Archives for reviews - Page 31
Book Review – Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes by Rayne Hall
Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Simple Fixes by Rayne Hall My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is full of useful tips, and more importantly a broad framework for approaching improving your work as what works is continually evolving. Once enough people find a new technique for improving their book's visibility and sales it becomes less useful. However there are definitely a set of things that will always remain useful. I'm not going to tell you the list, Rayne deserves to profit from her hard work and she's not charging the earth for the book. I got it on pre-order for £, about 99 cents US. That could of course just have been a ploy on her part to catapult it up the sales rankings. However even if it costs you a little more it may still…
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Book Review – Grimm’s Fairy Tales
Grimm's Fairy Stories by Jacob Grimm My rating: 3 of 5 stars Interesting to see the originals that Disney worked their magic on. There's a similarity across some of the stories where you can see that perhaps they are mutated versions of the same original that have morphed as they were told. Also there are a number of fairy stories that I hadn't heard before, them not having quite entered popular consciousness where I grew up. Possibly some of these would be the kernel of some good stories, Grimm's style is very much tell and no show. That suits the sort of morality tales these are, intended for someone to simply recount them at bedtime or round the fire or dinner table. They've come from an oral tradition, and anything taking longer to tell than 10 to 20 minutes would…
Book Review – Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton
Resurrection by Arwen Elys Dayton My rating: 4 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this story, it was a mix of classic science fiction, ancient history and a modern thriller. I'm not an expert on the Egyptology, but what there was worked very well for me as a story and was plausible. It managed to avoid being too Erich von Däniken in its approach, and the way that the locals never grasped the technology was completely believable. Another aspect that I liked was the interplay between the metal poor and biotech rich Kinley (humans from a planet 8 light years away) and their enemies who used cloned Kinley to spy on them. This provided some of the science fiction backdrop for a modern day thriller, with the two racing to recover the lost secret of faster than light travel (the…
#ExplainAFilmPlotBadly my tweets
This twitter trend piqued my interest this morning and helped me avoid dealing with my end of module assessment for B120. Anyway here is my contribution to the infinite monkeys. If you think you recognise them feel free to reply on twitter. Related articles What I Did With My Post-Event Time Last Night Victor Ganata: I haven't seen any #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly posts that top this description of "The Wizard of Oz", though: "Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again Guardians of the Galaxy Chaos Monkeys Explain a Film Plot Badly: Best 'Worst' Movie Descriptions - #explainafilmplotbadly Goes Viral Infinite Monkey Copyright Theory
Book Review – Would They Lie to You? by Robert Hutton
Would They Lie to You? by Robert Hutton My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is even better than the previous book Romps, Tots and Boffins: The Strange Language of News by Robert Hutton which was a look at journalese. Would They Lie to You? is a much more cynical look at how people tell stories to journalists (and by extension to the public). Presented as if it is a leaked document teaching the inner circle how to use language to manipulate the truth without actually breaking it. The opening quotes summarise it perfectly "I didn't lie, you just asked the wrong questions - Rob Ford". Having spent some of my working life in Whitehall I recognise some of the techniques presented, and it made me laugh in the same way Dilbert does. Like its predecessor it is divided into…