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Howard and Barton, two Harvard researchers in education, argue in Ch. 1, "Writing Is Thinking," that writing is about generating ideas, not just communicating them, and that writer's block comes from preoccupation with the "performance" aspect of writing (and also from the myth that you need to wait for flashes of insight from a fickle "muse").
Ch. 2, "From First to Last Draft," explains a process that puts concerns about performance at the very end, where they belong: (1) Record every thought you have on your topic--half-formed thoughts, confused thoughts, silly thoughts, sentences, phrases, lists, feelings, questions--quickly, with no concern about clear formulation, aiming for quantity, not quality. (2) Go over these notes and give topical labels to large and small chunks of text. (3) Retype your notes (don't cut 'n' paste), grouping sections by topic. While this step is fairly simple and mechanical, you'll inevitably do a bit of rethinking, ammending, and revising along the way, but without stirring up performance anxiety. (4) Rearrange the topics into a sensible sequence. (5) NOW work on performance issues.
The remaining chapters are about organizing ideas into an essay format, making an argument, and grammar and punctuation. These chapters may be helpful too, but I haven't read them. I think the real gift of this book is not so much that it helps you write well but that it helps you write instead of not writing.
The process works. I can vouch for it. I'm hyper-perfectionistic, but with the help of this book and Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," I wrote a book without ever getting paralyzed in front of a blank screen. (Now I just hope it'll work as well for my dissertation . . . )
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The poems by Gloria Marie Pardo Vargas, interspersed throughout the book, add to the enjoyment. This is a large over-sized book that is beautifully designed and bound (included is a red ribbon marker) that is a must for any collector of male erotica or for anyone who has always had a fascination with torero's and their beautiful costumes. I have only one regret, I would love to see a book of these same images in color showcasing the beautiful colors and patterns of the torero's costumes. This is a book that I will enjoy over and over again. As a collector, this is at the top of my list.
Joe Hanssen
I suppose that the few poems sprinkled throughout the volume are appropriate accompaniments to the photos, though they could easily have been dispensed with. The introduction is quite helpful, as is the thumbnail index at the end which identifies models and locations. The volume itself is richly produced and beautifully printed, with a sewn-in ribbon bookmark. ...
Even Hemingway, through Lady Brett, couldn't help remarking on "those tight green trousers," but for too long the majority of people (especially artists) associated with bullfighting have pretended to ignore all those lurid paquetes y nalgas. Afanador's stunning collection goes a long way toward remedying that ignor-ance. Overall, a long-needed addition to the body of art and photography associated with toreo.
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Easy and fascinating reading for anyone interested in history, frugal living, and occassionaly a good laugh.
I read just a few pages in a little store, than had to come home and find it to buy for myself.
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Mig's parents have just split up, and her father vanishes in a sudden, strange car accident. Her guilt-ridden mother takes Mig and her teen brother Chris to stuffy Cranbury-on-Sea to spend some time with Aunt Maria, a picky, weird old lady. At first Mig thinks that things are normal, except for Aunt Maria's many and varied eccentricities.
But then she sees her father's car, belonging to a stranger. Chris says that there's a ghost in his bedroom. A mysterious cat appears, that strongly resembles Aunt Maria's former companion. And Mig notices that the people in Cranbury-on-Sea are very odd: Everything revolves around tea parties, usually headed by friends of Aunt Maria's, while the men and kids are all zombies. All except a very odd brother and sister down the road, and a person from the past who may hold the key to stopping the sinister aunt Maria...
Everyone has a relative like Aunt Maria: she's picky, nosy, feigns self-sacrifice to "guilt" adults into doing what she wants, wallows in gender stereotypes and inflicts those stereotypes on kids, plays favorites, complains constantly about noise, insists on everything being home-cooked, has a flock of weird old friends, calls you by your full first name, and is horrified if everything isn't completely clean. The main difference is that in this book, she's a malevolent witch who doesn't think twice about turning people into animals.
Usually Jones' female heroes are not quite as interesting as her male ones, but Mig was excellently written: smart, funny, sympathetic, understandable, poignant, and very pleasant. It's hard not to sympathize with her frustration over Aunt Maria, and her increasingly helpless position in a town of witches and zombies. Mum is nicely written, for what there is of her; she's less of a presence than the others are. Chris really steals the book: He's funny, disruptive, charming, smart (to a point) and sometimes needs to have his mouth taped shut. Antony Green is also nice, a smart and well-written character; Elaine is, with a minimum of effort, utterly creepy; Mr. and Miss Phelps are funny, very funny, making me wonder if they were used to add a slightly lighter note to an otherwise darker book.
The book is very evocatively written -- it's in diary form, but this doesn't make the narrative awkward as it is in many books. Jones shows that she's apparently had experiences with such relatives: the mother's guilty acceptance of Maria's demands is well-written, as are the kids' chafing and Maria's incessent demands and self-sacrificial selfishness.
A treasure, that is currently available only in the UK. Hopefully it will be reprinted soon in the US, so that more readers can enjoy it.
Forced to conform to the community's rigidly conservative ideas about male and female roles, Mig is somewhat overwhelmed at first, while her brother Chris rebels by becoming involved in the schemes of unfriendly Mr Phelps across the street. When Chris foolishly goes too far and Aunt Maria turns him into a wolf, Mig is left alone to find a way to get him turned back, and to release her family from her aunt's suffocating grip.
This is a complex book in the best tradition of Diana Wynne Jones, and is worth reading more than once to get the full impact out of it. What struck me most about this book is something that should never be mentioned in reviews, as it comes too near the end. But I would like to say ! that the subject is treated more effectively here than in any other book I know. In fact this section is in danger of overpowering the rest of the story, making the book much darker than the blurb would have you believe. But, if anything, that makes the book better. If you want an unconventional, thought-provoking read and are willing to involve yourself completely in the story, then I thoroughly reccommend this book.
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At the time of its publication this incarnation had the most complete data about the diva's recordings on compact disc then available, including newly discovered complete performances of Aida and La Traviata. Even when the information goes out of date, as it inevitably will (new incarnations of live performances will appear, and perhaps rumored unpublished material will surface), Ardoin's gracefully written, knowledgeable and balanced commentaries on Callas' work will remain an endless source of pleasure. May _The Callas Legacy_ come back into print, and soon!
I really enjoyed reading it and I believe that I gained from it.
A big bravo to Peter McLaren and a humble "efharisto" (thank you) in Greek.
Reviewer: Robert E. Bahruth, Ph.D. from Boise StateUniversity, Boise, Idaho
In order to contextualize the significance of the contributions of both Che Guevara and Paulo Freire for American readers, McLaren makes the analogy to Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. respectively. Whereas Che, Malcolm X and Dr. King were all dealt with by assassination, Paulo died of heart failure at the age of 75. One might suspect that Paulo's end may have been more violent - and he certainly suffered persecution during critical periods in his lifetime, including a long exile - had his ideas not been rejected by anti-intellectuals in the American academy. Often his work was dismissed, without careful consideration, by professors who claimed that his ideas only applied to third world contexts. To this Donaldo Macedo often asked the critical question: Have you been to East Los Angeles, Roxbury, Harlem, East St. Louis or Camden, New Jersey, lately? One might wonder how the world today might have been a saner place for humanity had Che, Malcolm and Dr. King truly enjoyed the protection of the first amendment's freedom of speech "guarantee," thereby living longer lives and pushing the causes of common people's human rights. It has been claimed that the reason why Che was not allowed a trial in an international court was because the powerbrokers who financed his murder - there were CIA agents present to orchestrate his assassination, including the way he should be shot to make it appear as though he were wounded in combat - feared the power of his discourse and how it might play in the minds of the oppressed peoples of the world. To set the record straight and to dispel the many myths generated by status quo propagandists, McLaren's scholarship allows readers to look into the life and the machinations of the mind of Che, while simultaneously calling into question how contemporary revolutionaries such as Comandante Marcos in Chiapas, Mexico are both inspired by the lived example of commitment and love that Che provided, as they are equally persecuted for standing up for the rights of subsistence cultures around the world who are not interested in joining in the vulgar game of globalization, consumerism, and the politics of greed. Were Che alive today, with access to the high technology that Comandante Marcos and others so skillfully employ as they advance the cause of their post modern revolution, he might not have had to resort to violence which was then his only option. With the co-opting of corporate media, many are hoodwinked by the spin doctors who claim objectivity. Journalism has sunk to such depths of integrity and moral bankruptcy that they have found it necessary to invent terms such as investigative reporting. What does this imply about all other types of reporting? To counter the propaganda of corporate media, Comandante Marcos has demonstrated the power of the internet as a tool of organization, fund raising, and moral support from around the world, as well as the means to dispel myths while informing the world of the atrocities and lies of the status quo. Che would have had a field day with such luxuries! McLaren's other subject, Paulo Freire, is addressed with great love, honesty and devotion. He shows us the gentle man, dedicated as was Dr. King, to nonviolent humanism and the cause of democratic ideals. Education which is not commodified or politicized to reproduce the status quo, but rather a process of conscientization which invites all humans to participate as agents of history, as readers and writers of the word-world. Paulo provided a vision which expresses the possibilities for a future which is less violent and anti humane than the world we live in today. His was an invitation for teachers to rise above the technicism of skill, drill and kill which banters learners into silence and submission. Along with Chomsky, Giroux, Aronowitz, Macedo, bell hooks, McLaren, Chávez Chávez and others committed to "teaching to transgress," Paulo was an inspiration to us all. I have often said that the degree to which the status quo rejects a vision is in direct proportion to its power to create change. Clearly, Paulo has been marginalized in mainstream academia, but for world class scholars and extraordinary humans who are ontologically clear, Paulo's is a message of hope and possibility. McLaren has made a great contribution by keeping Paulo's vision alive and challenging all of us to awaken to social consciousness. In Peter's own words in a recent interview he states so well what is at stake:
"We cannot -- we must not -- think that equality can occur in our schools or society in general without at once and the same time demanding and participating in political and economic revolution. No sphere of domination must remain unassailed by the project of liberation. We need to remain steadfast, we cannot embark in a flight from being, that is, a flight towards the world of commodities that can only objectify being. We need to remember that we do not own ourselves, we don't belong only to ourselves. We belong to being. Because we belong to being, we need not covet the fruits of capital, for they are also the fruits of exploitation. Exploitation violates being. To find our multicultural soul is always an exercise of praxis, not ownership. It is an act conjugated with love in the interests of social justice. I am not trying to be metaphysical here since I connect objectified being with labor, with the laboring and toiling body, with the alienated worker, with the commodification of labor, with the exploited and the oppressed...
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