Review of THE HUNDRED THOUSAND KINGDOMS, Discussion of ON WRITING, and Other Updates

First posts to the Reading and Writing blogs have gone up! They're both responses to books, and each includes a few recommendations for further reading, so check them out:

Review: N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

This book is right up my alley—female protagonist thrown into an unfamiliar and extravagant setting with ulterior motives all around? Yes, please!



(I'll be posting a follow-up to this next week, discussing some feminist issues I had with it, so if you don't mind spoilers you should keep an eye out for that!)

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Discussing Stephen King's On Writing

The contents of craft books (as with any of the self-help genres) are generally hit-or-miss—the advice tends to fall into one of four categories: (1) full disagreement (reader rejects writer’s idea immediately); (2) filler (reader has heard this idea before, and the writer adds nothing new to the discourse); (3) epiphany-once-removed (reader was familiar with the idea but didn’t have the words to fully express it ‘til now); and (4) true epiphany (reader has never had this idea before). Stephen King’s On Writing, at least half consisting of the author’s memoir, adds a new category: irrelevant (ideas that don’t relate to the craft the book is trying to teach). Whether this new category adds anything to the book other than a demographic of potential readers to its market… Well, that’s a matter of opinion. My opinion is a resounding No.

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General Site Updates:
I've put together a site header, and subheaders for the various blogs that'll do well enough until I find something I like better. Oh, and added a couple of widgets: a progress bar for my current writing project, and the last twenty books I've read on Goodreads. Other than that, just content. Yay, content!