#18: See Jane Write, Sarah Mlynowki and Farrin Jacobs

In other words, "A Girl's Guide to Writing Chick Lit." I picked this one up on a whim at the library after flipping through it at Borders. Despite the egregious title, I have to say it's one of the better "how to write" books I've read. It covers both the basics and also gets into nitpicky detail, and while I already knew a lot of the points, it got my brain churning and made me realize a couple of things about pacing and character development. It also reads incredibly quickly. And, probably most important, it avoided my biggest pet peeve in books with sidebars: The sidebars fall naturally within the text, at breaks. I seriously hate it when you have to flip back and forth between the pages, or stop in the middle of the main text to take in the sidebar...so annoying. So I highly recommend this one.

I did have to laugh though in reading the Grammar and Punctuation chapter. The authors spend a couple pages detailing the differences between words like "effect" and "affect" and "bear" and "bare." Now, I'm not generally a snob about these things, but I'm thinking if you don't already know the difference between these words, a novel isn't in your future. Dentistry or astrophysics, maybe. I'm not sure that I even remember how to figure out the volume of a cube (length times width times height?), but I also realized early on that the sciences were not my calling. You know what I mean?

Next up: I've started reading Brideshead Revisited but it's slow-going. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through. I just found out that The Zoo on the Road to Nablus is waiting for me at the library (finally!), and I might be tempted to switch over. The only problem is, when I drop a book, I rarely go back. So we'll see if Brideshead and I can tough it out...maybe I'll just go see the movie. :)

#15: Basic Black, Cathie Black

I interviewed Cathie Black, president of Hearst Magazines, for a story a couple of weeks ago and read her book, which came out in hardcover last year, in preparation. Although I'm generally not one for the business books, I liked Basic Black. Her writing style is friendly and straightforward, and it's as much a memoir as a how-to. But even more, her anecdotes about mistakes she witnessed and learned from jived pretty well with things that had been happening at my now-former workplace. And honestly, it felt gratifying to see these situations basically replicated and have Black say, no that was wrong, we should have done x or y instead. Because no one actually wants to work in an office like The Office, you know? But I'm getting off topic.

I'd recommend Basic Black and plan to give my copy to one of my former co-workers. So two thumbs up.