Good Books » Literary Giants

Do You Need Help Writing a Book? by Sharon C Evans

admin — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:49:00 +0000

Writing a book can be a very enjoyable, introspective experience. When you write a book, you are truly writing about a very important aspect of your own life. Many of the great literary giants in times past taught the important lesson to “write what you know.” It is quite common for first time authors to put a great deal of themselves into their first book. Understanding this basic thought will help you on the road to writing your first book. Many authors make amateur mistakes, and they attempt to write about a world they do not truly know. In order to write an honest book, you must learn the new world you wish to inhabit. You must learn the jargon, the terminology and the essence of this world.

This stands true whether you are writing fiction or non-fiction. In order to write non-fiction you must gain a thorough understanding of this “world” or this subject if you are truly to teach your audience. If you want to write a novel then you must make the fantasy of this story come alive with vivid descriptions, realistic dialogue and a strong sense of authenticity in every scene. Where can you go to get help with writing a book? There are many options open to you. First and foremost, you must read on a regular basis. It will be difficult to sit down and write a full-length novel or nonfiction book if you have little to no idea of how sentences are constructed. You must study models of how a story is constructed, and the best way to do this outside of a classroom is to read.

Pick up a timeless classic book or a modern book from the shelves and try and analyze it critically. Notice how and why the author writes a certain way or uses a particular choice of words. Try creating an outline of the story based upon what you read and then analyze why the outline is situated in such a way. The best way to write a book is to increase your knowledge of writing including vocabulary, writing structure and of course, the subject of your interest. If you need help with creating your first book, you can contact an editing service that might be able to work with you on fleshing out your ideas. The best way to improve as a writer is to first improve as a reader.

Sharon C. Evans is an author, coach, speaker and information product specialist. She hosts an audio and video coaching program where her audience can find expert information from book market gurus. The expert can learn to turn their secrets and expert information into books, which truly are the ultimate client magnet. See more at http://www.bookauthorsecrets.com/

Review – The Temptation of the Impossible

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:35:00 +0000

The Temptation of the Impossible:

Victor Hugo and Les Misérables

Mario Vargas Llosa

John King, translator

Princeton University Press

232 pages

Hardcover $24.95

978-0-691-13111-5

Here, in this compelling book, readers can enjoy the fascinating encounter between two literary giants: Mario Vargas Llosa and Victor Hugo. Intriguing and entertaining in its approach—part literary criticism, part biography, and part personal essay—The Temptation of the Impossible is Vargas Llosa’s consistently perceptive tribute to Hugo’s Les Misérables. For Vargas Llosa—Peruvian novelist, journalist, and literary critic—Hugo’s 1862 novel is a brilliant if not always flawlessly executed portrayal of “a world blazing with extreme misfortune, love, courage, happiness, and vile deeds.”

Hugo’s development of characters and themes are central to Vargas Llosa’s analysis, but for the Peruvian critic it is Hugo’s narrative style that remains essential to appreciating the novel. The narrator, says Vargas Llosa, is most remarkable for his “omniscience, omnipotence, exuberance, visibility, and egomania. He knows everything that happens during the time of the novel, those eighteen years that begin on an October evening in 1815, when the ex-convict Jean Valjean enters the inhospitable town of Digne, and end that night in 1833 when Jean Valjean dies in his small house in the Rue de L’Homme Armé, with Marius and Cosette by his bedside, in the glow of Bishop Myriel’s candlesticks.”

Vargas Llosa boldly though not wholly persuasively argues that a great novel—especially Hugo’s gargantuan tale of Valjean, Cosette, Marius, Javert, and the other characters—can make “us feel dissatisfied with what exists, and gives us an appetite for unreality that can influence our lives in many different ways and affect the wider world.” Many literary critics will disagree that novels function as catalysts for changing an individual (much less the world), yet Vargas Llosa argues so passionately that even dissenting critics will admire his zealous and thorough reasoning.

Hugo’s novel, while extraordinarily popular in the nineteenth century, unfortunately attracts few contemporary readers. It is perhaps too long and discursive. Many potential readers, in fact, are more familiar with the spectacular musical than with Hugo’s book; the Schönberg-Boublil box-office phenomenon opened in September 1980 in Paris for an eight-week season and has shown little signs of fading from the limelight. Nevertheless, for any student of world literature who is interested in an important and hugely readable, one-stop critical analysis of Hugo’s canonical novel, Vargas Llosa’s fascinating book is the perfect destination for an evening or two. Readers may not be persuaded of the greatness of Les Misérables, but they will be entertained and edified by Vargas Llosa’s infectious enthusiasm.

Review -Written Lives

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:55:00 +0000

Written Lives by Javier Marías (translated by Margaret Jull Costa)

New Directions

ISBN 978-0-8112-1689-0

Trade Paperback

Okay, booklovers and prolific readers, here is a great little book to carry along down to the beach on the Gulf shores, to your vacation getaway in the mountains, or to your lawn-chair in your backyard for a relaxing afternoon.

Internationally renowned Spanish author Javier Marías has served up a wonderful picnic buffet of biographical tidbits in which readers will discover strange and surprising things about some of the world’s most famous writers.

These are not typical biographical essays about literary giants: instead these 26 mini-essays (included in a 193-page book) are fresh and idiosyncratic looks at everyone from Djuna Barnes and Yukio Mishima to Giuseppe Tomas di Lampedusa and Rudyard Kipling.

Readers are invited—through anecdotal vignettes—to reconsider (among others) the single-minded and taciturn William Faulkner, the temperamental and deferential Joseph Conrad, the pompous and profane James Joyce, and the circumlocutory and urbane Henry James. Readers can also take a fresh look at (among others) the impatient champion of women (and enigmatic scoundrel) Arthur Conan Doyle, the provocative and ironic Isak Dinesen, and the arrogantly silent Emily Brontë.

There are too many other gems (and too little space here) for a full accounting. Let it be succinctly said, though, that every included writer—squirming a bit under the masterful author’s wry scrutiny—is a surprise. Never has so much wonderful entertainment been packed into such a small package. Written Lives is simply marvelous. Enjoy!