I am unsure where or when I picked up this book. I've had it in my pile for a while now, and picked it up when the slower, non-fiction I've been reading was starting to disinterest me. The book was a slower read than I expected it to be, but I'm unsure where my expectations came from.

The book is about Charlie, a lawyer in Small Town, Georgia, and daughter of a defense lawyer, Rusty, who believes that all people deserve a defense, especially those found guilty in the court of public opinion and unlikely to receive a fair trial or vigorous defense otherwise - you know, the lawyer who is guaranteed to make enemies.

Said enemies take out their vengeance on Rusty's family, and there we have the set up for the main character's demeanor, struggle, conflict, strengths, and development.

This is the first Karin Slaughter book I've read. Mom's favorable opinion of Slaughter's writing influenced my reading the book. There were a number of places where I nodded in understanding of some of the characters' actions, so Slaughter's writing is believable and understandable, which is great.

I just don't know that I'm a better person for having read this book.

Stay with me.

Many of the fiction books I've read have a moral to them. If they lack a moral, then they might contain some incident that causes reflection, a pondering, something to consider that affects the reader's life. Take the Imperial Radch series, for example. Leckie writes about privilege and power and how they manifest corruption, all in the framework of a space opera. Heinlein books were all social commentary.

Okay, this is one of the shorter books on my "I have read" list that I don't count as a book, per se. I read it in a dead tree format. It contained words on the pages. The whole object had a cover, title page, copyright, and sections. It qualifies as a book in every legitimate definition of the word.

But it's too short for my book reading count.

This is a printing of David Foster Walace's commencement speech to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. If I had heard it at my college graduation, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have understood it nearly as well as my current day self does. I'm pretty sure if my 21 year old self had understood his words as well as current day self does, my life would have been significantly different.

I'm also pretty sure my 60 year old self will want to smack my current self upside the head, for STILL not understanding these things.

It's a 20 minute read, available in many places online (and in video format, if that's your thing). Worth reading / watching / experiencing.

The point here is that I think this is one part of what the liberal arts mantra of “teaching me how to think” is really supposed to mean: to be just a little less arrogant, to have some “critical awareness” about myself and my certainties… because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
Page 33

It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
Page 54

This book was recommended in a slack channel I'm in, along with How to Write Short. The two books together helped her write better copy for a site she was developing. Having recently read Draft No. 4 and How to Write Short, I read this one, too.

The book has two big sections. The first section has a series of short sentences giving writing advice. The second section contains examples of writing, along with a critique of the examples. I enjoyed reading the second section. The first section annoyed me.

A series of short sentences would be fine if each of the lines were actually a complete sentence. Instead, the book is formated with choppy lines that break apart longer sentences.

So, imagine reading a book.

Where each line has a fragment of a sentence.

And you are supposed to know.

That it is actually a single sentence.

One naturally pauses at a period.

Which is not how this book is meant to read.

The pause habit is not breakable.

In a single book.

Yeah, so the first section annoyed me. Despite this annoyance, the advice is good. I was amused at how much of the advice I ignore, especially when it comes to pronouns. I am so bad with my use of pronouns. In particular, I use too many of them.

Anyway, main themes of the book:

1. Use short sentences, you don't need long sentences.

2. Have meaning in each sentence.

3. Trust yourself. Give yourself authority. Write about what interests you.

4. Notice things.

5. Don't use cliches. Question any sentence that appears unconsidered or "naturally."

6. Learn grammar so that you don't annoy the reader with bad grammar that they might not know about but can sense.