The art of looking sideways

I love books and I love to read. I try to read from every category; naturally I have my favourites. One of these, from my own humble library, is The art of looking sideways, by the late Alan Fletcher. The book is like a hardcover curiosity cabinet. Fletcher says the book “has no thesis, is neither a whodunnit nor a how-to-do-it, has no beginning, middle or end. It’s a journey without a destination.” It’s full of trivia, quotes, anecdotes, images and random thoughts. Open a page at random and peer into the mind of Alan Fletcher. At over 500 pages it will be a long time before I tire of this gem.

In fact: the best of creative non fiction

Forgive the brevity of this post, but I’m in the process of transferring some posts from another blog. In fact: The best of creative nonfiction, edited by Lee Gutkind

If you like reading creative nonfiction, this will be a really good read for you.  Each of the twenty-five essays represents the best taken from the journal Creative Nonfiction. At the end of each essay the writer offers advice for beginner writers which could apply to most types of writing I suppose. Most of the essays are engrossing, so much so that I had to pace myself and read only one essay at a time so I wouldn’t finish it too soon. I still read it cover to cover in a day and a half.