Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

writing

“Conversations on Writing” by Ursula K. Le Guin with David Naimon

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Recommended to me by: sturgeonslawyer

I read this because I will read anything by Ursula K. Le Guin, and alas there won’t be more wise words from her to read. I feel her loss as an emptiness in the world where her steadiness and integrity used to be.

The book is an edited transcription of radio interviews with David Naimon of KBOO here in Portland, divided into sections for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. It includes a few excerpts by Le Guin and others that she referred to in their conversations.

A short, choppy book, great for learning little bits about Le Guin and about writing and about reading and about life.

Available at bookshop.org.

“EPUB Straight to the Point” by Elizabeth Castro

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Subtitle: Creating ebooks for the Apple iPad and other ereaders

Recommended to me by: Finding it at the library

Creating an epub ebook from an InDesign print book file involves a whole lot of hidden settings and mysterious outcomes. I read a lot of blog posts, and this book was also helpful in getting the details squared away. It has step by step instructions for creating an epub ebook from Word and InDesign, and then further step by step instructions for editing the epub directly to refine the results. Since I learned HTML before CSS was a thing, and epub uses CSS, this was helpful to get oriented. It’s from 2011, but still useful.

It has some iPad-specific details, like a list of the fonts it supports and previews of each.

Available at bookshop.org in a newer edition.

“The Non-Designer’s InDesign Book” by Robin Williams

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Subtitle: Essential design techniques for print projects

Recommended to me by: Finding it at the library

I’m formatting my book with Adobe InDesign. While it does work to do a web search to find out how to do things like add more pages to the book, or move a title farther down the page, I decided I wanted more of an overview of the whole program and its features.

A friend suggested checking a book out of the library. This was perfect, because I could check out several books and see which one I liked, and since I have an older version of the program, older books were just right.

This book won because it is inviting, clear, direct, and brief. The design examples are varied and interesting (not all for sports and bars). Some of the examples are even from “Mothering Magazine”! While Robin doesn’t address book projects, the aesthetics and attention to detail in her examples fit in with how I work. Not only am I happy to support a woman author of a technical book, I feel more at home reading her book.

Highly recommended if you need to wrestle with InDesign CS5. I got her Photoshop book too, and I’m looking forward to reading that next, to work on the book cover and interior illustrations.

Available at biblio.com.

“High Tide in Tucson” by Barbara Kingsolver

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Subtitle: Essays from Now or Never

Recommended to me by: Donna Smith

When I first read this book of essays years ago, I became so absorbed that I missed my transit stop. I continued reading on a high, windy platform as I waited to catch a train returning in the other direction. I picked it up again from a friend’s bookshelf while snow-bound in DC. It is still absorbing – I read it in afternoon.

Barbara Kingsolver writes about a hermit crab she accidentally brought home from a beach to Tucscon, and how it maintained rhythms of activity and hibernation far from any tides. The theme of rhythms weaves through the book, including not-knowing times in her life, desperation and despair, and finding her way out again.

I remembered her two-year old deliberately knocking over her glass of orange juice, to her harried dismay, and the resulting meditation on autonomy and the need for slow time. This time I noticed the clear acknowledgements of racism and sexism in our culture.

There is a lovely interlude about her stay in the Canary Islands. People there genuinely like children, rather than grudgingly tolerating them the way United States culture does. She also feels safe walking alone at night there.

Highly recommended.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Indie Publishing” edited by Ellen Lupton

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Subtitle: How to Design and Produce Your Own Book

Recommended to me by: Found on the library shelf in the self-publishing section, and renewed several times.

This is a quirky book with practical, detailed advice about self-publishing and designing books. I appreciate the information on choosing a page layout and some good typographical options.

I’m less enthusiastic about their choices for book examples, which tend toward the erotic. They also mention a specific print on demand company often enough to make me wonder if they get a kickback. Still, well worth reading for the design advice.

Available at biblio.com.

“Let’s Take the Long Way Home” by Gail Caldwell

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Subtitle: a memoir of friendship

Recommended to me by: Courtney on the Feministing blog

I loved this book. I cried at the beginning, smiled in the middle, and sighed at the end.

Gail Caldwell describes first her grief at her best friend Caroline Knapp’s death, and then their daily joys together while she was alive. They trained their big dogs together, rowed on the Charles River together, and most of all, talked about everything, including both their writing careers, and both their past struggles with alcohol.

The writing is compressed, detailed, elegant, meandering across years within a page. Trying to find a representative sample, I ended up re-reading large swathes of the book. Here, I opened the book at random:

“I’m afraid that no one will ever love me again.” He leaned toward me with a smile of great kindness on his face, his hands clasped in front of him. “Don’t you know?” he asked gently. “The flaw is the thing we love.”

This book is about intimacy, connection, grief, and love. Go read it.

Available at bookshop.org.