Several Short Sentences About Writing

February 25, 2018 Raymond Wong

Verlyn Klinkenborg knows a few things about writing. He earned a Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton, and he has authored a number of books. He is on the editorial board of the New York Times and he is a creative writing instructor.

Klinkenborg demonstrates crisp, clear prose in Several Short Sentences About Writing. His book is straightforward, direct, and takes the form of a prose poem sustained over 150 pages. A former creative writing professor suggested the book to me because it changed her thoughts about how writing should be taught, and I can see why it impressed her so much.

The Glass Castle

August 13, 2017 Raymond Wong

The opening of Jeannette Walls’s memoir shows the narrator as an adult who sees her mother scavenging through trash in New York. It’s an apt beginning to a book that chronicles the trials of a family through the eyes of a little girl who grows up in desperate poverty. Yet what’s startling is not the fact that Walls has to scour the trash in the school bathroom or cafeteria to find something to eat or that the family has to use a bucket as a toilet because their house doesn’t have plumbing, but the way the author captures the innocence of a girl who sees these things as a normal way of life.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

July 9, 2017 Raymond Wong

This book brings to life the story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cancer cells have contributed to the polio vaccine, cancer research, genetic mapping, and any number of biomedical/science studies since the 1950s. Skloot conveys the science in the book and the importance of “HeLa,” the name for the cancer cells that have meant so much to research in the biomedical/science community, but she also chronicles the story of Henrietta Lacks, her family, and the people in the science community who advanced the culturing of HeLa cells for biomedical research.

God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir by George Foreman

February 4, 2017 Raymond Wong

At one time, George Foreman went into the boxing ring filled with hatred and wanted to literally kill his opponent with his fists. He stared directly at the other fighter with anger in his eyes before the fight and went after him once the bell rang. The intent was to destroy the other man and Foreman did just that on many occasions, winning the heavyweight championship by pummeling Joe Frazier in 1973. A few fights after his epic defeat at the hands of Muhammad Ali in Zaire, Foreman fought Jimmy Young in 1977 and lost a decision on the judges’ scorecards. Then something remarkable happened.

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

January 16, 2017 Raymond Wong

Susan Jeffers believes people can overcome their fears and this book shows how to do it. She defines fear in three stages. Level 1: things that happen to people such as dying, earthquakes, and accidents and actions such as asking for a raise, learning to drive a car, and public speaking. Level 2: inner fears: rejection, failure, vulnerability. Level 3: the culprit that drives all other fears – the inability to cope with a situation.

Loud and Clear

November 6, 2016 Raymond Wong

Anna Quindlen isn’t afraid to speak her mind and she does it through prose that is insightful, precise, political, and heartfelt. Loud and Clear, a collection of Quindlen’s columns from Newsweek and The New York Times, provides personal reflections from a Pulitzer-winning writer, one who has worked as a reporter, columnist, and novelist.

The Warmth of Other Suns

July 4, 2016 Raymond Wong

Isabel Wilkerson’s book about the migration of African Americans away from the South to escape persecution is an account of three people who braved this journey. In telling their stories, Wilkerson effectively chronicles this period in American history with compassion for their plight and unveils the cruelty inflicted on African Americans that made the exodus necessary.

179 Ways to Save a Novel

May 14, 2016 Raymond Wong

Peter Selgin’s book of sage advice for writers is engaging, humorous, inspiring, and filled with helpful tips to improve one’s prose whether fiction or autobiographical nonfiction. It’s written in an unvarnished, down-to-earth style that suggests he’s talking to a friend over a warm cup of mint tea. The tone is inviting yet instructive at the same time. Readers sense that Selgin is speaking from experiences, some harsh, and he’s trying to save writers from mistakes he’s made. One example is a lesson learned from a writing workshop encounter in which Frank Conroy literally tossed Selgin’s manuscript to the floor to show his disdain for a word that called attention to the writing.

Safekeeping

February 28, 2016 Raymond Wong

Abigail Thomas’s Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life, is a collection of short vignettes, some as brief as a paragraph, but they hit with the power of an avalanche. These are stories of family, snapshots from a picture album of moments in time, caught in a camera’s lens at just the right instant, at the precise angle necessary to convey the raw feelings of loss, pain, emptiness, grief, and wonder.

Catfish and Mandala

January 9, 2016 Raymond Wong

Andrew Pham paints a vivid picture of Vietnam: the food (We wolf down our plebeian meal of catfish, rice, pickled firecracker eggplant with shrimp paste, and steamed string beans from his garden), some not so appetizing native dishes (their chopsticks hovering above plates of boiled gizzards curly like cashews, pig hearts sliced like truffles, intestines chopped up like rigatoni); the people (You can tell a Vietnamese by the way he wears his sandals. Is the stem firmly held between the toes? Or does the ball of the heel drag beyond the sandal? Do the sandals flap like loose tongues when he walks?); the poverty (They walk to the highway and ride a three-wheeled Tuk-tuk to Hanoi four days a week. Rice-girl makes her own rice dumplings and Papaya-girl picks her fruit from the family orchard. Neither has enough merchandise for a stall at the market or makes enough to pay for a permit to sell on the street, so they go door-to-door).

Happy Holidays!

December 22, 2015 Raymond Wong

Picture of Sao Paulo by Silvio Tanaka

Growing Up

December 16, 2015 Raymond Wong

There is nothing earthshaking happening in Russell Baker’s memoir, Growing Up. No rampant alcoholism, disfiguring calamity, or a soul-searing incident of abandonment to hook and maintain a reader’s interest. What is offered instead in the pages of this touching book more than makes up for any lack of heart-pumping suspense. Baker paints a picture of his upbringing in a landscape as warm and colorful as the Norman Rockwell covers gracing the Saturday Evening Post editions Baker tries to peddle as an 8-year-old boy in a small town called Belleville at the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey.

The Latehomecomer

October 25, 2015 Raymond Wong

In Kao Kalia Yang’s memoir of her family’s experience as Hmong refugees to America, the narrator wrote a high school English essay about love in response to Romeo and Juliet: “Love is the reason why my mother and father stick together in a hard life when they might each have an easier one apart; love is the reason why you choose a life with someone, and you don’t turn back although your heart cries sometimes and your children see you cry and you wish out loud that things were easier. Love is getting up each day and fighting the same fight only to sleep that night in the same bed beside the same person because long ago, when you were younger and you did not see so clearly, you had chosen them”

The Three Questions

August 4, 2015 Raymond Wong

This illustrated children’s book by Jon J. Muth was adapted from a short story by Leo Tolstoy, and it is a story that is loved by children and adults alike. Nikolai is a boy who yearns to be a good person, but he doesn’t know how, so he asks himself three questions: “When is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do?”

Lifespan of a Fact

July 18, 2015 Raymond Wong

The Lifespan of a Fact is a battle of wills between a writer, D’ Agata, of a submitted essay in which he has admittedly taken “liberties… here and there, but none of them are harmful” and the magazine’s fact-checker, Fingal, a man obsessed with the accuracy of details in a work of nonfiction. What follows in this book is an engaging, humorous, and controversial philosophical fight that poses some difficult questions: How much flexibility and artistic license is acceptable in a work of nonfiction? Where is the line drawn? What is truth – factual versus artistic?

A Whole New Mind

May 8, 2015 Raymond Wong

Daniel Pink says you better cultivate the right hemisphere of your brain, the artistic/creative side responsible for seeing the big picture, spontaneity, emotive expression, abstraction, and context. He gives three reasons why this area of the mind is essential in the modern world: abundance, Asia, and automation. By abundance, he means that many societies have more material wealth than they know what to do with. He gives the example of a designer toilet brush to illustrate the excesses to which America has sunk in its pursuit of beauty, perfection, and extravagance. Asia is a source of plentiful, cheap labor that will make many U.S. jobs obsolete. And automation in the way of technology, cell phones, and ultra-efficient, task-oriented computers is able to out-perform and out-think many human beings.

Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero

March 8, 2015 Raymond Wong

Michael Hingson was working on the 78th floor in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when American Airlines Flight 11 flew into floors 93 through 99 of the building. Hingson, blind from infancy due to a medical procedure used to provide oxygen to premature babies, his guide dog, Roselle, and a small group of employees descended Stairwell B in a race to get out of the building before it collapsed. They needed to go down 1,463 stairs. Thunder Dog is the riveting account of their escape from death.

The Duke of Deception

February 4, 2015 Raymond Wong

In this memoir, Geoffrey Wolff, writes an unflinchingly honest portrayal of growing up with his father, a man who goes through life duping people into extending him credit in order to bask in a state of temporary luxury, only to have it all come tumbling down like a house of cards, because it’s never enough. Once the bills come due and the repossessions begin, the “Duke” can only haul himself and his family out of town in pursuit of the next target of deception.

The Memory Palace

December 7, 2014 Raymond Wong

Mira Bartok’s memoir is a story of her relationship with her schizophrenic mother, Norma. In her prologue, Bartok sets the stakes: she gives the hypothetical situation of a homeless woman on a ledge five stories up. She’s in her own world of fantasy. There’s an ambulance below. The woman yearns to be set free. The people below are trying to help her, save her from a fall, from death. The woman only wants to fly.

Grandfather's Journey

November 5, 2014 Raymond Wong

Allen Say’s Grandfather’s Journey is a touching piece of brilliant literature. The narrator, a boy, tells the story in so little words, it’s remarkable that you can soak all of it in.

2-25-18I posted a review of Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. The review appeared in Small Print Magazine, and you have to read his critiques of his students' writing. They are laugh-out-loud hilarious.  8-13-17The Gl… — 2-25-18
I posted a review of *Several Short Sentences About Writing* by Verlyn Klinkenborg. The review appeared in *Small Print Magazine*, and you have to read his critiques of his students' writing. They are laugh-out-loud hilarious.

8-13-17
*The Glass Castle* just came out in theaters, and here is what I think of Jeannette Walls's book.

7-9-17
I just posted a review of *The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks* by Rebecca Skloot. The well-researched story is a tribute to a woman and her humanity, not just what her cells meant to medical science.

2-4-17
How does a person change? Read how George Foreman transformed from a mean, bullying boxer to a man of compassion in God In My Corner: A Spiritual Memoir.

1-16-17
Happy New Year! Enjoy my review of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers. If fear is stopping you from being the person you want to be, this book offers practical advice.

11-6-16
I posted a review of *Loud and Clear* by Anna Quindlen. I admire the humanity and empathy in her essays.

7-4-16
Happy 4th everyone. Check out my review of Isabel Wilkerson's *The Warmth of Other Suns.* I am in awe of the research she conducted to write this book.

5-14-16
I just posted a review of *179 Ways to Save a Novel* by Peter Selgin, one of the authors who has helped me the most at Antioch University Los Angeles.

2-28-16
If you haven't read Abigail Thomas's *Safekeeping: Some True Stories from a Life,* you're in for a treat. Her prose is sharp, unerring, and so resonant. As a writer, I admire both her honesty and her craft.

1-9-16
I just posted a review of *Catfish and Mandala*, a first-person journey through Vietnam by bicycle.

12-16-15
A story of mother and son, told with elegance and humanity. *Growing Up* by Russell Baker is a story to be cherished.

10-25-15
I just posted a review of *The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir* by Kao Kalia Yang. She depicts a vivid portrayal of her family's experience as Hmong in America.

8-4-15
I recently presented at the Alpine Library for their "Breakfast & Books" event and recommended a children's book, *The Three Questions* by Jon J. Muth. Here's my review of his wondrous adaptation from Leo Tolstoy's short story.

7-18-15
I posted a review of *Lifespan of a Fact*, an argument about what is and isn't acceptable in nonfiction.

5-8-15
I posted a review of *A Whole New Mind* by Daniel Pink, a compelling argument for developing the right hemisphere of your brain to remain viable in the technology age.

3-8-15
I posted a review of *Thunder Dog* by Michael Hingson and Susy Flory. The authors make use of point of view and tense shifts to great effect in telling the story of a blind man's harrowing escape from the North Tower on 9/11.

2-4-15
I posted a review of Geoffrey Wolff's *The Duke of Deception*, a fascinating memoir of a father who lives a life of lies.

12-7-14
I just posted a review of Mira Bartok's *The Memory Palace*. I used to work with chronically mentally ill adults in a day treatment center, and I'm impressed with how Bartok captures the ravaging effects of her mother's schizophrenia with honesty and compassion.

11-5-14
Elisabeth Newbold, the librarian at the Alpine Library, suggested we read Allen Say's *Grandfather's Journey* when I did an author presentation in October. After reading this book, my daughter, Kristie, asked to write a book review, and I posted it. As Kristie said in her review, the book is remarkable, so we hope you will read it.

10-18-14
I just posted my review of *Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking* after promising to do so at my author presentation during San Diego City College's International Book Fair on Oct. 15th. Introverts will feel understood after reading this book, and extroverts will touch the other face of the coin.

Hi,

A fabulous writing mentor at Antioch University LA, Chris Hale, told me I can make a difference by bringing attention to books. It saddens me when I hear people are reading less, because books are such a treasured part of my life. As the father of two precocious children named Kevin and Kristie, I have tried to nurture an appreciation of books, the beauty and magic of stories. I’m grateful they are both avid readers; Kevin is a fan of fantasy and science fiction and Kristie loves nature and animals.

In this section, you will find my book reviews because I want to create a community of readers and writers who revel in words. So please comment, share, tell us what you’re reading, and what inspires you.