This is just a blog about books. We post news, reviews, views, and occasionally interviews. That is about it.
You would be hard pressed to find any sort of focus or blogging “niche” as the marketers say. Instead, we cover books from practically every subject, style and genre; and enjoy books for all ages. Thus “Collected Miscellany.”
The writing here can also be rather sporadic and eclectic so the vast majority of the traffic comes from Google searches for specific books or authors. Hence the tag-line: “Writing for Google since 2003.”
Hi Collected Miscellany!
I was wandering around the internet, and stumbled across your blog. Excellent title! Sounds like the sort of thing I would say. Yay more talking about fun books! Good onya, our universe needs more of that.
As an author and cartoonist myself, I thought I should say hello, and point you toward my website! Here’s hoping mine is the sort of humor you enjoy, and that you’d like to share what I do with all your readers!
My name is Ray Friesen, I write and draw a series of humor adventure graphic novels (chock full of pirates and penguins and all sorts of silly things). My first, ‘ A Cheese Related Mishap’ was one of the American Library Association’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of the Year for Kids! (my books are aimed at children, but adults who have a inner child are fans as well). A free first chapter preview of all my books (including ‘YARG!’ ‘Another Dirt Sandwich’ and the forthcoming ‘Cupcakes of DOOM!) as well as my weekly webcomic are all available at my website, http://www.DontEatAnyBugs.com. Get yourself addicted! If you like to laugh, giggling is guaranteed.
Thanks very much! If you are inclined to talk about me on your blog after this, I’d like to do anything possible to help! If you do interviews, I’m available, if you need pictures, anything on my site is up for grabs, and if you have any special requests, I’d love to help in anyway I can! I like to spread the love, but not too thin or else you can’t taste it.
Ray
Dear Colleague,
Here is a short excerpt from my new book aimed at helping students negotiate the difficult passage from high school to college. If after reading it you would like a copy for review, you will find contact information below.
Yours sincerely,
Philip Yaffe
Editor-in-Chief, UCLA Daily Bruin (1964-65)
The Wall Street Journal
During my senior year, I tutored writing to make a bit of much-needed cash. I remember one case in particular. A girl came to me with a note from a professor: “Young lady, I advise you either to drop my class immediately or prepare to fail it.” Obviously she was bright enough; after all she was a student at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). So where was the problem?
I read a couple of her essays that had gotten such poor marks. There was no question that she had a lot of interesting things to say. Equally, there was no question that she was saying them badly.
It very quickly became apparent where the problem lay. She simply was not fully using one of the fundamental principles of good writing, because she thought that consistently applying it was just too much trouble. It took a couple of sessions to convince her that it wasn’t too much trouble — in fact it was crucial. Her writing immediately began to improve. At the end of the term, not only didn’t she fail the class, she had pulled her grade all the way up from a certain “F” to a gratifying “B”.
This was not an isolated case. When students were having writing difficulties, it was generally because they were: 1) unfamiliar with a fundamental principle, 2) inconsistently applying it, 3) improperly applying it, or 4) not applying it at all.
I am not saying that to be a good writer, you should first study journalism. However, because it was the antithesis of the poor writing I had been doing previously, journalism gave me a flying start. Over the past four decades I think I have added some insights into good writing that I didn’t learn from journalism. Or at least I have made explicit certain key ideas which previously were implicit, and therefore poorly applied.
The title of the book is The Gettysburg Approach to Writing & Speaking like a Professional. To request a review copy, please contact me at: phil.yaffe@yahoo.com,phil.yaffe@gmail.com.