Anthologies, Memoirs, and Nonfiction

Help for Writers by Roy Peter Clark
Genre: Instructional/Self Help for Writers
ISBN: 9780316126717
Published: September 21st 2011 by Little, Brown and Company
Rating: 5

This book is one of those books that I will let people borrow as long as they don't take it out of my house. It's so awesome I know it will be stolen if I loosen my grip on it. It reminds me of The Breakout Novelist, only it's not specifically aimed for novels, but more writers in general. It's about the process of writing, the preparation, the motivation, the different tricks and tips to get you going, and to get you to finish, and then how to edit etc. This is a gem of a book and should be on every writer's bookshelf.

Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
Genre: YA Steampunk
ISBN:  9780763648435
Published: October 11th 2011 by Candlewick Press
Rating: 4

This is a really cool collection of fourteen different short stories by some of todays best known YA authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Christopher Rowe, Holly Black, and more. They are peculiar and strange, and though I don't like all of them, I appreciate them and I like the collection as a whole. I definitely recommend this collection to anyone who likes the steampunk Genre. (This review is copyright Haley Mathiot and AmazonVine.)

Every Step You Take: A Memoir by Jock Soto
Genre: Memoir
ISBN: 9780061732386
Published: October 4th 2011 by Harper
Rating: 3, DNF

What can I say about a dancer's memoir? It's not the first I've read. In general I avoid memoirs because they tend to have a stuffy self-absorbed feel to them. There was a little of that in Every Step You Take, but it wasn't really bad at all. I didn't read the whole thing, although I probably will finish it eventually (a chapter here and a chapter there). It was interesting, and I felt pulled into Soto's story—his writing has good voice—but I didn't feel compelled to read it. I didn't love it, but I didn't dislike it. I'm still on the fence. If I ever find myself reading the rest and change my mind about it, I'll be sure to revise this review, but as it is, I'm finding my mind wandering. Time to move on. (This review is copyright Haley Mathiot and AmazonVine.)