2 new reviews
12:37 PM PDT, April 20, 2009
I've recently reviewed two very different books: the novel American Rust and the non-fiction The Towering World of Jimmy Choo. They were both difficult to review, for opposite.
I liked American Rust a great deal, but I couldn't really verbalize exactly why, except that it's vividly written with strong characterization. I had a very hard time trying to form my impressions of the book into words. This probably means the author is a good one--skilled enough to not only draw the average reader into his work, but to hide the seams so well that you're not sure why it's such a good book. The Jimmy Choo book, on the other hand, was a train wreck. I really dislike reviewing books I don't like. Temperamentally, it's hard for me to take a knife to a book that someone worked on for years. Knowing how difficult writing is, I hate being confronted with proof that Sturgeon's Law is still valid: ninety percent of everything really is crap. Sometimes, no matter how carefully you screen your books, you will eventually dip into that lower 90%. As a writer, reading something awful (at least for me), triggers an underlying anxiety that perhaps you aren't one of the talented tenth. "Whoever wrote this thought it was pretty good," I think to myself, "So how do I know if my work isn't this terrible?" Sitting down to write the review with a heavy heart, I thought of Klingons. Yep, the horseshoe-crabheads from Star Trek. In particular, there was one episode (I think it was Heart of Glory), where a Klingon is going to die as a traitor and criminal, rather than face an honorable end in battle. When Worf objects to the head Klingon guy, he says quite gnomically, "When one of us dies like that, it dishonors us all." But they still had to do it, because right is right. That's how I feel reading--and reviewing--a bad book. Having been on the receiving end of a few negative reviews, I know how discouraging they can be, so I don't give the thumbs down without really, really having problems with a book. At least I don't do that Klingon death howl when I finish the review, although that would certainly be cathartic. Reviews
3:26 PM PDT, April 13, 2009
I've been reading some pretty good books lately. I haven't finished my review of Phillipp Meyer's American Rust yet because it's not an easy book to reduce to a few paragraphs. When I do, though, I'll be sure to post a link here.
I'm going to try to use this blog a bit more in the future. You can always check out my musing at theDieIsCast, but I'll try to make this more writing-specific. Since I'm teaching a writing class again this summer, I should have plenty of material. Writing, writing, and more writing
10:46 AM PST, February 15, 2009
I haven't posted much here because I've been doing a lot of writing. Hopefully you'll be seeing something new from me soon.
I've also been reading a great deal. The Amazon Vine program's been a real help for me--I'm getting to read several books I wouldn't have otherwise seen. Amazon Vine
3:03 PM PDT, October 7, 2008
I've signed up for Amazon Vine, and gotten a few books already. One book that I wanted but couldn't get, American Lightning, fortuitously fell into my lap anyway, and that's become my latest review.
I'm in the midst of revising a chapter of my own work, which is always a tough time. It's hard to judge what to cut and what to keep, where to prune and where to expand. Personally, I've found that I can edit other people's work with confidence and clarity, but when faced with reworking what I've written I often get assailed by doubt. Of course, it's always easier to diagnose someone else's problems than it is your own, so I guess that this is par for the course. Hopefully Amazon Vine will expose me to some great new work I wouldn't have otherwise seen, work that will exercise a positive influence on my own writing, thus making me a better writer and providing you, the reading public, with some quality reviews. If only it was that easy. Still writing
10:15 PM PDT, August 14, 2008
You wouldn't know it from my book list, but I'm doing a lot of writing these days. Oh, I'm working on a book, but I can't tell you about it yet. When the time is right, though, I'll be writing plenty about it.
But you can read my prose stylings at many places. I'm doing my biweekly opinion piece for the Las Vegas Business Press and you can see the index of my Atlantic City history pieces for Casino Connection here. Add to that regular work in Casino Enterprise Management and the Nevada version of Casino Connection, plus a few academic things, and you can see that I'm keeping busy. Still, most people just care about the book. And it's coming... Teaching is fun
4:56 PM PDT, June 26, 2008
I've meant to post here much more often, but I've been very busy with work and work-related stuff, and teaching. As I mentioned before, I'm teaching a course in creative non-fiction this month at UNLV.
Working with other people always gives me a new perspective on writing. It's always easier to look at someone else's work to see what works and what doesn't, and I find that the more that I give other people feedback, the better I get at critiquing my own work. Teaching is, I've discovered, not my favorite thing to do, though it's near the top of the list. I'd say that my list looks something like this: 1. Family time 2. Reading 3. Writing 4. Teaching If it wasn't for grading, teaching might move up a spot. My site's mostly changed
11:22 PM PDT, May 18, 2008
the die is cast, my personal website, now has a completely new design, with upgraded WordPress software, comments re-enabled, and a totally new look.
I've even animated the logo. Judging from my author rankings, there hasn't been a rush of people buying my books lately. If it's because of indifference, I'm guessing that you're not reading this, so for all of the people who want to buy some of my writing but have been victimized by pain at the pump, the mortgage meltdown, or the credit crunch (gotta love those alliterative financial crises), you can head over to the die is cast and read some of my stuff for free. Ironically, the carpet gallery is the thing that gets the most attention (far more than my writing), and that's the one thing that I haven't migrated to the new look, mostly because I'm still getting a handle on how to build image galleries in WordPress. I've downloaded a plugin, but haven't been able to make it work yet. Change is coming
9:46 PM PDT, May 4, 2008
I've been spending some time on a rework of the die is cast. It's going to look much better and, eventually, have more content. Going through the site, I'm amazed at how much writing I've done over the past few years.
Teaching writing
11:19 PM PDT, March 30, 2008
I'm very excited about teaching a creative writing class this summer at UNLV. It's Honors Seminar 1 in summer session 2 (mostly in June). I've decided to call it "The Craft of Creative Non-Fiction," even though I know many people disagree with the term. If it's too creative, they say, it's fiction, and if it's just well-written, why not just call it non-fiction? I think that "creative non-fiction" is appropriate, though, because it is a very different kind of writing from academic and journalistic non-fiction.
We're going to be doing some reading, some discussing, lots of writing, and more workshopping than you can imagine. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, people looking on this site for books about gambling (if they read this blog on one of my book pages) probably know more about this class than UNLV students. I'm going to have to ramp up my recruitment efforts if I want a full class. What qualifies me to teach writing? After all, I haven't written a best-seller yet. But I'm willing to wager that I've published 3 more books than any of my students, which makes me something of an authority. But I don't see the class as a place for me to lecture students about the One True Way to write. Instead, I see it as a group effort that I'm leading, like a conductor leads an orchestra. So hopefully I can play Duke Ellington to a few aspiring Johnny Hodges, Harry Carneys, and Tricky Sam Nantons out there, gently prompting them to excellence with a few well-placed notes. Students will learn a little about the genre and explore their own writing. They'll all finish a "Big Project" during the class--this is a serious piece of writing that they can try to get published or just be proud of. So if you are a UNLV student or know one, take a look at this class. I've joined a gang...
4:29 PM PDT, March 21, 2008, updated at 3:40 PM PDT, March 22, 2008
But we're not beefing over who gets to control the Barksdale corners or anything like that. Instead, we talk about casino design and what's going on in the Bizarro world of Las Vegas. You can check us out at the Vegas gang podcast:
http://www.vegasgangpodcast.com. Getting to talk about current issues with real people is a nice break from researching and writing about the past. And my own negligible contributions to the podcasts aside, they are pretty interesting.. So if you can't get enough of Las Vegas and/or casino issues, check them out.
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Bio
I love how "writer, historian" is in quotes next to my name. I really am one of each--I've got a Ph.D. in US History from UCLA and I've written three books so far.
My website has a ton of info about my writing, professional, and creative work. So feel free to check it out at www.dieiscast.com. Oh yeah, there's more photos of casino carpets than you ever thought existed there, if you're into that sort of thing. As far as the writing goes, I'm hard at work on my fourth book, and regularly write shorter non-fiction pieces as well.
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