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ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEWS


JUNE 20, 2024


QUICK TIPS ON WRITING ABOUT YOUR CORE VALUES

Filed under: Faith — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 2:41 pm
Tags: Books, Essays, Religion, Spirituality, Writing


Your core values may be the most challenging topic to write about in a short
piece such as a blog post. They often seem to transcend words, or to affect so
many areas of your life, they could fill a book.

But I recently discovered a great resource for writers trying to write about
those values, whether they’re religious, philosophical, artistic, or something
else. It’s “This I Believe,” a collection of essays that began as a series of
radio talks hosted by the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow back in the late 1940s.

The series had post-Murrow incarnations on NPR and the Voice of America, and
it’s inspired a book and website that has hundreds of brief essays by
influential figures such as Rosa Parks and John McCain. I write about some of
its lessons in my latest story at @Medium, using Parks’ essay as an example. A
vital point if you want connect with readers when writing about your faith is:
Don’t give a sermon, tell a story.










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JUNE 17, 2024


IS THERE A CONSPIRACY AGAINST INDIE AUTHORS?

Filed under: Books — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 12:27 pm
Tags: Advice, Book Critics, Book Reviews, Indie Authors, Self-publishing


If you’ve self-published a book or know someone who has, you might have
wondered: Is there a conspiracy against indie authors by major media?

So many newspapers and magazines have died or killed their book-review sections
that it’s much harder than it used to be even for traditionally published
authors to get reviewed. Indie authors typically have far more of a struggle.

Yes, self-published writers can hope for the best from the reader-reviews on
Amazon or Goodreads, but both of those can attract trolls or “review bombers”
who gang up on a book.

In my latest post at @Medium, I write about some of the myths and realities
indie authors face when trying to get their books reviews and suggest how I
might do it if self-published:

https://medium.com/lit-life/why-critics-dont-want-to-read-your-self-published-book-38e37a1a06f4


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JUNE 14, 2024


ADVENTURES WITH YESTERDAY’S BESTSELLERS

Filed under: Books,Women — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 5:36 pm


Long before anyone had heard of Sheryl Sandberg and leaning in, Margaret Hennig
and Anne Jardim wrote the first bestseller about why women succeed in
organizations in The Managerial Woman.

Much of its advice has gone out of date since the book first appeared in 1976.
Yet one of Hennig and Jardim’s conclusions still rings true:

“The critical issue facing women and minorities (any outsider to corporations)
is no longer the lack of legal equal opportunity; it is one of gaining equal
ability to take advantage of it. They and corporate senior managements must now
deal with the reasons why, for many women, legal equal opportunity does not
ensure real equal opportunity. Having the right to a job is not the same as the
ability to get it.”

I went back to that and other former bestsellers and found a few ageless tips
that I wrote about in “Timeless Secrets of Success From Yesterday’s Bestsellers”
over at @Medium:




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JUNE 9, 2024


ARE THE MEDIA MAKING US ALL HATE EACH OTHER?

Filed under: Media — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 12:35 pm
Tags: Books, Journalism, News, Pop Culture, TV


Has we become a nation of haters? You might think so from what you see all
around you. The alarming spread of hate has inspired everything from a
proliferation of hate-crime laws to a Taylor Swift song and the bestselling
novel-turned-movie The Hate U Give.

The more urgent question is: Why is this happening? I’ve heard all kinds of
explanations: income inequality, hate-mongering politicians, what schools do (or
don’t teach).

But those explanations tend to ignore a factor that modifies all the others: the
upheavals in the media that have made it easier for them to spread the hate. I
dig into how it all happened in my latest post at @Medium, which draws on my
experiences as a journalist as well as several books on the subject, including
the Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi’s Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes
Us Despite One Another. My conclusion, which you can read here, is that Taibbi
has a point.






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MAY 30, 2024


WHY I DON’T COUNT THE NUMBER OF BOOKS I READ

Filed under: Books — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 2:30 pm
Tags: Advice, Culture, Fiction, Nonfiction, Opinion, Reading


Book-tracking websites like Goodreads helped to launch an era of competitive
reading. So did books with scary titles like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You
Die.

All over social media, people can’t seem to stop telling you how many books
they’ve read. Or about how many they think you should read.

All of this can co-opt the joy of reading by turning it into a numbers game.
I’ve seen an article called “1000 Books Before Kindergarten,” as though it’s
never too soon to start making kids feel guilty about how little they’ve little
they’ve read.

In a new article on @Medium, I explain why I’ve never counted the books I’ve
read and why quality matters more than quantity when it comes to your reading.
Short version: If I need to read a thousand more books before I die, I’ll have
to meet my Maker with a paper bag over my face.


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MAY 25, 2024


AN ALL-STAR LINEUP OF BASEBALL BOOKS

Filed under: Books,Sports — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 9:06 pm
Tags: Baseball, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Sports


Back in the 1970s, football passed baseball as America’s most popular sport. But
you might never know it from what you see at bookstores and libraries.

Major publishers traditionally have brought out better books about baseball than
about football, which has no less drama. George Plimpton, the celebrated Paris
Review editor, tried to explain it with what he called his “Small Ball Theory”
of literature: The smaller the ball, the better the book.

Some critics disagree with Plimpton, but I’ve found his theory to hold more than
a grain of truth: Every spring, when I was the book critic for Glamour and later
for a large newspaper, I received from publishers more good books about baseball
than about football.

I’d be hard-pressed to name 10 great books about football, much as I love the
sport. But I’ve found great baseball titles in every category: fiction,
nonfiction, and poetry.

Over at @Medium, I write about the baseball books for adults or children that
have made it into my literary Hall of Fame: a list that includes titles as
different as pitcher Jim Bouton’s Ball Four, a diary-like account of his life on
(and off) on the mound, and Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship, an award-winning
account of Negro League baseball, illustrated with his own handsome pantings.
You’ll find my full list, and why I chose the entries, in my @Medium story,
“Take Me Out To the Bookstore.”




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MAY 22, 2024


THE APPALLING EFFORT TO JAIL LIBRARIANS FOR DISPLAYING BANNED BOOKS

Filed under: Uncategorized — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 12:12 pm
Tags: Banned Books, Law, Librarians, Linraries, Politics


Book bans took a frightening turn last month when the Alabama House of
Representatives overwhelmingly voted to criminalize librarians who displayed
books others found offensive, particularly those involving sexuality and gender.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed in the Alabama Senate, which declined to
pass the same bill, and it didn’t become law.

But the effort was appalling even by the standards of redder-than-red Alabama,
where I live. If the Senate had passed the house bill, librarians could have
faced a $10,000 fine and a month in a county jail for the first offense and a
much longer prison term for the second. And because the nation as a whole is
increasingly taking its cues from the South, such attempts could spread to other
states.

I defend librarians and write about why they shouldn’t go to jail for the books
they select in my latest post at @Medium. Let’s hope such misguided efforts stop
at the state borders.




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MAY 1, 2024


AN AWARD-WINNING BOOK SHOWS HOW OUR CHILD-PROTECTION SERVICES ARE FAILING

Filed under: Books — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 9:34 am
Tags: Adoption, Child Abuse, Foster Care, Journalism, Law, True Crime


Six years ago a white married couple, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, drove off a steep
cliff on the Pacific Coast Highway in an SUV that also carried their six adopted
black or biracial children. Nobody survived the plunge.

The tragedy made national news and deepened as more facts emerged.
Child-protection services had received multiple reports of abuse or neglect by
the women, who had been investigated in three states. Why were the murdered
children allowed to remain in their home for so long given their obvious
mistreatment?

Journalist Roxanna Asgarian deftly reconstructs the crime in her recent We Were
Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal, which has won the
National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and other major literary
prizes. She shows how the failures of child-protection services contributed the
deaths of the children and why such tragedies could happen elsewhere in the
United States.

In my latest story on @Medium, I explore a question that has baffled countless
people: How could this have happened? And is there a way to keep such tragedies
from happening again?




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APRIL 26, 2024


SECRETS FOR WRITING A BESTSELLING THRILLER FROM JAMES BOND’S CREATOR

Filed under: Writing — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 9:29 am
Tags: Bestellers, Books, British Authors, Fiction, Ian Fleming, James Bond,
Novels, Thrillers, Writing Tips


Ian Fleming celebrated his finishing the first draft of Casino Royale by buying
a gold-plated Royal typewriter, an early step toward launching the James Bond
books that would make him famous. But did it help him write his novels?

Apparently not. Fleming thought the font on his golden typewriter was too small,
and he seldom used it, according to Nicholas Shakespeare’s new biography, Ian
Fleming: The Complete Man.

What did help him create one of the most popular fictional spies in history?

Shakespeare lists some of the elements of what Fleming called his “formula” for
writing a bestseller, which included sticking a writing schedule of three hours
each morning and one hour a night and permitting no interruptions. He also wrote
fast and didn’t reread and revise his work until he’d reached the last page.
Interested in his other methods? I say more about Fleming’s strategies–and his
advice to others who want to write thrillers–in my latest story on @Medium.




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APRIL 20, 2024


ARE WE ALL WRONG ABOUT 007’S CREATOR?

Filed under: Short Stories — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 4:41 pm
Tags: Books, Fiction, Movies, Short Stories, James Bond, Film, Ian Fleming, 007


Movie producers are still searching for a new James Bond to replace Daniel
Craig, which means it’s likely to be at least a couple of years until a new 007
movie appears. In the meantime, I’ve been reading short stories by Bond’s
creator, Ian Fleming, and have found that some are terrific, and far above what
you might expect from the films.

That’s especially true of two well-written and fast-paced stories in Fleming’s
short story collection, For Your Eyes Only: the title story and “Quantum of
Solace.” Both have familiar trappings, including palmy tropical settings and
overseas assignments from the British secret service, which sends its hedonistic
spy to Jamaica and the Bahamas.

But the stories also have a psychological depth that may surprise anyone who
expects little more than shootouts and seduction from 007 (in “Quantum of
Solace,” Bond has no love interest at all). Over at @Medium, I write about what
I found in Fleming that I didn’t expect:




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Next Page »


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   * Quick Tips on Writing About Your Core Values
   * Is There A Conspiracy Against Indie Authors?
   * Adventures With Yesterday’s Bestsellers
   * Are The Media Making Us All Hate Each Other?
   * Why I Don’t Count The Number Of Books I Read


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