs.

Concord Free Public Library

Boston Public Library

As you can tell, I’m a bit old fashion. I love bookstore and libraries. My favorite libraries are the Boston Public Library and the Concord Free Public Library. I like both of these because there are surprises buried in their stacks—surprises that knowledgeable librarians help you uncover. 

In the Boston Public Library I found a Roger Sherman doctoral thesis by Christopher Collier, the author of Decision in Philadelphia. In Concord, I found a one hundred and sixty year old biography of Roger Sherman. Both finds were invaluable for my research for Tempest at Dawn. Since I was not a resident of Massachusetts, I was further surprised when the Concord Free Public Library issued me a library card on the spot and let me walk out of the building with this valuable book. Free library cards for everyone is a longstanding tradition of this charming bastion of American literary history.

Bookstores are great, used bookstores are fun and great, but libraries are indispensable because they come equipped with tour guides called librarians. I sure hope the digitization of books doesn't cost us this valuable resource.

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