Posts tagged "Books"
You may wonder why we sometimes mention fiction on this business blog.
Simple. If you write at work, you need to write clearly and efficiently, and reading is essential for honing any writer's skills and sensitivities.
Stephen King said, "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write." He was talking to so-called creative writers, but the same rule applies to everyone who writes at work.
Once again I'm choosing Christmas books (the printed sort) to give my family.
Winnowing the wheat from the chaff, my first criterion is as crude as bog mud.
When I pick up a book six months after reading it, do I experience an immediate cinematic rush of images and characters and flavour? Or do I struggle to remember anything about this book at all? That happens far too often nowadays: the fault doubtless lies in my own synaptic inertia.
The following 10 books are not all favourites, by any means—I've enjoyed certain other books in 2012 just as much or more. These books do not all pass the Enjoyability Test, but they do all pass the Unforgettability Test.
OK, it's a well-known fact among my friends that I (Rachel) am going to the Frankfurt Book Fair. (Along with 280,000 others.) My excuse: New Zealand is the Guest of Honour and my excellent, outstanding, frivolous book Scarlet Heels: 26 Stories About Sex is in the New Zealand Society of Authors' catalogue.
What's my strategy? It's been slippery but finally, two weeks before the event, I'm getting my head straight.
Christmas book time again! Here are the New Zealand books I am giving to lucky friends and family members. Sure, by now we're all reading ebooks on our phones, iPads or book readers. But the paper book is far from...