Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Reading Report

Building Believable Characters - A Writer's Digest Sourcebook

This was my first stop on the quest to deeper characterization. For a fairly fat book the advice section is rather skimpy. What it does have is a character thesaurus. There are hefty sections on face and body, personality, expressions, body language, voice,dress, dialects, names and homes.

Sort of like buying a cookbook and finding instead lists of ingredients. Less roll and click, and more thoughtful reading about the book, on part. Yet, I'm not sure I'm disappointed. I think it might well serve the way a regular thesaurus does as a memory aid or brain nudge.



The Good Son by Craig Nova

Mr. Nova is one of the most brilliant unknown authors around. Worthy of reading strictly for craft. His sentences are dense with precise meaning, each requiring careful savoring in the mind to absorb the full flavor. In addition, he has a distinctive author voice.

All that said he has a small reading audience, the uniformly admiring critics, a few discriminating readers and, occassionally, me. Why? Frankly, I think he was born too late - if F. Scott Fitzgeral were writing today - would he be a best seller ?



Isabella by Loretta Chase

Having discovered Ms. Chase last year - she's now a favorite reward read. So far each title has been thoroughly delightful. This one, sadly, is currently out of print - but available from selected re-sellers.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Evanne:

I wanted to take a moment to say thanks for your generous comment, which I ran across by accident, but that only made me more, well, happily surprised. So, thanks.

Craig Nova

4:51 PM  
Blogger Evanne Lorraine said...

You're more than welcome, I adore your work.

4:54 PM  

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