Book Review: Your Behavior Will Be Monitored

Megacorporation UniView is poised to cement their reputation as “the most trusted name in AI.” After pioneering self-driving and HR bots, UniView is now barreling toward an audacious new launch. That is, if they can pull it off in time.

Enter Noah. A down-and-out copywriter reeling from a midlife crisis, he isn’t the typical hire for a groundbreaking tech company full of brilliant engineers and run by a cutthroat CEO. But Lex, UniView’s Head of HR and one of their greatest successes, makes no mistakes—her algorithm ensures it.

UniView’s latest venture, a bot named Quinn that creates revolutionary personalized advertising, needs expert training. Noah needs to teach Quinn, who is a much better student than he ever could have hoped for, the finer points of consumer motivation and the art of writing a catchy tagline. But when corporate competitors force UniView to accelerate their timeline to market, guardrails around the AI loosen just as Quinn is learning a bit too much.

Book Review: Verb Your Enthusiasm

Verbs are the underrated stars of the English language. They hold it all together. A complete sentence cannot exist without one, yet a single verb can create complete meaning. (See?) In this brilliant exploration of language, grammar, and style, Sarah L. Kaufman illuminates how all of us, professional writers and novices alike, can master the art of the verb and unlock the infinite potential of written expression.

When she was the dance critic at The Washington Post, Kaufman was challenged to translate the dynamic language of movement into words. Verbs showed her the way. Good verbs power great storytelling; they leap off the page, fire our senses, and transform our perceptions.

Book Review: Queens of Disco

From leading vocalists such as Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer and The Pointer Sisters, who helped popularize disco music in the late seventies, to modern-day disco divas including Madonna and Kylie Minogue, Queens of Disco is an electrifying must-read for dance music enthusiasts.

This joyful book explores disco's emergence in the underground club scene and unpicks its influence on DJ culture and legacy in defining electronic dance music such as hip-hop, house and new-wave. Featuring complementary playlists alongside detailed profiles of ten female trailblazers and fully illustrated throughout.

Book Review: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.

In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.

Book Review: Enemy of My Enemy

When reports come in that the Kingpin and a police officer have been killed and that Frank Castle (aka the Punisher) has turned himself in for it, Matt Murdock senses holes in the narratives the media and the streets are quick to run with. Both criminals have been Matt’s nemeses when he dons the cowl of the Daredevil, and there’s no denying that New York is better off without its Kingpin and with the Punisher behind bars. And yet, while the Punisher is a murderous vigilante, he doesn’t kill cops. And he doesn’t turn himself in.

Castle certainly deserves prison for all of the other crimes he has committed in the past. However, Matt’s indominable sense of justice insists that nobody should be locked away for crimes they didn’t actually commit. Representing the vigilante in court, Matt enters a contest of wills and guile with Castle to try and uncover the game beneath the game. And when Matt’s girlfriend takes the stand and complicates matters, there’s truly no rest for the wicked or the just. As the Kingpin’s absence causes passion and ambitions to run hot in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt must decide if justice means the letter of the law, what’s best for the citizen on the streets, or where his heart leading him.

Book Review: Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch - Let Verbs Power Your Writing

Great sentences pivot on great verbs. In Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch, Constance Hale, best-selling author of Sin and Syntax, zeroes in on verbs that make bad writing sour and good writing sing. Each chapter features four sections: “Vex” tackles tough syntax, “Hex” debunks myths about verbs, “Smash” warns of bad writing habits, and “Smooch” showcases exemplary writing.

A veteran journalist and writing teacher, Hale peppers her advice with pop-culture references and adapts her expertise for writers of every level. With examples ranging from the tangled clauses of Henry James and the piercing insight of Joan Didion to the punchy gerunds of the Coen brothers and the passive verbs of CEOs on trial, this book offers a reenergized take on the “little despot of the sentence.”

Book Review: The Story Grid

The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not.

The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult.)