Review of The Neverfear, by Katherine Rundell

Adventure, Audiobooks, Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Starred Review 0

The Neverfear

by Katherine Rundell
read by Samuel West

Listening Library, 2026. 8 hours, 4 minutes.
Review written September 4, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is the third book in the series that began with Impossible Creatures, and in my opinion, it continues to be the best currently ongoing fantasy series for kids. Katherine Rundell has a skill that J. K. Rowling also possessed of inserting delightfully imaginative magical details. She’s got a bestiary in the back of each book that has many creatures you will have heard of before, such as dragons and unicorns, but plenty of unique creations of her own.

You will want to read these books in order, though I’m finding I’m not too lost if I’ve forgotten many of the details from the earlier books. Listening to this one reminded me just how much I have enjoyed them all, and I’ll be wanting to reread them from the beginning.

In this volume, Christopher is now living most of the time in the magical world of the Archipelago, studying to be a good guardian, and Anya, the one-time princess from the second book, is living on the same island with her father, the berserker Nighthand, and Irian, the beloved of Nighthand.

On an errand with Christopher and Anya, Irian is kidnapped by a sinister band of outlaws who wear Ouroboros bracelets. The children are told they must perform three progressively more difficult Herculean tasks or she will die. After they perform amazing exploits to complete the tasks, a new threat arises to everything they care about.

In the progress of carrying out these tasks and defeating these challenges, against all odds, both Christopher and Anya uncover new skills within themselves. There’s lots of danger here, along with love, loyalty, humor, and plenty of magic. Samuel West’s voice is perfect for narrating these adventures, matter-of-factly presenting the magical details with his proper British accent.

Reading these books makes me wish my kids were young again, as they would make splendid family read-alouds.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Childrens_Fiction/neverfear.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Counterweights, by Shannan Martin

Christian, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review 0

Counterweights

An Essential Practice for Holding Hope in a Heavy World

by Shannan Martin

Revell, 2026. 238 pages.
Review written July 8, 2026, from my own book, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

Over several years since it was my Sonderbooks Stand-out in 2016, I’ve gone through the book Champagne for the Soul with two of my small groups (as well as on my own) – and both times it set our group spotting joys, looking for things to be joyful about in daily life.

But sometimes I feel a bit guilty looking for joys when there’s so much trouble in the world. When people are being oppressed and injustice is rampant, is it right to take pleasure in a sighting of a great blue heron?

This book fully acknowledges the weight of the world. And Shannan Martin frames finding joys as looking for counterweights.

She begins with a metaphor that she learned as a child that it’s easier to carry heavy weights if you have one bucket on each side.

Abundance isn’t experienced by merely counting our blessings but by countering our weights.

The essays that follow are a collection of some of the weights and counterweights I’ve faced, mostly over a few years’ time, which I believe deserve our sacred attention. Some of my hardships have been uniquely personal, while others have tied all of us in knots. Others have been secondary: the contact burns of paying attention to a world where, most often, trauma lands hardest on those who are already vulnerable. These weights range from mundane to dizzyingly dramatic. But at every turn, goodness has waited for me to take notice and scoop it up, leveling the load of life’s endless dualities.

I love the way this doesn’t dismiss or minimize the weights, but shows that the weights make the counterweights all the more necessary.

This is not a “silver lining” situation, where pain and injustice are minimized for the sake of flimsy optimism or playing nice. It’s not even about hoarding our favorite things. We are not guaranteed to have those things within our reach. The practice of gathering counterweights is about creating moments of sustenance from the raw materials of what we’re given. It is about holding everything in honest tension. Both/and. Our counterweights help us move forward and breathe through the heaviness. At their best, they can’t be bought or sold. They aren’t a matter of luck or reserved for the privileged. They are widely accessible and casually weird, entirely personal and communal to their core. They are their own reward. And they are happening all the time, ready to steady us on our feet.

So that’s what you’ve got in this book – stories of weighty matters, but also counterweights, things that bring joy. And it’s a lovely model for dealing with our own weights.

After all:

Counterweights are everywhere. But it’s up to us to slow down and see them.

shannanmartin.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/counterweights.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of King of the Neuro Verse, by Idris Goodwin

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Starred Review, Teen Fiction Review 1

King of the Neuro Verse

by Idris Goodwin
read by the Author

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2025. 3 hours, 2 minutes.
Review written August 12, 2026, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review

This is a young adult novel in verse, so it’s short, and perfect for neurodivergent thinkers like the protagonist.

Pernell is stuck going to summer school for his third time in high school, and all his nerves are jangled. Fortunately, a friend gave him a digital voice recorder, so he’s letting off steam by telling all his difficulties to “the future.” It’s 1999, so he’s not sure if the world will end when Y2K hits.

He’s got to take English – and then it turns out that the very teacher who made him go to summer school is teaching the class. She’s made up her mind about Pernell and is portrayed as a bully who humiliates him regularly. Though Pernell honestly has trouble paying attention.

Fortunately, at lunch time, every year a group of students do a rap circle they call the Cypher. Last year’s Cypher King graduated, and Pernell is determined to win the crown himself.

So why does playing with language in rap make so much more sense to him than writing essays in class?

My one little quibble with this audiobook is that a couple of times Pernell refers to ambient noise, and I wish the production had gone to enough trouble to simulate that, since it pulled me out of the book when I didn’t hear it. Supposedly, he’s recording the whole thing. In a print book, we don’t miss the ambient noise and trust that it’s there, but in an audiobook, I wish they’d attempted to make us think this was Pernell’s actual recording. The author is a rapper himself, so he reads the words well.

But that was a minor quibble. The story itself helped me understand how it feels to be a teen with ADHD just trying to do his best – and be King of what he actually cares about.

idrisgoodwin.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/king_of_the_neuro_verse.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Book Talking with Sondy: Wild Goose Edition

Book Talking with Sondy 0

A library serving a community of any kind… enriches that community, which would be impoverished and weakened if that library did not exist.

— Michael Gorman, Our Own Selves: More Meditations for Librarians, p. 191

I’m writing today from North Carolina!  Yes, I’m attending Wild Goose Festival, a kind-of out there festival based in progressive Christianity about spirituality and activism and other good stuff.

I wimped out today.  After a 9 to 5 pre-conference in 96-degree heat (but we were in a tent, with fans), I went back to the hotel and got cool.  And I’m not camping like the real devotees.  I guess I know my limits.  Anyway, the preconference was a lovely time with a Methodist minister who is an indigenous practitioner, talking with six of us about prayer.  I’m looking forward to two and a half more days of goodness (and heat).  I’ll be leading a group on Saturday writing their own psalms of lament.

New format!

Yes, I’m planning to continue posting Book Talking with Sondy as a monthly newsletter, sent to subscribers in their email.

But I’ve decided to also post them as blog entries.  I like being able to refer back to what I’ve written.  So if you subscribe to my blog for the reviews, you can unsubscribe to Book Talking with Sondy.  You can find all three options on the Subscribe page of the blog.

#Sonderbooks25

Yes, I’m making progress on  #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of writing Sonderbooks as of this month.

I very quickly made a new page of 2008 Stand-outs in the phone-friendly format.  But then it dawned on me that not only did I start the Sonderbooks blog in 2007, I also started the Sonderquotes blog and the Sonderjourneys blog then.  So I started reading not only the old book reviews, but also those other posts from 2007 and 2008.

And then I found out that somewhere along the way (I think when I switched web hosting companies), the files got corrupted with some special characters.  I got it cleaned up at the time in the main blog, but I couldn’t resist cleaning up the old entries in Sonderquotes and Sonderjourneys while I was rereading them – so it’s taking a little longer, but I’m having a lot of fun.  Very soon, I’ll get a summary post up about my 2008 reading year.  Sonderquotes especially reminded me of the books that helped me get through that year.  And the books reminded me how thrilled I was to actually be working as a librarian.  The quotation above was from Sonderquotes in 2008.

Library Insider Info

The latest interesting thing in our county is that the schools had the very good idea that all second graders should go on a field trip to the public library and check out a book.

This is a wonderful idea.  It did not come with additional money or staff for the library, however.  But we are making it happen.

And where I come in as Youth Materials Selector, is I’ll try to order more books that second-graders will want to check out.  For all of our twenty-two branches.

The hard part is that second graders have a very wide range of reading levels.  My plan is to mainly focus on graphic novels, because those appeal to all second graders, regardless of reading level.

We have some gift money and will get some additional graphic novels.  An interesting thing is that we have a special type of library card for public school students who don’t have a card of their own.  As the year goes on, we can check which books are being checked out on those cards – it will be mostly second graders using them – and see if we need to adjust the books we are ordering.

Reviews to Check Out

I got 26 reviews posted in August, so even more than July.  And I only got 23 new reviews written, so little by little, I’m catching up my backlog.

Actually, speaking of catching up, I completed a milestone just this past week and posted my last review written in 2025, so now my 40 backlog reviews were all written in 2026.

But I got some more good ones posted this last month!  Let me mention some of my favorites:

In the order they were posted:

Heronry, by Barbara Herkert, art by Gordy Wright.  This is a children’s nonfiction picture book, but I am a heron addict, so I loved it.

The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, by Raphael G. Warnock, is about the moral issues of seeking justice.

Busted, by Dan Gemeinhart, read by Mark Sanderlin, is a kids’ book that pulled all my heartstrings.  It begins with a kid bribed to break an old guy out of a nursing home and help him complete a bucket list.  Hijinks ensue.

Sabriel, by Garth Nix.  This is an updated, phone-friendly review of one of my 2004 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.  A YA Fantasy classic reread with pleasure for #Sonderbooks25.

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, by Sangu Mandanna, read by Samara MacLaren.  A cozy fantasy for adults, this features a young witch who gets roped into tutoring three volatile witch children in an unconventional home.

Basket Ball: The Story of the All-American Game, by Kadir Nelson.  Another children’s nonfiction book, but with more text than a picture book, this one tells the history of basketball, accompanied by stunning paintings.

One Word, Six Letters, by Adib Khorram.  The story of a year of high school, it shows the impact of a slur shouted at the start of the year on two students, one of whom did the shouting.

The Yahoo Boys: Love, Deception, and the Real Lives of Nigeria’s Romance Scammers, by Carlos Barragán.  Why the scammers are almost as trapped as the people they’re scamming.

Red Star Rebels, by Amie Kaufman, performed by Max Meyers, Jessica Almasy, and a full cast.  A YA thriller set on Mars with an amazing audio production.

Beauty, by Robin McKinley, read by Charlotte Parry.  An Old Favorite YA Fantasy classic retelling of the fairy tale.

Brigands and Breadknives, by Travis Baldree, read by the Author.  A cozy fantasy novel for adults, this one an adventure tale.

Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences, by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott.  A new classic on writing from the author of Bird by Bird – and her husband.

Austenland, by Shannon Hale.  This is an updated-in-2026 edition of the book for adults about what’s essentially a Jane Austen theme park for romantically inclined women.  The first edition was a 2007 Sonderbooks Stand-out.

And that reminds me, in August, I visited the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.  A lot of waiting in line, but it was still fun.

Have you noticed that I have trouble picking out highlights?  This is a side effect of only reviewing books I like.  (I did skip writing reviews of a couple books last month, honest!)  But I did leave plenty for you to discover on Sonderbooks.com

How about you?  Read anything good lately?

Thanks again, so much, for your support!

As always, Happy Reading!

Sondy

Review of Diamond Fever! by Steve Sheinkin

Children's Nonfiction Review, History, Starred Review 0

Diamond Fever!

A True Crime Story in the Wild West

by Steve Sheinkin
with comics and art by Jon Chad

Roaring Brook Press, 2026. 240 pages.
Review written August 30, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Here’s a true crime story told with all the drama of a novel. It’s suitable for middle school or upper elementary kids, though teens will like it, too. I’ll list it on the Children’s Nonfiction page, but this isn’t a picture book – it’s an adventure tale of the Wild West.

The story is of a dramatic and complicated swindle involving a diamond mine. We know it’s a crime from the title, and the author doesn’t hide that from the beginning, but we don’t know what was done or how they pulled it off until the end.

Interesting to me is that the criminals got away with it. Essentially, they duped famous and powerful people, who didn’t want it to get out that they had been swindled. It’s a long and involved swindle, and Steve Sheinkin takes us every step of the way.

He starts us off with two men in San Francisco in 1870, bringing a bag of rough diamonds to a mine investor for safe keeping. They say they found a diamond field when out prospecting. The investor checks, and these are real diamonds.

And so begins a long adventure involving multiple investors and multiple expeditions to the secret diamond field in the middle of the country. Before it’s done, they’ve pulled in the rich and powerful and have throngs in San Francisco interested in investing, planning to strike it rich. They even have to be stealthy about visiting the site, because others will want to stake a claim first.

How is it a crime? Who’s responsible? How did they pull it off? Where did the actual diamonds in that bag come from? The author skillfully spreads out the answers to keep us wanting to find out more. And there’s some nice pointers about not falling for scams at the end. It can even happen to the rich and powerful!

Some of the key scenes are shown with comics, and this tale is spun in a way that keeps you turning pages.

stevesheinkin.com
jonchad.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Austenland, by Shannon Hale

Austenalia, Fiction Review, Romance, Sonderbooks25, Stand-outs, Starred Review 0

Austenland

by Shannon Hale

Bloomsbury, 2026. 326 pages.
Review written August 29, 2026, from my own copy, ordered via Bloomsbury.com and signed by the Author at the National Book Festival
Review of original edition written in 2013.
2007 Sonderbooks Stand-out:
#2 Romance Fiction
Starred Review

Shannon Hale has revised Austenland and Midnight in Austenland! So of course I had to buy new copies. And rereading it fits in perfectly with my plan for #Sonderbooks25, celebrating 25 years of writing Sonderbooks, to reread selected Sonderbooks Stand-outs from previous years. The fabulous news is that she did the revisions in preparation for writing a third volume, Christmas in Austenland, coming out this Fall, which of course I already have preordered.

She says it started as just a little editing to update the technology, but ended up as a full-on revision. It’s been long enough since I last read Austenland – 2013 – that I didn’t really notice the differences, but I thoroughly enjoyed the story and still wish someone would make this place in real life. And yes, I read into the wee hours of the morning finishing it because it was too hard to stop. Even knowing what’s going to happen.

The premise is that there’s a country house in England where wealthy women can go and be immersed in the world of Jane Austen. They’re promised a romantic experience and get to attend a ball at the end. Handsome actors all make up a house party in Regency England.

Our heroine in this first novel, Jane Hayes, isn’t rich enough to pay her own way, but she is obsessed with the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice miniseries starring Colin Firth. Her great-aunt Carolyn learns her secret – and in her will leaves Jane a trip to Austenland.

Once there, Jane’s journey loosely parallels Pride and Prejudice, complete with some clever banter, interesting first impressions, and a Wickham-like character. Some fun moments include Jane being asked to play the pianoforte and launching into “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater.” And the house party decides to put on a theatrical production (as in Mansfield Park), which puts couples together.

Something I love about the new edition is that it includes 48 pages at the back telling of Shannon Hale’s experience making the movie Austenland and getting to be present on the set in England. (The movie is great fun – of course I own that, too.) What a dream come true seeing her words come to life! She captures the magic of the experience beautifully.

When I was in line at the National Book Festival to get this signed, the person next to me was a Jane Austen fan and a Shannon Hale fan, but hadn’t heard of these books. Anyone this describes needs to read Austenland! And now they’re updated, with more volumes on the way!

shannonhale.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Fiction/austenland_2026.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of The Scammer, by Tiffany D. Jackson

Audiobooks, Contemporary, Suspense, Teen Fiction Review 0

The Scammer

by Tiffany D. Jackson
read by January LaVoy

Quill Tree Books, 2025. 9 hours, 10 minutes.
Review written December 15, 2025, from a library eaudiobook.

The Scammer is another young adult thriller by Tiffany Jackson featuring a Black girl protagonist. Jordyn has decided at the last minute, against her parents wishes, to defer her Yale acceptance and attend a historically Black university in Washington, D.C. Once there, she quickly becomes firm friends with her suitemates.

But one of her new friends has a brother who recently got out of prison (wrongly accused, of course), and she asks to let him stay with them. Devonte is everything charming. He cooks for the girls, cleans for them, and starts giving life advice.

But the life advice accelerates to controlling every part of their lives, giving them a curfew, telling them what they can do, and who they can be around. What’s more, it spreads to more people on campus turning to this charming older man to know how they should live. And then he starts asking for money, so their new family can build a community together.

I have to say that the middle of this audiobook when Devonte was getting more and more controlling was difficult even to listen to. Jordyn does make at least one friend who helps her get her head clear – but of course it all leads up to a dangerous crisis. As has to happen in any good thriller.

So yes, here’s some gripping escapism with a side of cautionary tale. And a thriller with a less typical heroine in the spotlight.

writeinbk.com

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/scammer.html

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Wildspeak, words by Sangma Francis, pictures by Lexi Vangsnes

Contemporary, Picture Book Review, Starred Review 0

Wildspeak

words by Sangma Francis
pictures by Lexi Vangsnes

Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2026. 36 pages.
Review written August 13, 2026, from a library book.
Starred Review

Wildspeak is a wondrous and wonder-filled picture book about creativity and exploring the natural world.

We see a mother and two girls heading off on a nature walk. All three have brown skin, and a dog is happily bounding along with them.

In the wide, wide world with its wide, wide skies,
there are wild, wild words waiting to be spoken.

First, the book highlights some imaginative words that describe nature, like “dragonflies,” and “waterweeds.” But then they begin making up words of their own, like “Sunglitter,” to describe the scatter of light off water. And then they make a game of it:

“What’s the word for the shininess of pebbles underneath?” Cora asks.

It’s time for Wildspeak! On the next spread, they shout the words, “Stonelight,” “Bottomshimmer,” “Rockglisten,” and “Goblingems.”

And so the book continues. I’m not sure where they find so many different spaces for their nature walk – meadows, beach, mountain, forest – but in each space they highlight some existing wild words, and then make up new ones of their own.

For example, when a wave goes out and leaves sea stones drying in the sun, the girls call it, “Beachcrackle,” “Foamdry,” “Poolfizz,” and “Stonebreath.”

At the end of the day, they write their new words in their nature journal.

The end papers are fun, showing that nature journal, and including a taped-in glossary of some of the existing wildspeak words encountered earlier in the book.

This book is more for young elementary school kids than preschoolers – kids that can write down their new words. But preschoolers can get in on the imagination and wonder.

asangmafrancis.com
lexivangsnes.com
sourcebooks.com

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Review of Princess Academy: The Graphic Novel, by Shannon Hale and Victoria Ying

Children's Fiction Review, Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Starred Review 0

Princess Academy

The Graphic Novel

by Shannon Hale
illustrated by Victoria Ying
color by Elena Dall’aglio

Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2026. 284 pages.
Review written August 23, 2026, from a copy ordered via Amazon.com and signed by the author.
Starred Review

I ordered two copies of this book for my two 11-year-old nieces (different families) in time to have them signed by Shannon Hale at the National Book Festival. And – I had to wait in line so long, I got the entire book read!

I read and loved the original Newbery Honor-winning book back in 2005, and listened to the audiobook in 2008, so it’s been a long time, but I know the story well. I enjoyed the graphic novel, and I can’t think of anything important that it left out, though of course it’s much quicker to read than the original book.

I like the way they show that people from the village of Mount Eskel like to sing, but having words for songs and musical notes dancing across the pages, especially starting each chapter. That reminded me… and sure enough I checked, and each chapter of the original book also begins with a song. The addition of musical notes and the words flying in the air makes them come across more as songs than poems in the graphic novel.

I also like how the graphic novel portrays quarry speech – when the villagers of Mount Eskel can speak to one another across distances through the special stone of their home. In the graphic novel, these show as golden bubbles, with pictures and words inside them, but you get more of a feeling of what’s going on, and the author doesn’t need as many words of description.

Other than that, I’m not sure how well the book works as a stand-alone graphic novel, since I’m reading into it everything I already know about the story. But as far as I can tell, it gets the same ideas across in fewer words because of the visual impact of the pictures.

And the pictures are well done. I can keep better track of the various characters than when I was only visualizing them in my own head. They show Mount Eskel as a beautiful and brightly colored place.

I’ve forgotten to tell what the book’s about. A small mountain village is disrupted when the kingdom’s priests have performed divination and determined that the future princess will come from their village. So all the girls within a few years of coming of age are taken to a princess academy to learn skills like reading, writing, arithmetic, etiquette, and diplomacy. At the end of the year, there will be a ball and the prince will choose his bride.

Our protagonist Miri enjoys learning at the academy, and hopes to help her village with what she’s learned. She’s not sure she wants to leave her mountain. Besides, she has a handsome friend at home that she’s maybe having feelings for. Does she want to marry a stranger in exchange for power?

I do still hope that people (my nieces) will want to move on to the plain text book. It necessarily has more nuance – but the story did translate well into this new medium.

One other note: I put the original book on my Young Adult page because, after all, it’s about young people getting married. This graphic novel is a little more explicit that the marriage won’t happen until the chosen princess comes of age, and the style of the illustrations is more geared to middle grades than to high school, so I’m going to list this on the Children’s Fiction page.

shannonhale.com
victoriaying.com

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Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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Review of Good Writing, by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott

Creativity, Nonfiction Review, Starred Review, Writing 0

Good Writing

36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences

by Neal Allen and Anne Lamott

Avery (Penguin Random House), 2026. 200 pages.
Review written August 18, 2026, from my own copy, purchased via Amazon.com.
Starred Review

I already loved Anne Lamott. Her vulnerable writing with self-deprecating humor and relatability won me over long ago. Now she’s written a book with her husband about how to write better, and preordering my own copy was a no-brainer.

Preorder? But this book has been out a few months. Yes, well, it’s the perfect book for reading a chapter a day (most days) and trying to absorb the wisdom. It’s also going to be a book I want to keep handy for when I’m revising my writing. I’m self-conscious about the rules I’m breaking in writing this review – but it’s not about squelching writing, it’s about making writing better, about improving sentences. (Anne does recommend pulling it out on the third draft of a book, which she calls the “dental draft” for in-depth cleaning.)

The set up of the book is 36 short chapters with writing rules from Neal’s years of experience as a journalist. And then in each chapter, Anne chimes in. She does some teasing and a little sniping, but the two writers’ love and respect for each other shines through and is a delight to read even if it wouldn’t help your own writing.

I like how Anne explains it in the Introduction:

My teaching has mostly been about the attitude of writing: gaining the confidence to get your stories told, to stop not writing, to tell the truthiest truth, make the plunge into empathy, and, mostly, to develop the habit of keeping your butt in the chair every day. Neal tends more toward encouraging people to write better sentences and paragraphs. Hence this book, and my own fixation with the best possible sentences I can write.

The rules you’ll find here are basic but universal: “Use Strong Verbs,” “Don’t Show Off,” “Trust Your Voice,” “Drop ‘Very’ and Other Crutch Words,” “Jettison [All Those] Tiny Words.”

Neal makes the case that you’ll find these rules helpful even if you don’t think of yourself as a writer:

These rules of good writing don’t exist only on the written page. They inform all types of communication, including everyday speech. We enjoy being entertained and persuaded in conversation, on film, through headphones, in private, and out in crowds. Instead of reading, people are listening – to books, yes, but also to experts on podcasts. As those experts script or improvise their words, they’re following many of the rules of rhetoric and persuasion that lifted Pericles two millennia ago and later, Shakespeare. Strong verbs keep the listener’s attention exactly the same way they keep the reader’s. I can’t prove it, but I tend to believe that the rules of persuasion and sentence-making will survive any changes in media, and may always assist us in refining the words we use to understand the human experience.

And I love Anne’s take on that:

Neal shared these thirty-six rules with me on our fourth or fifth date, and while their simplicity and brilliance were not the main reason I agreed to marry him a couple of years later, they didn’t hurt. His rules helped me become a better writer, and if you follow them, your writing will get better, too. Your work will get more economical, sharper, and more riveting. It is possible that it will become both more fun for us to read and more fun for you to write. Our hope is that you will be able to edit your work in a more focused and efficient way. Long, boring descriptions, out; generic verbs, out; endlessly inserted adjectives and adverbs, out out out. And clichés, feh! You can do better.

Writers, if you haven’t yet read Anne’s Bird by Bird, you absolutely need to do that! After that book gets you to write and to get your shitty first draft down on paper, this book will help you make that draft much less shitty.

And we’ll all be happier to read your writing.

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Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Nonfiction/good_writing.html

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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.

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