Customer Reviews

Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a lifelong Peanuts fan and a writer, when I learned of this book I was immediately excited. I got it from Amazon.com and read the whole thing in about two hours. It's a good, satisfying book, but not quite what I expected. I never thought I'd say this, but probably the best thing about the book is the introduction.

Monte Schulz, son of the great Charles, uses the introduction to cast his father as a lover of books and as someone who always thought of his work as low art. (Personally, I consider "Peanuts" to be among the highest art there is). The stories Monte tells about his father are wonderful and made me feel a bit closer to one of my heroes.

The strips collected here, most of which feature Snoopy pounding away at his infamous typewriter or getting a rejection slip (sometimes tied to a rock) are excellent. I've always said that anybody can find his or herself in a Peanuts [comic] strip -- I'm in MOST of the strips about Snoopy.

Where the book falls somewhat short is in the essays collected from some really great writers. Rather than being anything really groundbreaking or informative, most of them are little more than pep talks. The one from Julia Child is completely superfluous unless you're out to write the world's greatest cookbook.

It's a worthwhile book, especially if you're a writer who loves Peanuts. Just don't expect too much from it.

Even Snoopy has publishing woes. And this book contains close to 200 pages of the beloved Peanuts comic strips, all related to writing and getting published.

But this book is more than just a new decoration for your coffee table. Some of the most successful authors today have written essays tied into the comics.

For example, several strips illustrate Snoopy's trouble with Lucy, super critic. Author Sue Grafton's essay addresses the issue writers face when having outsiders take a look at your work in progress.

Over 30 authors offer their advice in a humorous, yet very informative essay. Some of those authors include Clive Cussler, Danielle Steel, Ed McBain, Fannie Flagg, Ray Bradbury, William F. Buckley, Jr. and more.

No matter what your writing experience, even if you're not a writer, you can take something away from this humorous look at the writing life. The authors lend a nice touch to the book, launching it into a writing reference tool as well as an entertaining one.

I luved this book. I read the whole thing and then bought it to take it home. It was inspiring to read what the authors contributed.

I just loved this book! I didn't buy it because I was hoping it would tell me how to get published...I bought it for the motivational comic strips!

How many times I would love to write a letter to an editor that says, I have just written the best story ever but I'm not going to mail it to you...instead you can come and get it...giggle...

If you are looking for a "how-to" book, then this isn't it, but if you are looking for a way to laugh at the whole process of writing, submitting and waiting for the good/bad letter to come..then this is the book for you...

I have many of the comic strips hanging at my computer, so when I get writer's block, I read the many "It was a dark and stormy night" and I seem to laugh a little and then start writing even more...

Any writer looking for deep words from the large (and highly respected) group of writers featured in "Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life" will come away disappointed. But for those writers who are looking for a laugh and a breezy escape featuring personal writing tales from the likes of William F. Buckley, Ed McBain, Danielle Steel, Julia Child, Ray Bradbury and Elmore Leonard, this book fills the bill as well as anything out there.

A handsome book with a clean layout, quality semigloss stock, and a good binding, the showpieces are the delightful Charles Schultz "Peanuts" strips featuring Snoopy in his hopeless Writer persona. Each one is funnier than the next, and as brought together in one place provide an overview of Snoopy's writing strips that I have not found in any other collection. (The strips span the latter half of the comic's run as Snoopy's Writer didn't show up until the Seventies.)

Schultz skewers just about every genre of writing, nails the agonies and ecstasies of rejection and acceptance, and does more with "It was a dark and stormy night" than seems humanly possible. If you are a writer and can't laugh at Snoopy's pathetic talents, you need to get out of the profession! Nonwriters might find the author anecdotes just a distraction from the humor in the strips, but what a wonderful distraction.

So sure, it fails to be a writer's workshop, sacrificing technical knowhow for mirth, but still, how can you lose? I can think of far worse ways for a writer to spend a few hours than reading this little piece of escapism.

A three star book with a four star soul thanks to Schultz's keen eye and Snoopy's aplomb.

At first glance, this book seemed to me to be just another one of the many Peanuts books that have been published since Charles Schulz's death, which after reading it, my suspicions were confirmed.

It has about a page or two from each of many famous authors, each giving some pointers on writing. These are separated by 2-4 Peanuts comic strips.

It is an excellent book for someone who wants a few pointers on writing from famous authors. It gets its classic Peanuts touch by having lots of strips from the comic every few pages. Virtually all of the comics are the ones with Snoopy writingn on his typewriter, so if you like Snoopy's attempts at writing, this book may be worth it just to get all of these strips in one place.

It is a good book, but nothing amazingly new. I give it a 4 out of 5.

This is a fun book. It doesn't provide much practical advice on writing, but it does contend with the psychological hurdles of writing, from struggling to get words on the page to dealing with rejection and bad critics. The short essays by famous & successful writers helped me by providing a little perspective on how various writers work.

I liked the comic strip and short essay format. You could read it cover to cover, but you can just as easily put it down between essays and actually get some writing done. I checked it out of the library, but I think it would make a great gift.

Other books have tried this same concept and succeeded more: Naomi Epel's "Writers Dreaming," "The Best Writing on Writing" edited by Jack Heffron, the essays in the annual "Writer's Handbook," or even Frederick Busch's "Letters to a Fiction Writer."

The twist here is the Snoopy comics - and there are many in this book. Snoopy, the Literary Ace, is a favorite of mine, but I limited the stars due to the lack of substance in the text, particularly for the price! I read it twice, and the book is so unfocused, minimalistic, and generic in its approach as to be useless. The writers represent everything from sci-fi to self-help yet there is suprisingly little writing advice or even reminiscences an aspiring writer might relate to or learn from. It's more like snippets collected at a literary cocktail party.

For HUMOR about writing, I'd recommend this book. For anything more meaty, I'd recommend the books previously mentioned.

I love this book, and used it so often in my middle school classrooms that the binder was wearing out (it was a paperback.) I retired this year, and passed the book along to a younger teacher who had worked with me for the past few years. But here at home, I missed the humor and the comments - so I bought this hardcover edition as a keepsake for my grandchildren. The book arrived two weeks earlier than expected! It looks brand new, even though it was listed as a used copy. Feeling very fortunate here!

Do you have a writer in your life? A child graduating from college or high school or even elementary school? A cousin or nephew who spends his or her days dreaming up worlds to explore? Even, dare I say it, a Harry Potter fanficcer? Then Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life is the ideal book to give your writer, on birthdays, on holidays, at graduation.

This is as much a book about life as it is a book about writing. This isn't a book about "the process." The book won't help you put words on the page, or help you fix your grammar, or describe the best ways of building air-tight plots. What Snoopy's Guide does is far more interesting and far more important--it takes twenty-odd writers and has them talk about about their writing processes, their wins and their losses, and each writer relates their experiences in some way back to Peanuts, which puts their experiences on terms everyone can relate to. Every writer has faced the terror of the blank page, or the title that won't come, or the vagaries of the market. Rather than discuss writing, Snoopy's Guide discusses the writing life, and that makes it a valuable resource to treasure.

If you need a gift, Snoopy's Guide would be ideal. I should know--I gave one as a gift, and it was perfect.