New Books Roundup

Time to catch up on my TBR pile. Catch up on mentioning them, that is. I can't review them until I read them, right? Well, maybe not fully in the case of Scott Donaldson's Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days. It is a scholarly compilation of the award-winning biographer's essays on both authors, probably less appealing to aficionados of either writer, I suspect. As the front flap blurb indicates, Donaldson has a "deep commitment to close reading." Think intricate details of each author's life traced to lines in a specific novel; positing similarities in lives to influences on works. It is an interesting glimpse into being a literary expert.

A similar academic-type of exegesis is Francine Prose's latest, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. A top novelist, Prose may be better known to us for her New York Times bestseller, Reading Like a Writer. This new nonfiction offering opens eyes to view Frank's little book as something more and other than just a girl's diary. For instance, did you know Frank's work is published in three different versions? Not languages (dozens of those), but editions with differing material. This happened partly because Frank was of a tender age, training herself to write and rewrite her experiences as a novel. Prose proposes that Frank was already an author before her short life ended too soon.

I've been advised to hold off reading Decoding The Lost Symbol: The Unauthorized Expert Guide to the Facts Behind the Fiction until I see Dan Brown's latest semiotic chase scenes. Simon Cox must have had a preview in order to write his guide. He also wrote Cracking the DaVinci Code and Illuminating Angels & Demons. Maybe I won't wait, though. Subjecting myself to the DaVinci book was torture enough. What could it hurt to cut to the solution?

If I make a mistake, I'll turn to Zig Ziglar and Julie Norman's Embrace the Struggle: Living Life on Life's Terms. In this slim volume, the current pope of positive thinking and his daughter build on a traumatic event in Ziglar's life to convince others with similar struggles that life is still worth living, even if it's on life's terms. I probably need to read this one closely and edit that last.

Finally (until the UPS guy comes this afternoon) is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Business Books by Bert Holtje. I couldn't resist peeking inside. I'm thinking it will have application to writing any nonfiction book. It begins with testing your idea and appears to be a comprehensive guide through all publishing stages, ending with publicizing the finished product. I am especially impressed that Holtje stresses working with a freelance editor even if your book will be published traditionally.

These new releases are gifts from their various publishers.

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