Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell

Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell vacillated between feeling engagingly insightful and annoyingly repetitive yet even the repetition felt like it served a purpose. Pity the Reader is part biography, part examination of Vonnegut's work, and part elaboration on Vonnegut's opinions and teachings. I thought I'd read some of Vonnegut's work years ago - like high school or college, but as I read through the descriptions of his work I became increasingly convinced I didn't. Somehow, that realization made Pity the Reader more intriguing to me than it was when I started. I'm very glad I read Pity the Reader, but I do believe it is a book that won't appeal to everyone. Also, I want to point out that I read the exercises included at the end but opted not to do them for a variety of reasons - mostly that I'd done some version of most of them at some other point in my life. I do think they could be very helpful and I might return to some of them when I feel stuck for one reason or another. Overall, if you're interested in Kurt Vonnegut, writing, or the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, you would probably enjoy this book.


Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including:


Capitalism Calls Poetry Lazy by Wyatt Welch
The Woman in Me by Brittany Spears
Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books by Ursula K. Le Guin
Petals of the Moon: A Poetry Collection by C. Churchill
The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes



Reviews will be posted as I finish these books.


Disclosure: This blog contains affiliate links meaning if you click on those links and make a purchase, I earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

If you'd like to follow what I'm reading in real time, please follow/friend me on Goodreads.

If you'd like to see when I publish new books, please follow me on Amazon.

If you'd like to learn more about me, please visit tlcooper.com.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Image
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert grabbed my attention from the first page. Kolbert illustrates the future of extinction by illuminating the history of extinction. She tells a story of the Earth we inhabit in both scientific and historical terms related to the myriad species of animals that have and do inhabit the Earth. She travels to myriad places on the Earth to talk to scientists and historians. I felt like she took me along on her journey to places I would never go on my own. She discussed the effects of natural processes as well as unnatural processes affecting the extinction of species and how those extinctions lead to other extinctions. Her references to previous mass extinctions were always linked to the story of our Earth and present-day extinctions. She talked about frogs, bats, auks, coral, and trees among other things. The Sixth Extinction doesn't shy away from pointing out how each species is a part of an ecosystem and how all our eco...
Read more

A Snitch in Time by Sunny Frazier

Image
Sunny Frazier always delights, and A Snitch in Time is no exception. She writes the Christy Bristol series in a way that feels lighthearted even in its darkest moments. When Bristol goes on vacation to visit her friend, Lennie, she never expects to get drafted into working for a different department doing her job. Bristol is intrigued enough by the crime at hand that her protestations seem half-hearted at times though her annoyance is very real. When she and Lennie get into a fight, she's left with nothing but the work the department expects her to do. Frazier drops the reader in the Sierra Nevada Foothills creating a sense of isolation that makes the reader cheer for Bristol to stand up to her superiors and get out of there while simultaneously wanting to her to solve the crime. When a witness contacts Bristol via phone she doesn't take her seriously at first only to discover she might have vital information. With suspicion cast in multiple directions, Bristol isn't sur...
Read more

Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat

Image
Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat approaches the Palestinian struggle for freedom by delving into how legal maneuvers are used to manipulate politics and political maneuvers are used to manipulate the law to justify the oppression of the Palestinian people. Erakat's explanations had me repeatedly wondering how people can be so cruel and why they choose to be. Erakat demonstrates and examines how the wording in multiple documents including the Oslo accords left loopholes and contributed to the subjugation of the Palestinian people while leaving room to make vague claims of a mirage of progress that falls apart with the smallest amount of investigation. An undercurrent throughout Justice for Some is that oppressors make laws the oppressed are expected to live by keeping the oppressors in power and the oppressed under control. Justice for Some explains much of the law that often gets cited in media and other analysis used to justify the dehumanizat...
Read more