Many photos, interesting text. The overlapping story of gas and electric was well laid out. My quibble is it only briefly mentions the glass lamp bases made in the depression--which was a significant change from the metal bases common since oil was replaced with gas and electric--and shows none of them. That is, of course, the time frame and type I am most interested in! Ah well.
Reviews and Comments
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kayote reviewed American Lighting - 1840-1940 by Nadja Maril
Interesting, but short shrift to the last two decades.
kayote reviewed THREE (3) DOORS TO DEATH by Rex Stout
Repetative, and shouldn't be
All three are good on their own, but they should not have been put together. The method used by Wolfe in two of them is way too close to be in the same set (and it's a method that smells slightly of author not having a good solution anyway). This is the second set of three I've read recently and they both would have been better had they swapped a story.
kayote rated Women at Work in Medieval Europe: 4 stars
kayote rated Lizard Prince and Other South American Stories: 3 stars
kayote reviewed Pick Up Sticks by Emma Lathen (A John Putnam Thatcher mystery)
When Wall Street's John Putnam Thatcher and his Down East crony, Henry Morland, started hiking …
Review of 'Pick Up Sticks' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I very much enjoy Emma Lathen, and this book is no exception. That said...I think I am glad Henry is not a common character since he is a bit overwhelming! So if you enjoy her books--you'll enjoy this one. If this is your first and you found it a bit scattered....please try another one! Thatcher is usually not being drug around quite so much.
kayote reviewed How to Live Like Your Cat by Roland Glasser
Review of 'How to Live Like Your Cat' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
It was cute, and somewhat interesting....for maybe the first third. It held it mostly together for a bit longer, though clearly starting to strain to draw out new ideas. Eventually it just gave up and became belabored. There is a decent, even good, long form magazine article at the core...but it was unfortunately stretched into a quite repetitive and sometimes questionable book.
kayote rated Favorite Celtic fairy tales: 2 stars
Favorite Celtic fairy tales by Joseph Jacobs, Thea Kliros (Dover children's thrift classics)
Review of "James A. Michener's writer's handbook" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
He takes you through his process from first(ish) draft to finished page. It is mostly about the high-level process. However, the actual examples were not very useful. Mostly they were too long. It was too hard to trace changes from one step to another, especially since it wasn't the same chunk (usually overlapping, but not identical), and the example was many pages long. He didn't really talk about WHAT he was doing from a word-level, but rather from a process. So he types up new paragraphs and pastes them in, rather than why he put in the new paragraph (he did explain why he took some out). Then he has his assistant type them up on the computer. Then the editors come in.
It is nice that it touches on the part after the author "finishes"--the benefits of editors and continued changes through galleys/etc. I have not seen that in …
He takes you through his process from first(ish) draft to finished page. It is mostly about the high-level process. However, the actual examples were not very useful. Mostly they were too long. It was too hard to trace changes from one step to another, especially since it wasn't the same chunk (usually overlapping, but not identical), and the example was many pages long. He didn't really talk about WHAT he was doing from a word-level, but rather from a process. So he types up new paragraphs and pastes them in, rather than why he put in the new paragraph (he did explain why he took some out). Then he has his assistant type them up on the computer. Then the editors come in.
It is nice that it touches on the part after the author "finishes"--the benefits of editors and continued changes through galleys/etc. I have not seen that in other similar books. That said, he doesn't go into any example in particular detail to really understand how often or how many people or how many times it goes back and forth. The same issue as with the writing section--very high level overview, with some pages with markings as accompaniments.
Perhaps if you copied some pages and did careful comparison with earlier or later you could determine what was going on, but the examples are too long to be able to do that easily as you read, and he does not particularly explain. The pages feel more like illustrations to the text, rather than the text explaining in detail the illustrations.
The Q&A at the end was indeed some of the best part of the book. But overall, Stephen King's On Writing or Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird fit much more what I was expecting from this book.
I did learn some fun things about being an editor in the past, and his process is indeed rather different. I ended up skimming the examples, but enjoyed the text (that was written for this book) as a bit of a window into a very successful writer's mind. It does make me think that version control should be applied to modern writing--so one can go back and look through how you got to where you ended up. The ability to do that is one that, as he notes, is mostly lost with modern computers. But it is fascinating, and sometimes what is cut becomes new stories.
kayote rated The singing rock & other brand-new fairy tales: 5 stars
kayote rated Native American Beadwork: 4 stars
kayote reviewed Secret Garden on 81st Street by Ivy Noelle Weir
Review of 'Secret Garden on 81st Street' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Secret Garden was one of my favorite books, so I was excited to see a modern retelling. I was suspicious of it being a single (admittedly on the thicker side) graphic novel. I would say it is more "inspired by" than a retelling. It took me a bit to realize they cut out the bad guy! Mary's adjustment is a bit smoother (saves a lot of space), Ms Medlock is more sympathetic, the doctor is a therapist. Grief is handled much more in a modern way. Dickon is still a nature lover and a bit on the cheerful crazy side. To be clear--I enjoyed this, it's a good story, and it integrates some important things from the modern world in really good ways. I just suggest reading it for its own good story merits rather than as a retelling.
kayote rated Space dumplins: 4 stars
Space dumplins by Craig Thompson
"For Violet Marlocke, family is the most important thing in the whole galaxy. So when her father goes missing while …
kayote rated Leon the Extraordinary: 4 stars
kayote reviewed Hardears by Matthew Clarke
Review of 'Hardears' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Fascinating world. So many characters, none of which got a lot of treatment--they seemed interesting but didn't get a chance to develop or be known. It would have been better taking one story at a time with the large arc always in the background and then weaving them together for a final arc. I really want to like it more--there is so much awesome here--but it was too much too fast just skimming over the tops of potential.