Old Testament History

The historical books of the Old Testament (the first 17 books in the typical organization of Christian Bibles) tell the story of the rise and fall of the Israelite nation. The big chunks of history are organized in this manner:

1- Founding the nation and receiving the Law (the Pentateuch, which includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy),

--The conquest and early settlement of Canaan (Joshua and Judges),

3-The early roots of a kingdom in Israel (Ruth and I Samuel),

4-The Israelite Kingdom (II Samuel, I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles), and

5-The end of captivity and rebuilding of Jerusalem (Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther).

The books are not organized in a strictly chronological order. In addition, there are overlaps and gaps.

A theme that runs through the books is the active engagement of God. He is engaged in all of His creation, and particularly in the history of the Israelite nation. He called them out to be His people, he caused them to rise and prosper as a nation, and when they turned away from them, He brought them low.

Another theme in these books is the importance of moral leadership. When the nation had morally upright leaders, the people tended to also be morally upright. When the leaders were selfish, greedy, lustful, and following false gods, the people followed them into every kind of sin. We are strongly influenced by others, especially our leaders.

The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville, TN:  Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Readings from Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen

Daily Readings from Your Best Life Now, is a daily devotional adapted from Joel Osteen’s breakout bestseller Your Best Life Now. The primary divisions of the book follow that of the source material. Likewise, the body of each short chapters is adapted closely from the original material. However, this book is organized differently. It is divided into 90 chapters, each one kept short in order to fit into a daily reading schedule.

At the top of each chapter is a reference to a passage of scripture. The chapters in the book are not expositions on the scripture; Osteen is plain in the introduction that that was not his intention. Osteen’s books, like his televised sermons, are topical rather than expositional. I thought that the connection between the scripture reading and the chapters were sometimes tenuous.

I’ll admit I took much longer than 90 days to finish this book (I probably first opened it shortly after it was published in 2005). That may have injured my sense of the book as a whole, but I think that the book was written with the hope that each chapter would be able to stand on its own as a sermonette of encouragement.

Encouragement is a good word for the book. It’s the theme through every part from encouragement to dream bigger to encouragement to press on in the hard times.

That leads also to what I think is the weakness of the book, and Osteen’s ouvre in general. It seems to draw from the theme and concepts of self-help as much (or more) as from the Bible. Even in the introduction, Osteen speaks in one sentence of wanting people to draw near to God and in the next of helping readers “unlock the doors of a fuller life.” These are not mutually exclusive pursuits, but that depends a lot on your concept of a fuller life.

I don’t mean to be too critical of Osteen. Obviously, I read several of his books and books by his predecessors as preachers of positivity in popular culture, Robert H. Schuller and Norman Vincent Peale. I have felt encourage by reading the books of these men, but I also leave there books feeling like something much deeper is missing.

Joel Osteen also wrote

Break Out

I Declare

You Can, You Will

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be by Robert H. Schuller

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. Daily Readings from Your Best Life Now. New York: Warner Faith, 2005.

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

I was going read only fiction over the holidays and give myself a break from writing reviews.  So I picked up Arthur & George by Julian Barnes.  I remembered I reviewed The Sherlockian by Graham Moore and began to feel obligated to review this other novel about Arthur Conan Doyle as well.

The books are very different.  The Sherlockian is a thriller and it is entirely fictional.  Barnes’ book is a more literary, historical novel based on real events.  If he had been writing a thriller, the story would have started when Doyle got involved in overturning the wrongful conviction of solicitor George Adelji for mutilating and killing animals in the rural community where he was raised by a Scottish mother and an Indian father who converted to Anglicanism and served as a vicar.  This doesn’t occur until you’ve already read 70 percent of the book.  Barnes doesn’t indulge the achronologic order a novel permits, but he does take his time, gets into the heads of his protagonists, and takes a long look at side stories.  This is why I refer to it as a literary novel in contrast to a thriller, which is more to-the-point and plot driven.

I wonder why Barnes decided to write a novel instead of a nonfiction account of the events.  I suspect there was plenty of source material.  Doyle was a prolific writer.  Newspapers abounded in England at the time.  Clues to the truth can be found in even the most obfuscatory court and government documents.  The Adelji case led to new laws, including the introduction of appeals courts to the British criminal justice system.  I suspect he wanted to explore themes that interested him without too strictly bound to a factual narrative.

There is the suggestion of a theme in the opening chapters.  Doyle and Adelji are introduced through their childhood exposures to death, something that would have been common in the 1800s.  Doyle famously became a spiritualist.  He was committed to the idea that death was passage into another life and that gifted people could communicate with the departed.  I do not know if Adelji’s views are on the record, but Barnes depicts him as something between neutral and skeptical.  He also seems indifferent and uncurious.  The only fact he is sure of is that everyone dies.  What happens after death, if anything, is unknown, and he finds the evidence of an afterlife to be weak.  These views are not contrasted; they are juxtaposed.

Ethics may be another theme.  Doyle derived his ethical view from his notions of chivalry.  Adelji, who comes across as a high-functioning person with Asperger’s syndrome, found his place in the order and logic of the law.  There was plenty of unethical activity, or at least human venality, presented in the story: racism, eugenic notions, sloppy police work, unjust courts, and heel-dragging bureaucrats.

I might have preferred a straight nonfiction account of the events.  Barnes novelization worked for me, though.  It was certainly more effective than the partial fictionalization attempted by David Gelernter in his history of the 1939 World’s Fair.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont

The Great Stink by Clare Clark

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Barnes, Julian.  Arthur & George.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

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A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold had a long career working with and studying nature as a government forester, university professor, founder of the discipline of wildlife management. He is remembered as author and popular proponent of wilderness based on his book A Sand County Almanac.

A Sand County Almanac is a collection of essays in three parts. The first part is a tour of his Wisconsin farm covering each month of the year. Actually, it is not a farm in the sense of being a business that produces food and fiber. It was abandoned as a farm and hiding place for illegal stills when Leopold bought it as a semi-wild getaway. To be fair, though, it was abandoned as a farm because of practices that destroyed much of its productive capacity, and Leopold’s theme is land management. He approaches that theme gently in the first part. A reader can have the sense of strolling around the place with Leopold as he points out the plants and animals that live there, full-time or seasonally, and shares his enthusiasm for them.

In the second part, Leopold expands the scope to cover many places in the central and western United States, and even a few places in Mexico and Canada. These essays also recount his personal experiences relating to wild lands. In some of these essays he begins to touch more firmly on points of land management and policy.

In the final part, Leopold’s essays are more direct. The point of the book is that, if Americans, or people generally, want to have a rich landscape, wildlife, and land that is productive for generations, we need to value land in a new way and take new approaches to managing it.

The culmination of this discussion is the land ethic. Ethics are essentially about community, and the appropriate and acceptable relationships between the members of the community and each member and the community as a whole. A land ethic treats the land as a part of the community. In land, Leopold includes “soils, waters, plants, and animals.” Land is a part of our community that produces things of both economic and ineffable value. The land ethic implies that we have obligations to each other and to the land to conserve it. Conservation isn’t simply a matter or protecting specific areas, plants or animals. There is a place for policy, but the ethic is also individual, and a successful conservation efforts will mean landowners will need to treat the land and something inherently valuable. We would conserve ethically out of a sense of humility, realizing that the land is much more complex that we understand, and that our progress can outpace our understanding with possibly irreversible undesirable results.

Reconnecting to the land, and learning to value it, is encouraged by Leopold. Arguably, the first two parts of the book are intended to give the reader a sense of connection to the land. On the policy front, he suggests that many of the things we do to connect people to wilderness is destroying the wilderness. A land ethic could be a curative for this because aware people could connect to the land (especially wild plants and animals) close to home, even in cities, and be able to appreciate even wilder places from a distance. He goes so far as to suggest that amateur wildlife research could become a new type of sportsmanship, and cites cases were amateurs managing their own small plots have contributed to our understanding of wildlife.

It should be noted that, in addition to being a collection of thoughtful essays on nature, A Sand County Almanac is beautifully written. He can be poetical and political in the same sentence, such as “Hemisphere solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.” He expresses himself with a gentle, homey cynicism as when he wrote, “Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.”

*

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches from Here and There. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

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12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy by Henry Cloud & John Townsend

Cloud, Henry & John Townsend. 12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy: Relief from False Assumptions.  Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend are Christian counselors.  In their practice, they found that many Christians have little knowledge of what the Bible says about their problems.  They often had been taught religious beliefs that not only were opposed the Bible, or misconstrued it, but were detrimental to their recovery.  They address a doze of these maddening traditions in 12 “Christian” Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy.

I won’t go over all twelve beliefs.  They’re all things I’ve seen or heard, or even thought myself, at some point.  You probably have run into them, too.  Some concepts recur throughout the chapters:

• Denial of neediness,
• Legalism,
• Over-spiritualizing,
• Underestimating God, and
• Underestimating the importance of people.

In each chapter, the authors describe the a false belief.  Sometimes they show its pseudo-biblical origins.  They then present the Biblical view on the subject.  They offer advice on how to put this knowledge into practice.

The overarching theme of the book is that growth as a Christian is a process.  God can change us in an instant, but more often He changes use over time.  The secondary theme is the necessity of the church.  Most of the crazy-making beliefs lead people to isolate themselves.  This is the opposite of what God intends.  It is often through our brothers and sisters in the church that God provides for our needs, and as we mature we have the privilege of helping others, too.

It would not be appropriate to describe this book as self-help.  Cloud and Townsend never assume that we can make on our own.  We’re not made to.  First, we need God and He is the prime mover in the transformation of our lives.  Second, the church is intended to be like a body, where the various parts aid, support, help, and heal each other.  God uses people and He has probably provided what we need through the church.  Finally, some people need professional help.  Whatever you need, powering through on your own is not the way to go.

This book may be useful to Christians at any stage, especially those struggling with ongoing problems.  I wish I had had it early in my Christian life, when its lessons might have save me a lot of struggle.

It is simple to read, too.  There is no technical, psychological material to wade through.  It is written to the person seeking help, not as a textbook or reference for the counselor or other professional.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

Fathered by God by John Eldredge

Have a New You by Friday by Kevin Leman

Into the Depths of God by Calvin Miller

Walking with God by John Eldredge

Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Stephen Post and Jill Neimark

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First Corinthians

First Corinthians. The Holy Bible. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

Corinth was a major commercial center for the Greeks. The church there, like churches elsewhere are too often, was fractious. To settle disputes, leaders of the Corinthian church sent a delegation to the missionary who established their church, Paul.

Sometimes you might get a sense of exasperation in reading Paul’s letter. He had hoped they would continue in the things he had taught them, growing in Christ. Instead, they were acting like children. In some ways, they were worse than children.

Paul had a lot to say to the Corinthian believers about how Christians should conduct themselves, especially in relation to their brothers in Christ. The general rule was this: love.

Love, and the corollary attributes of humility and generosity, was to be the governing principle in the church. There are many particulars Paul deals with in terms of the disputes going on in Corinth like partisanship, lawsuits , marriage, eating meat from sacrifices to idols, women in the church, and spiritual gifts. In every case, the advice was to be thoughtful and accommodating of others. It is better to inconvenience yourself for a while for the sake of a new or weak brother, drawing them into maturity of faith through love, than to assert you prerogatives and potentially hurt or alienate others, causing them to fall away or into error.

The love theme culminates in Chapter 13. This description of love is one of the most famous passages of the Bible, popular at weddings, and well worth reading.

A secondary theme of the letter is liberty. The gift of grace Christians receive from God includes great liberty. Godly character in imitation of Jesus, whose death paid for sins and whose perfect rightness was attributed to His people, was to characterize life. Christians don’t earn love, favor and forgiveness from God by their adherence to laws, customs and ceremonies (as if any of us could live perfectly), but they received His gift of forgiveness and new life. It didn’t matter how people dressed or what they ate because they had freedom in grace.

Much was permitted, but not everything was fruitful. Paul encouraged people not to flaunt their liberty, but to let love rule.

Though Christians have liberty, there remain things that are immoral and not to be practiced in the church. Liberty is not lawlessness and forgiveness is not license to sin with impunity. The church was to stand against immorality, especially among its members, and encourage each other in doing good. Paul addresses moral and doctrinal issues, especially in the later chapters of his letter.



Like other letters in the Bible, you’ll find things like you might put in your own communication: greetings, introductions, plans, schedules, instructions and other matters. In addition to instruction and wisdom, this letter opens a little window into history of the early church and the people who were involved in it.

Paul also wrote
Romans

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Acts
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Genesis
The Gospels
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

James

James.  The Holy Bible.  New King James Version.  Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.

James wrote to Jewish Christians.  His letter is full of practical wisdom for all Christians.

*

Several related themes run through James.  These are trials, self-control, practical faith, and humility.

James begins his letter with a discussion of trials.  We all have troubles.  Disconcertingly, sometimes our worst problems arise from doing the right thing.  Though it may seem like God has abandoned us in such times, God is at work.  Facing trials with patience and faith builds our character.

Part of a godly character is self-control.  A mature Christian will discipline himself.  In particular, he will watch what he says.  It is hard to control what we say, refraining from idle and harmful words.  It is hard to speak convincingly about the love, grace, and faithfulness of God when you just spewed a lot of gossip, lies, and nonsense.

James writes of faith in very practical and active terms.  Sermons, exultations, and moral sayings are hollow and useless if they are not coupled with service, aid and upright living.  If we really believe the Gospel and have call to be followers of Christ, we will act like Christ who humbled Himself to labor with men, heal the sick, feed the hungry, and care for the needy.

Emulating the humility or Christ is a theme of the letter in itself.  James extols believers to act with humility and treat everyone fairly.  Wealth and position are temporary, but in our eternal relation to God we’re all the same:  each Christian is a sinful person saved by the grace of God.  Pride is a source of strife, people in conflict as they all try to get their own way, but humble people trust God and can let go of strife.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Deuteronomy

Exodus

Genesis

The Gospels

Hebrews

Leviticus

The Most Effective Organization in the U.S. by Robert A. Watson & Ben Brown

The Pauline Letters

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October Featured Book

Happy Halloween!  Admittedly, KBR doesn’t feature much horror.  We still have some suspenseful books that may give you a thrill.  This month, we are featuring A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.  It’s a space fantasy story appropriate for young adult readers (possibly younger, I’m no expert on such things) with a frightening villain and a strong moral (and implicitly Christian) theme.

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

You may remember Robert H. Schuller from the Hour of Power television program. He was a popular figure who attracted celebrities to appear on broadcasts of worship services from the Crystal Cathedral. He preached what you might call a gospel of positivity, making in consciously a successor to Norman Vincent Peale and in some sense a predecessor to Joel Osteen. The Crystal Cathedral and the Schullers have floundered after his passing. Life’s Not Fair, but God is Good was published in happier times for them.

Reading the book two decades after it was published gave me an opportunity to look back. One of the things that struck me is that Schuller wrote of the fall of the Soviet Union soon after it occurred. He had high hopes for Russia and the other countries shifting toward a more democratic form of government. He looked forward to flourishing Christianity, greater freedom, wealth, and opportunity for long oppressed people. I’m not sure what he would think of the current state of affairs, especially in Russia, but clearly fall short of the hopes he expressed.

The book also prompted me to recall the Hour of Power. A routine segment featured Schuller interviewing someone, recorded live before the congregation of his church. Though it is not mentioned, I suspect many of the interviews recounted in the book may have come from the show. These guests were often famous performers, athletes, and politicians. Others were people who overcame troubles of all sorts, handicaps, injuries, financial setbacks, abuse and losses. The common thread through these interviews was how people succeeded through faith in God’s grace, hope, positive outlook and persistence.

Speaking of themes, I should say something about the book. The title expresses the theme: Life’s Not Fair, but God is Good. Schuller concedes that sometimes life sucks. Bad things happen to everyone, and sometimes the worst things happen to those who seem to deserve it least. In spite of that, people can lead lives of purpose and joy because God is good. The Great Redeemer can man something beautiful out of the ugliness of life. Not only can He, He will.

I suppose the meat of the book is advice on how to live in the gap between the unfair circumstances we experience and the awesome goodness we can know even in the midst of them. In this, Schuller presents a mix of Christian philosophy and self-help positive thinking. We can’t always choose our circumstances, but we can choose our reactions. Schuller encourages hopeful, positive responses based on the acknowledgment of God’s goodness. Prayer, belief, gratitude, good works, humility, forgiveness, connection to others, generosity, patience, and vision are tools we have, or can develop, to be overcomers in the face of obstacles. We master these skills under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit as we get to know Christ better.

Robert H. Schuller also wrote Self-Love.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

Gratitude by Melody Beattie

I Declare by Joel Osteen

It’s Not About Me by Max Lucado

The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright

Just Say Thanks! by R. T. Kendall

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Quiet by Susan Cain

Stop Whining, Start Living by Dr. Laura

This Year I Will… by M. J. Ryan

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Schuller, Robert H. Life’s Not Fair, but God is Good. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991.

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Deal with It! by Paula White

White, Paula. Deal with It! Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

When Paula White says Deal with It! she doesn’t mean “suck it up.” In this book, she urges readers, particularly women, to acknowledge and confront their problems, that is, really deal with it. Fortunately, believers are not left to their own devices to overcome problems. God is ready and able to help His own.

Each chapter is built around a woman from the Bible and White’s view of her central problems. Some are well known names like Ruth, Esther, and Mary Magdalene . Some are not as well known: the Shunammite who welcomed Elisha into her home and Zelophehad’s daughters.



As much as things have changed over thousands of years, people are still people, and the problems these women faced have parallels today. Through God’s help, the women in White’s example overcame bad histories, weak men, lifestyle changes, excessive demands, deep hurt, competition, poor reputations, disappointments, injustices, and overwhelming expectations.

God came through for these women. Of course, as with us, God did not always choose to act immediately or in the ways they might have wanted. However, they trusted Him and persevered faithfully. God will come through, but it is important how we think and act in the meantime. We are called to do what is right, obey proper authority, stand up for justice, and hold onto faith in God all the time, especially in tough times.

White’s style is much like speech. Since she is mainly a speaker and preacher, you might expect it. In some ways, the book reads like a collection of sermons, though the chapters are tightly linked by a central theme.

As in her preaching and other books, White draws on her personal experience. She presents herself as having been a messed up young woman who made many bad decisions, had a head full of bad ideas, and beset with hang-ups. If you’d lived her life, maybe you’d have fallen into the same errors. She’s not complaining, though. She uses these examples to show how God has turned things around for her, just as he did for the Biblical women she writes about.

That is the central issue of the book. Things don’t have to remain as they are. God has the power to change them. However, we must face our problems and deal with them. We can’t let ourselves be derailed by time or difficulties, but trusting and obeying God we can see our lives renewed into something even better than we might have imagined.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Acts
The Emotional Energy Factor by Mira Kirshenbaum
Genesis
The Gospel of John
The Joy of Supernatural Thinking by Bill Bright
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

Become a Better You by Joel Osteen

Become a Better You was Joel Osteen’s follow-up to his first book, Your Best Life Now. Osteen even presents the book as a continuation of the theme and purpose of its predecessor.

Each chapter is a topical sermon on reaching your potential in some aspect of life. The aspects are personal growth, positive self-image, relationships, habits, faith and passion.

I have previously criticized Osteen for taking self-help advice and wrapping it up in religion. I see Norman Vincent Peale and Robert H. Schuller in much the same light. A defense all of these pastors might raise is that they are focusing on practical matters of living well. A head full of religious knowledge that doesn’t change your life for the better is doing no good; it’s not the life Christians are called to.

I agree. I also see in Jesus and the apostles teachers who could both delve deep into the scripture and provide very practical instruction based on it. Religious meditation and working to make the world a better place—even if little seems to come of it—go hand-in-hand in Christianity.

In one area Osteen has a strong foundation: relationships. It is clear from the Bible that God cares very much about how we relate to and treat each other. Osteen’s use of scriptures are apropos in these chapters. The sermons hold up when read with a Bible in the other hand; something that is weaker in the other chapters.

Joel Osteen also wrote

Break Out

I Declare

Readings from Your Best Life Now

You Can, You Will

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Be All You Can Be! by John C. Maxwell

Complaint Free Relationships by Will Bowen

Creative Living for Today by Maxwell Maltz

Faith by Jimmy Carter

Life's Not Fair, but God is Good by Robert H. Schuller

The Magic Power of Self-Image Psychology by Maxwell Malts

Positive Imaging by Norman Vincent Peale

Power in Praise by Merlin R. Carothers

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale

Self-Love by Robert H. Schuller

You Can Become the Person You Want to Be by Robert H. Schuller

You Can if You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale

Osteen, Joel. Become a Better You: Seven Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day. New York: Free Press, 2007.

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron

We are all writers. Language and writing come naturally to us. We learn the notion that we are bad writers somewhere along the way, most likely in school. We are trained to be self-conscious and anxious about writing; we need to break that training and start having fun.

This viewpoint is the starting point for Julia Cameron’s advice to writers in The Right to Write. She envisions millions of people writing. They’ll write naturally and organically for the joy of writing.

That is the other major theme that runs through the book: write for the sake of writing. Writing has a lot of benefits even if you only write for your own eyes. It is a way for us to express ourselves and examine our lives.

Cameron has a lot of advice for writers but it is generally not prescriptive. Each writer has his own way. Cameron’s advice is aimed at helping him discover it. That does not mean her advice is impractical. She has some hardnosed comments about what it takes to overcome the blocks would-be writers create (or accept) to their own development.

As Cameron describes it, the writing life is not about being a writer. It is more about becoming the person and writer you can be. It is a process of learning and discovery. She tells several stories of writers who, for various reasons, stop learning and stop being open. The result is that they stop writing or find it difficult. Always be learning is good advice for anyone who wants to improve at something, whatever it may be.

Writing should be integrated into life. Your life, interests, experiences, relationships, emotions, and all the things you take in through the senses are fuel for writing. The more you live, the more you’ll have to write about and the more you’ll want to write.

The book contains many exercises to help a budding writer develop. One of the main things is simply to write every day. She describes daily writing that is intended to get one used to writing without the inner censor putting on the breaks. You also get used to writing even when not in the mood, though once you start writing your mood is likely to come around.

If you’re looking for a step-by-step guide for writing a popular genre novel, this isn’t it. If you want some practical advice and encouragement from a professional writer who thinks you can write something worthwhile, and enjoy it, then The Right to Write is a good choice.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Finding Your Writer’s Voice by Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall

Just Write by Walter Dean Myers

Keeping a Journal You Love by Sheila Bender

Mastering Fiction Writing by Kit Reed

No Plot? Not Problem! A Low Stress-High Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Write Your Heart Out by Rebecca McClanahan

Cameron, Julia. The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1998.