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One of my avocations involves writing book reviews; you can see some of what I've already written on my Web site.
The biggest frustration with the job is that I usually only have a few hundred words to review a book that deserves so much more, and I don't always have the luxury of writing a far more detailed second review, such as the journal article I wrote on Critical Power Tools. Don't worry, it's not standard journal-speak: I tried to discuss an important but insanely dense topic in an accessible manner.
The latest book I've reviewed is Kim Goodwin's Designing for the Digital Age. The review will appear several months from now in the journal Technical Communication, and then shortly thereafter on my Web site. It's a long slog because of the level of detail (the writing is elegant, clear, and often amusing), but if you need to design anything that will be used by people, including technical documentation, this book deserves a place of honor on your bookshelf. Highly recommended.
My next book is Heath and O'Hair's Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication, which is already looking fascinating. I can't even begin to do justice to 33 chapters in only 700 words, so I think I'll try to provide a running commentary here instead and eventually collect all that information into a single article. Stay tuned...
Of course, I also clearly need a good whack upside the head... what would possess me to accept the task of reviewing two 700-page technical books in a space of 3 months? Sigh. Still, it's worth the effort--it's amazing the things you learn when you get over the fear of academic prose, roll up your mental sleeves (now there's a metaphor for you!), and actually pay attention to what the rocket scientists are saying. One of the things I love most about my current form of employment is just how much I get to learn about things I might otherwise never think about.
The biggest frustration with the job is that I usually only have a few hundred words to review a book that deserves so much more, and I don't always have the luxury of writing a far more detailed second review, such as the journal article I wrote on Critical Power Tools. Don't worry, it's not standard journal-speak: I tried to discuss an important but insanely dense topic in an accessible manner.
The latest book I've reviewed is Kim Goodwin's Designing for the Digital Age. The review will appear several months from now in the journal Technical Communication, and then shortly thereafter on my Web site. It's a long slog because of the level of detail (the writing is elegant, clear, and often amusing), but if you need to design anything that will be used by people, including technical documentation, this book deserves a place of honor on your bookshelf. Highly recommended.
My next book is Heath and O'Hair's Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication, which is already looking fascinating. I can't even begin to do justice to 33 chapters in only 700 words, so I think I'll try to provide a running commentary here instead and eventually collect all that information into a single article. Stay tuned...
Of course, I also clearly need a good whack upside the head... what would possess me to accept the task of reviewing two 700-page technical books in a space of 3 months? Sigh. Still, it's worth the effort--it's amazing the things you learn when you get over the fear of academic prose, roll up your mental sleeves (now there's a metaphor for you!), and actually pay attention to what the rocket scientists are saying. One of the things I love most about my current form of employment is just how much I get to learn about things I might otherwise never think about.