Claire

Hunger Games Knock Off

Revisado: 11-28-24

You’ve read this story 100 times already. Do you really need to read it again?

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Step 1: Ditch your bad ideas

Revisado: 05-15-23

Maybe there’s good story advice in here; but this book works HARD to make sure it has 0 credibility by the end. The example story it develops was SO BAD, that at fist I thought, “Oh good, she’s going to teach us how to fix a dumpster fire of a premise.” I was shocked when we got through the workshopping role play and Cron steps in to PRAISE what I thought was irredeemable drivel whose plot holes should have been apparent to any middle schooler who had any experience with another human being. “Here’s why it works,” Cron says.
Me: But it doesn’t work! It doesn’t work at all! Are you insane? Literally none of that would ever happen!

The rest of the book I finished for the train-wreck factor: to see how Cron would force this unbelievable nonsense over the finish line.

Here are 2 steps this book is missing: if your characters aren’t realistic, readers will ditch your book (e.g. if you have grown adults acting as preposterously as Nickelodeon characters). So if you don’t know how humans actually behave, maybe try illustration instead. Or do your research, and have the bravery to ditch bad (and mildly offensive) story premises at the first whiff of rubbish.

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Wow! Great read!

Revisado: 03-12-23

Great story. Excellent writing. Outstanding narration. I canceled my weekend plans to listen to it straight through. Super interesting, super well done.

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Nothing but fluff

Revisado: 03-05-23

This book spends several minutes reminding you to drink water, and is full of other banalities equally as useless to actually writing. If you want writing advice, there are plenty of real books out there about the craft. Give this one a miss.

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Sponsored by the thesaurus?

Revisado: 02-14-22

I don’t expect runners to be gifted writers, but Karnazes has several best-sellers now. Why can’t he find an editor? This book reads like it was written by a high school junior trying to cram in as many SAT words as possible and using 3/4 of them wrong. It was so distracting I almost couldn’t get through it. It may never be a masterpiece, but it would have been a much more engaging book if Karnazes had stuck to plain language and an 8th grade reading level.

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Useful for AN only

Revisado: 07-07-21

Like so many books on eating disorders, this book briefly mentions the spectrum of eating disorders, but only discusses restricting in any depth. Much of the advice would be unhelpful to harmful if applied to BN or BED.

Also, I wouldn’t recommend this book if you’re not the intended audience (parents of kids with eating disorders featuring restriction). If you’re, say, looking for insights into how to recover from your own eating disorder, this book won’t offer you much. It may actually be overwhelming to the sufferer, as it advocates an authoritarian approach that may be discouraging or impractical for those suffering from an eating disorder themselves.

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All you need to know…

Revisado: 06-18-21

This book recommends emu oil. That’s right, oil derived from the giant bird. That’s the kind of book this is.

If you’re the kind of person who is like, “Yeah, I’d try emu oil!” then you’ll probably get something from it. If you’re the other kind of person, maybe read some more mainstream stuff instead.

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Inventory of mundane experiences (mostly meals) in a Manhattan Creative’s life

Revisado: 02-10-21

Ever read a book and wonder, “Why would anyone bother to write this? Why am I reading this? What a waste of precious life.” This book is just a series of unremarkable moments with NY artists (a particularly obnoxious and unpalatable group if you don’t happen to be one) eating city food. There are no lessons. The writing ranges from bad to truly appalling purple prose. The only lesson I got from this book was, “if this crap is published and sold, how bad is my writing? Not this bad, certainly.”

Skip it.

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Like listening to the ramblings of a meth head for a day

Revisado: 01-27-21

Ever walk past a crazy person and wonder, “I wonder what it would be like to listen to what this person has to say...!” Well, it sounds like Spirit Hacking. Or Spirit Hacking sounds like manic psychosis, I’m not sure.

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I came in with an open mind and tried really hard to meet it at its level. But this book is totally bats—t, crackers, loony, insane, incoherent. And while the writing sounds like a meth high, the narration sounds more like a bad trade show presenter after a few dizen likes of coke. Nope. Nope. Nope.

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How to write no book I’d ever read

Revisado: 10-18-20

This book has a handful of useful suggestions about craft and technique interspersed between long drawn-out plot descriptions of the truly terrible story he’s writing, and sycophantic fanboy namedropping of a pop writer no one has ever accused of writing quality fiction. I only recommend if writing a straight-to-paperback airport/beach novel is your thing.

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