Writers Read

Being a writer should mean you are also a big reader, after all a writer's love of writing comes from their love of reading, and reading specifically in the genre they are writing helps informs them of good and bad examples of writing and what's cliche in that genre. (Though being a big reader alone doesn't mean your a good writer, I wish!)

I am a pretty big reader. I thought I’d share as a regular thing what I’m reading, and with some mini-reviews.

I just picked up, and am nearly finished reading “Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation”. I found it laying around the house the day after I decided to start this blog, and I thought I’d better read it, not really knowing anything about the author. I haven’t been able to put it down. It’s an excellent book, and Hewett is engaging in the way he writes. If nothing else he highlights the vital importance of the spread of information through blogs and how it creates competitions that keeps larger forms of media in line and creates checks against bias (of any sort) in the mainstream media.

Before that I finished reading a biography of the magician Harry Blackstone Sr, “Blackstone, a Magician's Life”. I thought the writing was pretty clunky in places, and not as tight as other biographies I had read, and to me read more like a reminiscence than a more studious biography (like for example, the excellent biography of Houdini “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero” by William Kalush or “The Rasputin file” by Edvard Radzinsky which I both highly recommend.) , but it did have some good information and interesting tidbits about the man and the people that surrounded him. Those interested in the history of magic might want to check it out, though there are better magic biographies out there, and there may even be better Blackstone biography out there.