Writing-Communication – Page 5 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Blog for Bucks: How to Create, Promote, and Profit from Your Blog

By Scott J. Pearson | June 7, 2020June 7, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

The author Bodnar is a professional blogger and freelance writer. She maintains several blogs and operates in several roles – like a ghostwriter for blogs and for books, an author of books, and a maintainer of for-profit blogs. She distills wisdom from her experiences as she teaches how to blog. She covers everything from the basics of blogging to writing effective copy, from earning money from your blog to garnering a readership. She also includes…

Spiritual Quests: The Art and Craft of Religious Writing

By Scott J. Pearson | May 12, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

This book is the manicured transcript of an event in New York City in the 1980s. This seminar featured six prominent writers influenced by different faith traditions. They spoke on how their religious beliefs/practices changed the way they wrote. By commenting on a practice as timeless as writing, this account captures much of religious writers’ sentiments towards their craft. All of these six speeches were interesting. They covered faith traditions as disparate as Roman Catholicism,…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

By Scott J. Pearson | May 4, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Anne Lamott is a brilliant mentor to writers and to creative people in general. She spins her yarn with a conversational, west-coast style. In this book, she writes about redeeming our experiences to produce literature. She has learned many lessons in her life, and she shares their fruit in vivid detail here. She is most brilliant, in my opinion, not in her quality novels but when she functions as a memoir-writer-turned-spiritual-advisor. What she says is…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

Word by Word by Anne Lamott

By Scott J. Pearson | March 22, 2020March 22, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Anne Lamott is a writer most known for her writings on spirituality and contemporary life. Based in San Francisco, California, she has also written a work that addresses writers’ lives. Although that work (Bird by Bird) is not prerequisite reading, this work follows up on that book and is set as a live, taped speech at a writers’ conference in 1999. This audio recording shares insights from that book and from other elements in her…

Biography-Memoir Poetry Writing-Communication

T.S. Eliot: A Life by Peter Ackroyd

By Scott J. Pearson | January 26, 2020January 26, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

T.S. Eliot was one of the great poets in the English language during the twentieth century. He grew up in St. Louis and after graduating from college, moved to England. He loved his new country so much that he eventually became a subject of the English king. He wrote noted poems and plays over his lifespan. He also worked as a banker and as an editor for a publishing firm. The author of this biography…

Writing-Communication

Writing to Learn

By Scott J. Pearson | November 30, 2019November 29, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

While alive, Zinsser was our era’s guru on writing. Besides bestselling On Writing Well, he left us with a cadre of lesser-known works on how to communicate effectively. This work chronicles how to write educational pieces and is replete with examples from a variety of fields, ranging from music to geology and from physics to art. Zinsser’s authority is relatively unquestioned in the popular sphere. I do question whether his writing principles are indeed universal,…

Writing-Communication

Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir

By Scott J. Pearson | November 21, 2019November 24, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Writing a memoir, a very personal task, involves an individualized process that is specific to each author. This book contains insights from ten authors of meaningful memoirs. Some of their advice conflicts; at other times, their process is so grounded in history that it can never be replicated. As such, this work is less of a how-to book and more of an inspirational book to aid a budding writer’s self-confidence. I have taken from this…

Biography-Memoir Writing-Communication

Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past

By Scott J. Pearson | November 2, 2019April 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

William Zinsser is famous for being an excellent coach for writers. He has mastered the art of communicating through words. He has followed an alternative career path that has brought him success and fulfillment. He shares his insights in this memoir of his life while coaching the reader how to write about her/his own life. Zinsser’s style is humble and consistently strikes the right tone for sharing the memory. That skill – sharing memories –…

Management-Business Writing-Communication

Crucial Conversations

By Scott J. Pearson | October 11, 2019April 1, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Do conversations ever catch you off-guard? Do you ever feel unprepared for conversations that pop up spontaneously yet seem to matter a lot and to affect dramatically the course of our lives? These situations often occur in families and in businesses, and this book attempts to prepare us better for handling those weighty situations. This book came recommended to me as a part of a book club at my workplace. I can see why. It…

Leadership Management-Business Psychology Writing-Communication

The Skilled Facilitator

By Scott J. Pearson | October 6, 2019September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Successfully resolving conflict is one of the most important tasks in management and leadership. Schwarz, a Harvard-educated organizational psychologist, teaches us how to do just this in this well-received book. Its success can be demonstrated by the fact that it now resides in its third edition. (This review only applies to the second edition.) Schwarz tells us how to be not just a facilitator but a skilled facilitator of discussion within organization. He consults with…