Review of On Living, by Kerry Egan

On Living

by Kerry Egan

Riverhead Books, 2016. 208 pages.
Starred Review

On Living is such a lovely little book! Kerry Egan was a hospice chaplain who listened to dying people tell about their lives and their stories.

This book tells many of the stories of the people she met. But along the way, it weaves in plenty of wisdom about living.

In the beginning of the book, she explains what chaplains do:

Hospice chaplains are sort of the opposite of storytellers. We’re story holders.

We listen to the stories that people believe have shaped their lives. We listen to the stories people choose to tell, and the meaning they make of those stories.

While religion plays a central role in spiritual care for many patients, it doesn’t for many others. Spiritual care, faith, and religion are not the same thing. Some chaplains might also be priests and pastors, but in their roles as chaplains, they don’t preach or teach.

Instead, they create a space – a sacred time and place – in which people can look at the lives they’ve led and try to figure out what it all means to them.

When you talk to hundreds of people who are dying and looking back over their lives, you come to realize something startling: Every single person out there has a crazy story. Every single person has some bizarre, life-shattering, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you story in their past, or will experience one in the future. Every shopper in the grocery store, every telemarketer on the phone, every mother at school pickup, every banker striding down the sidewalk. Money, faith, popularity, beauty, power – nothing prevents it.

Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us. Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis, where we have lost our sense of what is right and wrong, possible and impossible, real and not real. Never underestimate how frightening, angering, confusing, devastating it is to be in that place. Making meaning of what is meaningless is hard work. Soul-searching is painful. This process of making or finding meaning at the end of life is what the chaplain facilitates. The chaplain doesn’t do the work. The patient does. The chaplain isn’t wrestling with the events of a life that don’t match up with everything you were taught was true, but she won’t turn away in fear, either. She won’t try to give you pat answers to get you to stop talking about pain, or shut you down with platitudes that make her feel better but do nothing to resolve the confusion and yearning you feel. A chaplain is not the one laboring to make meaning, but she’s been with other people who have. She knows what tends to be helpful, and what doesn’t. She might ask questions you would never have considered, or that help you remember other times you survived something hard and other ways you made sense of what seemed senseless. She can reframe the story, and can offer a different interpretation to consider, accept, or reject. She can remind you of the larger story of your life, or the wisdom of your faith tradition. She can hold open a space of prayer or meditation or reflection when you don’t have the energy or strength to keep the walls from collapsing. She will not leave you. And maybe most important: She knows the work can be done. She knows you can do it and not crumble into dust.

She wrote this book when a patient named Gloria revealed that she’d been praying for someone to write her story. When she found out that Kerry was a writer, Gloria made her promise.

While a few patients before Gloria had told me that they wished other people could learn from their life stories – had even given me permission to share their stories with others – it was Gloria and the promise I made to her that led to this little book. I had been holding on to patients’ stories for many years by then, the stories that patients had poured out and puzzled over, the stories they turned over in their minds like the rosary beads and worn Bibles they turned over in their hands. I hoarded them, locked them away in my heart.

Often, but not always, my patients found some measure of peace as we talked. Often, but not always, their faith in something good and greater than themselves was affirmed. Often, but not always, they found strength they didn’t know they had to make amends with the people in their lives, and courage to move forward without fear toward their deaths. Always, they taught me something.

She goes on to say:

I don’t know if listening to other people’s life stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those stories healed mine.

Just as was true for every one of my patients, something had happened to me, too. What I thought of as the story that had shaped my life up to that point was one I was ashamed of. I thought I was broken and cracked and could not be put back together again, that I was destroyed at the very deepest part of me, and that this was something that could never be made better. When I started working in hospice, I didn’t yet understand that everyone – everyone – is broken and cracked.

I’m not sure if reading a book full of stories told by the dying can make you wise. But I am sure that there is lots of wisdom in this book. Reading it provoked my thinking and uplifted my spirit.

penguin.com

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Review of Knitting Pearls, edited by Ann Hood

Knitting Pearls

Writers Writing About Knitting

edited by Ann Hood

W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. 260 pages.

This is a book of essays about knitting, and the essays are written by twenty-seven distinguished writers. Not all of the writers are knitters, but all of the writers do have something interesting to say about knitting. Maybe they had a relative who knitted for them. Maybe there’s a particular knitted object that starts their musings.

I took a long time to read this book. But that’s the beauty of essays – you can read one at a time and come away smiling. Or just musing about life.

Here’s a paragraph from the introduction, with the editor telling us what to expect. (There are several more paragraphs, so this is just a taste.)

And speaking of swooning, here’s what you have to look forward to when you read Knitting Pearls. Like me, some of the contributors knit their way through adversity. Caroline Leavitt’s first husband asked her to make him a sweater with brontosauruses on it, but as she knit the marriage began to crumble. Lily King’s daughter knit a hat during their year living in Italy, which eased her homesickness. Cynthia Chinelly knits to help her escape the worry she has for her son. Melissa Coleman hoped that knitting a sweater for everyone in her family would remove the curse of divorce. An on-again, off-again knitter, Robin Romm returned to it when her mother was dying, and now knits as she waits for a baby. Back at Ithaca College in the 1970s, Bill Roorbach joined the knitting club to get over his broken heart – and to meet girls.

If you love knitting, you’re going to enjoy this book.

wwnorton.com

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Review of Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon

Steal Like an Artist

10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

by Austin Kleon

Workman Publishing Company, 2012. 152 pages.

This is a little book of excellent suggestions for young adults who want to pursue creative work. I say young adults, because as an adult who’s more set in my ways, I’ve already developed my own versions of some of these suggestions, like “Get yourself a calendar,” “Keep a log book,” and “Keep your day job.” (And those are all under the Ninth Thing: “Be Boring. (It’s the only way to get work done.”)

I do love the title Thing: “Steal like an artist.” Here are some good lines from the section explaining it:

What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.

If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original, we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there’s a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love.

As much as I love collecting quotations and writing book reviews, it’s not a surprise I love this idea.

Of course, this was my favorite bit:

Always be reading. Go to the library. There’s magic in being surrounded by books. Get lost in the stacks. Read bibliographies. It’s not the book you start with, it’s the book that book leads you to.

Collect books, even if you don’t plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

Partly why I say this is for young adults is Thing Two: “Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.” It’s still good advice at age 53, but I have more of an idea than I did in my twenties.

The format of the book is such that it’s a great book to pull out and read a bit each morning to start your day with some inspiration. I tend to get such books read much more quickly than books that need a significant stretch of time in order to absorb them.

There are lots more good ideas for being creative for people of any age and place in their journey. I will probably give this book to my young adult children, who each have a creative side. And I’m storing away some of the advice to appropriate into my own life.

austinkleon.com
workman.com

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Review of Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dear Ijeawele,

or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. 63 pages.
Starred Review

This book is short – which makes it perfect for reading a little bit at a time, one suggestion per day. This would make a lovely gift for mothers of young girls.

Here’s the background of this little book, from the Introduction:

When a couple of years ago a friend of mine from childhood, who’d grown into a brilliant, strong, kind woman, asked me to tell her how to raise her baby girl a feminist, my first thought was that I did not know.

It felt like too huge a task.

But I had spoken publicly about feminism and perhaps that made her feel I was an expert on the subject. I had over the years also helped care for many babies of loved ones; I had worked as a babysitter and helped raise my nephews and nieces. I had done a lot of watching and listening, and I had done even more thinking.

In response to my friend’s request, I decided to write her a letter, which I hoped would be honest and practical, while also serving as a map of sorts for my own feminist thinking. This book is a version of that letter, with some details changed.

Now that I, too, am the mother of a delightful baby girl, I realize how easy it is to dispense advice about raising a child when you are not facing the enormously complex reality of it yourself.

Still, I think it is morally urgent to have honest conversations about raising children differently, about trying to create a fairer world for women and men.

My friend sent me a reply saying she would “try” to follow my suggestions.

And in rereading these as a mother, I, too, am determined to try.

And the fifteen suggestions she gives are good ones. Her style is personal and friendly, since the letter was written to a friend. Above all, it’s inspiring – and makes me think about my own interactions with people.

I’ll give some examples. The first suggestion:

Be a full person. Motherhood is a glorious gift, but do not define yourself solely by motherhood.

There is much elaboration on each suggestion, thoughtful, illuminating and inspiring. Here’s another one I loved:

Teach Chizalum to read. Teach her to love books. The best way is by casual example. If she sees you reading, she will understand that reading is valuable…. Books will help her understand and question the world, help her express herself, and help her in whatever she wants to become – a chef, a scientist, a singer, all benefit from the skills that reading brings.

This one was interesting, because I hadn’t thought of it this way before:

Never speak of marriage as an achievement. Find ways to make clear to her that marriage is not an achievement, nor is it what she should aspire to. A marriage can be happy or unhappy, but it is not an achievement.

We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other.

The Eighth Suggestion:

Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people…. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable….

Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone. Tell her that if someone does not like her, there will be someone else who will. Teach her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked, she is also a subject who can like or dislike. In her teenage years, if she comes home crying about some boys who don’t like her, let her know she can choose not to like those boys – yes, it’s hard, I know, just remembering my crush on Nnamdi in secondary school.

But still I wish somebody had told me this.

I like this paragraph in a suggestion about romance (“Romance will happen, so be on board.”):

Teach her that to love is not only to give but also to take. This is important because we give girls subtle cues about their lives – we teach girls that a large component of their ability to love is their ability to sacrifice their selves. We do not teach this to boys. Teach her that to love she must give of herself emotionally but she must also expect to be given.

And the final suggestion:

Teach her about difference. Make difference ordinary. Make difference normal. Teach her not to attach value to difference. And the reason for this is not to be fair or to be nice, but merely to be human and practical. Because difference is the reality of our world. And by teaching her about difference, you are equipping her to survive in a diverse world.

She must know and understand that people walk different paths in the world, and that as long as those paths do no harm to others, they are valid paths that she must respect. Teach her that we do not know – we cannot know – everything about life. Both religion and science have spaces for things we do not know, and it is enough to make peace with that.

Teach her never to universalize her own standards or experiences. Teach her that her standards are for her alone, and not for other people. This is the only necessary form of humility: the realization that difference is normal.

Come to think of it – this book is great reading even if you aren’t the mother of a young girl. It’s inspiring, encouraging, and thought-provoking.

aaknopf.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. 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 Hallelujah Anyway, by Anne Lamott

Hallelujah Anyway

Rediscovering Mercy

by Anne Lamott

Riverhead Books, 2017. 176 pages.
Starred Review

I do love Anne Lamott. She’s down-to-earth and real. She admits to all kinds of uncharitable thoughts – and then shows us that they can be overcome with mercy. She does away with pretense and helps me stop trying to do the same.

In this book, she focuses on Mercy. Here’s a paragraph from the beginning. I opened the book at random and found something wonderfully quotable:

Just to hear the words “mercy” or “merciful” can transform the whole day, because as the old saying goes, the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows. Something lights up in me. We know mercy is always our salvation – as we age, as our grandchildren go down the same dark streets that called to their parents, as the ice caps melt. But I wish it was something else. I wish it was being able to figure things out, at which I am very good, or to assign blame, at which I am better, or to convince people of the rightness of my ideas. I wish it was a political savior who believes the same things I believe, who possesses the force of great moral strength that (of course) agrees with my own deepest values. But no, hope of renewal and restoration is found in the merciful fibrillating heart of the world.

Anne Lamott will make you smile and make you think and make you look at the world with a little more mercy.

penguin.com

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Review of The Gift of Anger, by Arun Gandhi

The Gift of Anger

And Other Lessons from My Grandfather Mahatma Gandhi

by Arun Gandhi

Gallery Books (Jeter Publishing), 2017. 292 pages.
Starred Review

This book is filled with stories of things that Arun Gandhi learned as a child when he lived for two years on the ashram with his grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi. I read a chapter a day, which gave me some nice, inspirational food for thought. I learned much I didn’t know about Mahatma Gandhi, but what I love most about this book is how it radiates peace and nonviolence. Reading this book makes it much easier to see how counterproductive it is to hold onto anger.

The chapters themselves are listed as “lessons.” So “Lesson One” is “Use Anger for Good.” Lesson Four is “Know Your Own Worth.” Lesson Five is “Lies Are Clutter.” Lesson Six is “Waste Is Violence.” And Lesson Eight is “Humility Is Strength.” The book includes eleven lessons, all illustrated by stories and insiights. Lesson Nine gives us “The Five Pillars of Nonviolence,” and throughout the book, a picture develops of the power of a nonviolent life.

I wasn’t surprised by the title story and the lesson “Use Anger for Good,” because I’d read about that incident in Arun Gandhi’s picture book, Grandfather Gandhi. When Arun came to the ashram as a boy, he had a lot of anger. His grandfather talked with him, including this insight:

Bapuji looked over at me from behind his spinning wheel. “I am glad to see you can be moved to anger. Anger is good. I get angry all the time,” he confessed as his fingers turned the wheel.

I could not believe what I was hearing. “I have never seen you angry,” I replied.

“Because I have learned to use my anger for good,” he explained. “Anger to people is like gas to the automobile – it fuels you to move forward and get to a better place. Without it, we would not be motivated to rise to a challenge. It is an energy that compels us to define what is just and unjust.”

Grandfather explained that when he was a boy in South Africa, he too had suffered from violent prejudice, and it made him angry. But eventually he learned that it didn’t help to seek vengeance, and he began to fight against prejudice and discrimination with compassion, responding to anger and hate with goodness. He believed in the power of truth and love. Seeking revenge made no sense to him. An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.

And that’s only the first lesson! The lessons progress, and are usually accompanied by stories from Arun’s life with his grandfather, though there are usually other illustrations as well. The lessons include Mahatma Gandhi’s time of political activism, using nonviolent protest to free India from British rule, and they continue all the way up to his death, and Arun’s struggles with wanting revenge. Ultimately, honoring his grandfather’s legacy won out.

“Forgiveness is more manly than punishment,” Bapuji had said.

When we are tested, we don’t prove our strength with violence or anger but by directing our actions for good. India had given Bapuji the great gift of a brief peace after his death. I had to give him the similar gift of forgiveness in the face of great evil. Bapuji had once explained that it is easy to love those who love you, but the real power of nonviolence comes when you can love those who hate you.

There’s lots of wisdom in this little book.

SimonandSchuster.com

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Review of The Hour of Land, by Terry Tempest Williams

The Hour of Land

A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks

by Terry Tempest Williams

Sarah Crichton Books (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2016. 389 pages.
Starred Review

I got to hear Terry Tempest Williams speak about this book at an ALA conference before it was published and got a chapbook of the first chapter, so I was watching eagerly for it to come out. However, it still took me a long time to get it read. I tend to read nonfiction slowly, a chapter at a time, and this one continued to be on hold at the library, so I couldn’t just renew it and keep going. I finally buckled down to finish and was even more impressed than I expected to be.

I expected a lot of meditations on the beauty of our National Parks, but what I found is a lot more than that. There is much information about their history, and yes, about the wildlife and landscape, but there’s also a great deal about current concerns, such as oil companies taking over the land all around a national park and creating environmental devastation inside the park. Or the devastation wrought by an oil spill on a national park on the coast. Since this was written before the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, it was hard to read about the challenges and be pretty certain that things aren’t getting better.

Here are some things Terry Tempest Williams has to say in the introductory chapter.

In my wanderings among these dozen national parks, my intention was to create portraits of unexpected beauty and complexity. I thought it would be a straightforward and exuberant project, focusing on the protection of public lands, as I have done through most of my life. But, in truth, it has been among the most rigorous assignments I have ever given myself because I was writing out of my limitations. I am not a historian or a scientist or an employee of a federal land agency privy to public land policy and law. My authority is simply that of a storyteller who lives in the American West in love with this country called home.

I have been inspired by the photographs and people included in this book. I have learned that there is no such thing as one portrait or one story, only the knowledge of our own experience shared. I no longer see America’s parks as “our best idea,” but our evolving idea; I see our national parks as our ongoing struggle as a diverse people to create circles of reverence in a time of collective cynicism where we are wary of being moved by anything but our own clever perspective.

“The purpose of life is to see,” the writer Jack Turner said to me on a late summer walk at the base of the Tetons. I understand this to be a matter of paying attention. The nature of our national parks is bound to the nature of our own humility, our capacity to stay open and curious in a world that instead beckons closure through fear. For me, humility begins as a deep recognition of all I do not know. This understanding doesn’t stop me, it inspires me to ask questions, to look more closely, feel more fully the character of the place where I am. And so with this particular book, I have sought to listen to both the inner and the outer landscapes that spoke to me, to not hide behind metaphor or lyricism as I have in the past, but to simply share the stories that emerged in each park encountered.

At a time when it feels like we are a nation divided, I am interested in how a sense of place can evolve toward an ethic of place, especially within our national parks….

This is the Hour of Land, when our mistakes and shortcomings must be placed in the perspective of time. The Hour of Land is where we remember what we have forgotten: We are not the only species who lives and dreams on the planet. There is something enduring that circulates in the heart of nature that deserves our respect and attention.

The national parks she explores in this book are Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, Acadia National Park in Maine, Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania, Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa, Big Bend National Park in Texas, Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska, Gulf Islands National Seashore in Florida and Mississippi, Canyonlands National Park in Utah, Alcatraz Island and Golden Gate National Recreation Area in California, Glacier National Park in Montana, and César E. Chavez National Monument in California.

What she discovered in these parks is fascinating and surprising and thought-provoking. This book is a treasure and a challenge.

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Review of Going Into Town, by Roz Chast

Going into Town

A Love Letter to New York

by Roz Chast

Bloomsbury, 2017. 169 pages.

This book is an introduction to New York, which New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast created for her children, who did not grow up in New York City, like she did.

Here are some selected things she says about the book. You’ll have to imagine the entertaining cartoons that go with these words.

This is not a “definitive guide book” to Manhattan. In fact, it’s not really a guide book. There’s nothing in here about the Statue of Liberty, for example. Why? Because I’ve never been. I’d like to go. Someday. Just not today. Please don’t make me go today.

This is also definitely not one of those “insider’s guides” where I tell you about the hippest clubs, the swankiest restaurants, the edgiest neighborhoods, the coolest gyms, or the store where the best people buy the most exclusive shoes.

It’s not a history book. Do not imagine, even for a second, that I’m going to tell you a bunch of cool facts, like how Betsy Ross invented concrete, or that a thousand feet under Grand Central, somebody discovered an old Pilgrim restaurant, and look, here’s the menu: . . .

I feel about Manhattan the way I feel about a book, a TV series, a movie, a play, an artist, a song, a food, a whatever that I love. I want to tell you about it so that maybe you will love it too. I’m not worried about it being “ruined” by too many people “discovering” it. Manhattan’s been ruined since 1626, when Peter Minuit bought it from Native Americans for $24.00.

Now my kids are grown-ups. The city has changed since I was 23. Things have happened. Some good, some bad, some very bad. But I still love it more than anyplace else, and hope you will too.

She does communicate this affection in the pages that follow. And despite saying it’s not a guide book, the next time I go to New York City, I’m going to check out this book and carefully review her chapter on the basic layout of Manhattan – it makes it all very clear and logical and would be tremendously helpful.

And along the way, I’d get many ideas of things to do and places to visit. And on top of all that, the book has plenty of things that make you laugh. It’s fun to read even if you never have gone to New York City, but will certainly make you want to remedy that situation.

bloomsbury.com

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Review of The Wisdom of Sundays, by Oprah Winfrey

The Wisdom of Sundays

Life-Changing Insights from Super Soul Conversations

by Oprah Winfrey

Flatiron Books, 2017. 240 pages.

Here’s how Oprah introduces this book:

I believe part of my calling on Earth is to help people connect to ideas that expand their vision of who they really are and all they can be.

That’s why I created Super Soul Sunday. After filming more than two hundred hours of heart-expanding interviews, I began to envision a truly transcendent book – with words you can hold in your hand, be inspired by, and carry with you forever.

The result is a lovely book. Oprah takes excerpts from interviews with many different distinguished guests with whom she’s discussed things that really matter.

The conversations are printed with a backdrop of photos, many of which were taken at Oprah’s home in Santa Barbara. They remind me of the photos I take near my own home, spotting small moments of beauty.

The general topics she covers are Awakening, Intention, Mindfulness, Spiritual GPS, Ego, Forgiveness, Broken Open, Grace and Gratitude, Fulfillment, and Love and Connection.

It won’t be a surprise that things get new agey, and there are leaders from several different religions represented here. I didn’t agree with every single word – but there are many beautiful nuggets here. The overall result is an uplifting and beautiful book.

flatironbooks.com
melcher.com

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Review of Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, by Ben Blatt

Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve

What the Numbers Reveal about the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing

by Ben Blatt

Simon & Schuster, 2017. 271 pages.

In the final paragraph of this book, Ben Blatt tells us:

The written word and the world of numbers should not be kept apart. It’s possible to be a lover of both. Through the union of writing and math there is so much to learn about the books we love and the writers we admire. And by looking at the patterns, we can appreciate that beautiful moment where the pattern breaks, and where a brilliant new idea bursts into the world.

Anyone who reads that paragraph and knows anything about me will understand that I loved this book. It’s a big data approach to literature, a statistical look at good books.

Seriously, what the author did here was take a huge amount of digitized texts from the classics (award-winning books or books on “best” lists) and from bestsellers and (for comparison) from fan fiction. Then he ran the numbers, asking a wide variety of questions. And discovered some fascinating things.

Do great writers actually use fewer -ly adverbs? Can you tell the difference between books written by women and books written by men simply by the words used? Can you figure out who really wrote a book, the big-name author or the coauthor? Do people follow their own advice (such as leaving out exclamation points and getting rid of “very”)? Are bestsellers getting dumber? Do Americans write “louder” fiction than British writers? Who uses the most cliches? And the one hinted at in the title: What are a writer’s favorite words?

You can probably learn something about what makes good writing from these insights, but mostly they’re just a lot of fun to think about. Who knew, for example, that Danielle Steel has begun 46% of her books with a sentence that refers to the weather? Or that Neil Gaiman’s favorite word is “unimpressed”? But that wouldn’wwwt have made as good a title.

SimonandSchuster.com

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Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.

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