Crenshaw's Books & Decks

I found this book among the list of best illustration books of 2014 chosen by Amazon's editors. Really? Unbelievable! This is an enlargement and remake of the author's blog entry, available for free on the Internet. See it here :)

I consider this one of the most appalling books I have read lately, and at rip off price of 10+ bucks for the Kindle edition. Give that money to charity! The book is not worth it.

The author is truly lost in translation, and wants you to get you lost as well. The ratings of the book seems to indicate she has succeeded.

The introduction is a clear example of pompous, vacuous well-intentioned "crappola" that says nothing and means nothing but wants to impress and fool the general public. Still, I had hopes that this would be, well, just a crappy introduction. Sadly it is not.

How did the author came across some of the non-existent words, some very translatable untranslatable words, is beyond my understanding. I came across something really similar in Tumblr a couple of years ago, and it is free and way better! (the blog is called Otherworldly). Otherwise, just google "untranslatable words into English" and you will find gazillion entries, most of them featuring the same bunch!

The Malaysian word in this book does not exist. I believe the Malaysian guy who says so in his review mostly because he/she is Malaysian and must know.

The Spanish "vacilando" (not a verb, but a verb tense, mind you) does not translate the way the author defines it. The verb "vacilar" has many different meanings, all translatable into English. You never use a gerund on its own, but within a a sentence that has another verb (or it is implicit in it), so that is always easier to translate than a noun or concept. The meaning presented in the book is not mainstream or standard Spanish. It might be slang, Spanglish or a regional/national use of the word, so, if that is the case, well, mention that instead of presenting it as a  general Spanish word. The definition is roughly translatable in English as wanderlust/ing or lurking around. A Spanish word that has no translation whatsoever is "sobremesa", for example, but that is not included in the book.

I don't know Japanese, Inuit or Norwegian, but if the Malay and Spanish words are non-existent or inaccurate, how many of the others are incorrect or understood wrongly?

Many of the words in the book can perfectly be translated into English, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, some others approximately. Just one example Commuovere in Italian is not a specific Italian word (the Spanish "conmover" has a similar meaning), and it can be easily translated into English as "being moved (by something)" as in the movie really moved me.  What makes a word untranslatable is not what it means, it is, most times, the embedded cultural meaning and use. When you use it, how you use it, who does it use it (age group, social group, racial group), the relevance of the word in the culture of a given social group or country, if it is a polite or rude word, etc. For example, you can translate the Portuguese word "Saudade" as nostalgia, longing, or as "blues", but the word has so much embedded cultural meaning in Portuguese literature and song lyrics, or even in the spirit of the Portuguese spirit, hat you cannot capture that in English. If you understand that, you also understand that the illustration in the book accompanying the word "Saudade" does not make any sense. Some words convey ways of living or thinking that are alien to the English speaking reader, so the translation has to do an U-turn to have specific words translated. The same also happens the reverse way.

The illustrations are lovely and cute, and I really enjoyed them. Very naif children's book sort of style, something that is very much my liking. However, the illustrations are there to illustrate, and they do not succeed at doing so at times because the meaning of some words is barely grasped. If this was just a stand alone book with no text, my rating would be way higher. 

I returned the book for refund. Why would I want to keep a book whose information is incorrect or wrong? Even if the book was accurate in its approach to the rest of the foreign words, it would still be a rip off and some of the definitions are questionable It takes you 10 minutes to read the 100+ "pages". What is more, there are masterpieces of illustration sold by Amazon at similar or cheaper prices!

Originally published in 1983, We is a mesmerising book, still relevant for our culture and psychology, and the best book I have read this year so far. 

This is Johnson at his best.  We shows what Johnson can (could) do when he takes the necessary time to work and write properly, with focus and direction, thinking about the reader and putting his vast knowledge to our service. Together with Inner Work, this is Johnson's best book, Jungian analysis explained in plain wholesome awesome language.

Despite what the title might induce you to think, this is not a romantic book or a dating book or a book on how to get the man/women of your dreams. Yet, it touches on romantic relationships from a psychological perspective. 

It is Johnson's trademark using classic mythology to dig a hole in our personal and cultural psyche and explain who we are, how we behave and why. Like many of his other works, We uses a myth (in this case the myth of Tristan & Isold) as a connector to take us in a long ride that goes from the 12th century to the 21st century having the ideal of romantic love in society, in relationships, and in our psyche. 

The book is well structured and it is narrated in a very beautiful prose. Although no footnotes are provided, the book is the most academic of Johnson's. The general introduction, and the chapters On Myths and Note for Women form a sort of prologue. In them you get, in a nutshell, what the aim of the following exploration is, what the book is about, and a short consideration on the the versions of the myth used for the study. Johnson uses as a basis the version of the myth in the Bédier Compilation, except for the three years that follow the drinking of the potion, for which he uses the Béroul's version (the first poet that told the story) as it is closed to the archetypal realms. It is important to remark that Johnson approaches and analyses the myth from a Jungian Psychology point of view not for a Literary point view. 

Four parts follow. The beginning of each part is a condensed summary of the myth, which is followed by several chapters analysing the symbols, characters, and dynamics explored in that part of the myth.

The conclusion, structured in three chapter, is great, brilliant at times. In it, Johnson tries to give a practical solution to what to do with the information he has given us.  The book ends with a list of references of the books quoted in the book, as well as a recommended reading list. A bit outdated, but good nevertheless.

Why using a myth to analyse the ideal of Romantic Love, you will ask. Johnson summarises it in this simple way:

"The myth not only records the dynamics of romantic love in the male psyche, it also reflects the fate of the feminine in our culture" (... )A myth is the collective “dream” of an entire people at a certain point in their history. It is as though the entire population dreamed together, and that “dream,” the myth, burst forth through its poetry, songs, and stories. (...) The myth of Tristan and Iseult is a profound expression of the Western psyche."

The way Johnson is able to dissect a myth without forgetting the historical context that led to its birth is something remarkable taking into account that he is not a historian. This is not to say that some of his statements are not controversial, which is so mostly because of lack of a proper academic apparatus and footnoting; this is the case, for example, of the relationship between Catharism and the birth of  Romances in the Middle Ages. I was mesmerised by Johnson's easiness at having a myth peeled off, layer by layer, until it connects with things that we modern humans still do.

This reflection on the female/feminine element and patriarchate in the Western Culture are priceless and very relevant to this very day. Most of the Note for Women reflects on this issue and on the fact that this is a male-made myth not a female one, and the shortcomings that can derive from the vision of the feminine from it.

There are different levels of analysis of the myth, all interconnected and intermingled: 1/ The historical approach to the text to understand why it is what it is. 2/ The analysis of the symbols in the myth. 3/ The analysis of the dynamics between our own psyche, that is, between our conscious and unconscious. 4/ The depiction of the ways of relating in romantic relationships the myth show, and how we are still replicating them; and 5/ the reasons for the ideal of romantic ideal being so strong (and destructive at times) in the Western Culture. This is also a great book to understand what Anima/Animus are and what Psychological Projections are and how they manifest. 

Johnson succeeds on many fronts in this book, especially at analysing what romance and romantic ideals are, and how they undermine our personal lives and society. He is able to explain the substratum that is the basis of the need for romance and romantic ideals and what the ideal is seeking in our inner world and in our unconscious.  

Despite what many reviews say, this is not a religious book or John does not preach. First at all, Jungian psychology is more spiritual than any other psychological discipline,but it is not religious. Even Johnson says that you have to decide what religion and God mean to you, and he speaks of God and the Gods. In that regard, you can criticise his Jungian approach, not the way Johnson links spirituality and psyche, as soul and self are concepts intrinsically linked in Jungian Psychology and Johnson is doing a Jungian approach to the text. In other words, a disregard for the connection between self and soul is not Jungian. Yet, just read Johnson's definition of soul in this book, which is treated as a psychological entity, and tell me that this is religious. It is not. Johnson, despite being a religious person, is good enough to detach himself for his personal religious preferences and speaks in ways that touch people like me, who are not religious. If this was not enough, the use of some Christian references are not literal. Johnson never uses his examples from the Bible in a literal way, ever. Just see the way he explains the Jesus' human-divine duality. Having said that, I think Johnson is a son of his time, and uses religion and spirituality as synonyms, something that is not so common nowadays.

The analysis of the myth shows us patterns of behaviour, psychological structures and couple dynamics that go from the far past towards this very day. As Johnson says, the myth doesn't tell us what to do with that information; this is he aim of his conclusion.  The answer is given by using the same mythological basis, but using the advice of two different mythical languages 1/ the myth of the Oglala Sioux Nation (the story of the Bison Spirit Woman), and 2/ in the language of dreams, by using the dream of one of Johnson's clients (The Bell of the Holy Virgin).

Johnson concludes that romantic projections are, in essence, deep down,  a quest to communicate with the most sacred part of our inner self, but just expressed in the reverse way. The passions of romance or drugs and the seek for physical possessions have in common a misdirected unhealthy way to reach that what our psyche-soul seeks. We need to redirect that energy to the right place, so that we can "channel it correctly so that it will enrich our lives— in the realms both of spirit and of relationship— rather than sabotage them".  How do we return to our inner sacred core, to our soul? "What is required is not so much an external, collective religion, but an inner experience of the numinous, divine realm that is manifested through the psyche" Dreamwork and archetypal inner work are a perfect alternative, numinous and spiritual at many levels, which can reach those places inside us that we consciously want to reach but unconsciously were are too afraid to. 

~~ One of the most interesting episodes of the myth, to me, appears narrated in part three, while the lovers are in the enchanted Garden and Isold tells a hermit that confronts them on their wrongdoings:

“Lord, by God Almighty, He does not love me, Nor I him. It was because of an herb potion Of which I drank And he drank, too: it was a sin.”

I was expecting Johnson to comment on it at length as it is really intriguing. It is a moment of awakening, of consciousness of the unconscious, if that can be said. It is like Adam and Eve a la Reverse. It is a lucid dreaming sort of episode as well, because when they are saying that, they are truly not projecting. The episode contrasts remarkably with the attitude of both characters before and after this episode. No word is devoted to it. How is that possible? I am dying to find this episode explained the Jungian way. Anyone?

~~ The major flaw of the book is the last chapter of the Conclusion. I was in awe at finding Johnson's projections on other Culture so patently obvious. He compares Western ways of relating and Eastern-Indian ways. He spent a good deal of time in India, obviously with good families and friends, and uses his own experience to produce a pink version of the Indian way of relating in family and romantic relationships. Some affirmations made me cringe, even shriek. Statements of the sort that Indian families are healthier, and they produce non neurotic children, that they are not romance based and that projections basically do not exist. I consider that a big blind cloth in front of Johnson's eyes. Have you ever watched a Bollywood movie? That would suffice to show how projections show in Indian culture, specifically. The fact is that relationships between women and men in India are far from ideal and vary from family to family, like in the West. Too many women are still treated as mere objects and possessions, women are raped on a daily basis in Delhi, and their raping and rapists are justified by a good part of society and the legal system. The documentary on the girl brutally raped and murdered on a bus in India a few years ago, would suffice to show how many men treat women in India, and how well educated people did justify it. Some women of my age only speak to their husbands when they are asked to do so. The cast system is still well alive in India, even though it is not politically correct to say so. There are 3-5 years old children begging for money, alone, at 5am in the morning in some major train stations. You can ignore that part of Indian reality, of course. I think that there are good and bad families everywhere, in India and in the West, and that the way Indian people project is different from us, but they still project.

IN SHORT
Personally, I would recommend starting with We, and then read Johnson's He and She, and not the other way around, even though We is a later book, just because you want to start with a clear idea of what Johnson does, how he approaches any myth or subject, and not having to guess that. We is a brilliant book and He and She do not match that greatness as they are published lectures not real books.

A NOTE ON THE COVER
The covers of Johnson's books on Kindle are usually dreadful, you wonder why investing so little in making the book shine also outside, but the cover of this Kindle edition is just beautiful and perfect for the book. A wild poppy.

.

Flotsam is a very short wordless graphic  book full of wondrous images and a great storyline. I love wordless picture books because they are more demanding on the artist, as the images have to carry the narrative on their own, and they are more open to interpretation (more a door to the imagination than a finished story) but also more Universal.

David Wiesner's drawing and illustration style are marvellous, crispy clean, detailed, almost hyper-real, delicate at times, flamboyant at others, with a great use of colour and wondrous imagery.

Flotsam is a message-in-a-bottle sort of story, the bottle being replaced by the images in an old camera that lands on a beach where our main character is spending his day.

Life is wondrous, you just have to look at it with a bit of attention. There is magic in the ordinary and we are all interconnected. Those are the main points in the message embedded in the story.

I consider that the story is fragmented unnecessarily. I truly loved the Magritte-like photographer-in-the-photographer photograph going from the present to  the past. That is fantastic, a great concept and well realised. The pictures about the sea world that the character sees in the photos are wondrous, but less original and with more artistic and illustration trites than the rest of the imagery. To me, the story about the photographer's photo of the photographer has so much potential for development that it is a pity that the author distracted himself with the underwater world and forgot to connect the first photo in the story with the photo of the first photographer who used the camera. That would had been way more interesting and would have rounded up the story more organically. The ending of the book is great.

Awarded the  best children book for 2006, devoted to children between 5-7y.o.a, the book is also good for adults and illustration lovers.

The "book" is not a book properly speaking, as it has 40 pages in paper and 26 or so in Kindle format. There must be a name for this sort of "books" that are not really books but are not novellas either. The Kindle format gave me so many problems in my tablet that I had to return it. I think this book is great to have in paperback.

I was looking for one of the Taschen wonderful compilation books on Arts, and I could not find any at my local bookshop, so I bought this book instead, to have it as a coffee-table book. This being the case, and the book being so bulky and edited, I did something I rarely do, which is buying a hard-copy book without spending enough time browsing through it. Big mistake.

You know a book of this kind is biased and not serious when countries with a huge large history of awesome architecture that have passed the proof of time are forgotten in favour of the UK and USA. I don't mean to say that the buildings in the book are not great, it is that the way the book is structured gives the impression and "sells" that UK is the country with the most wonderful awesome innovative architecture out there, disregarding the bigger achievements in architecture of countries like France, Italy and Spain. As the book includes architecture from Ancient times and Antiquity, the bias becomes even more obvious because parts of the world with wow ancient architecture are completely misrepresented in favour of countries like... Australia.That is not to say that one country is better than other, because I do love Australia, but the History of Architecture in Australia is not of the calibre of that of Greece for reasons that are obvious to any Art Historian. Yet, Greece's entries are.... just FIVE!

Isn't that called an imperialistic view of the world?

Just to give an example of the crap selection, take Syria and Lebanon for example, two countries with wow Ancient and Medieval architecture. Syria's only building included is the Great Mosque. Architectonic wonders as Palmyra, Boshra, Aleppo's Old Souq (now destroyed), any of the Templars castles, architectonic water deposits are forgotten.... Lebanon's only building listed is the building of a nightclub as if some of their Ancient temples and castles were not wow; Balbek, comes to mind.

There is also a meagre misrepresentation of Asian architecture, in general, and I missed the Utopian Garden in Singapore, although this might be just because it was finished after the update of the book.  Ethiopia just one entry, Thailand two entries, come on! Botswana not even included.

Of course you cannot include every single great building or architectural wonder in a book of this sort, but if you do a selection of this sort, so biased and narcissist, you have lost my respect as a publishing house and editor.

If this was not bad enough, the editor has done a terrible job with the indexes. The indexes are fragmented, the Index of Buildings (not by type but by name!) and the Index of Countries are one at the beginning of the book and the other at the back. No index of featured architects is included. The Index of Countries is in between the Glossary and the Index of Contributors. And no type of building index either. An example of how not to make an index, Mr Editor.

The photos are nice, some of them great, some others not, and not all buildings come with a photo. The texts are informative and well written and might you help to understand (or probably not) why some of those buildings are there beyond being... British as a main point to be included in the book. 

I have decided that the book is perfect for toilet reading :)

Darkroom is not your usual graphic memoir. 

Despite the author being a female, Quintero's Memoir is not the usual female memoir in vogue. I have read a good deal of graphic novels by female artists and, most of them, seem to share common themes: sexual identity, troubled childhood, Mental or psychological problems, love and relationships, or women issues in general. Quintero's Memoir in that regard is a different league. Dark Room connects more with a group of graphic memoirs coming from artists who immigrated into the USA and tell their story of struggle or just their experiences adjusting to the new culture and country. Quintero's Memoir relates to those, but the fact that she comes from a well adjusted family with no neurosis or mental problems, and Racial Segregation forms a good deal of the Memoir puts it on a different league as well. 

Quintero's Memoir deals with immigration, race, social upheaval and identity.  Not white, neither black, the Quinteros arrived from Argentina in 1961 and settled in the Alabama Black Belt area, in a time when segregation and Civil Rights libertarians were going to change the course of History in America. Lila and her family view and dealt with Segregation in a way that was not what it was expected from them, but they could not but be appalled by the reality of Segregation and life conditions of Afro-Americans, and they indeed were supportive of the Civil Rights movement.

Dark Room is both a personal and family memoir. It is also a memoir about the troubles of immigration, of being always The Other. The book it is perfect to illustrate Alterity processes. In a way, it is just normal that the Quinteros would see "the others" in American society, the Afro-Americans, with empathy and humanness and with empathic eyes. They themselves were "the others" to both white and black people. This gave them an unique vantage point, and also created trouble for them in their personal relationships. I also like the fact that we witness the different fortunes of the Quintero's siblings, as immigration affects differently to the members of the same family because people are, after all, individuals.

Dark Memoir is a lovely Memoir that goes from the personal to the familiar, stopping at the historical. Quintero herself reveals that memory is not the only source of her Memoir, as an historical approach is given to the narration of some of the horrific events happened in Alabama during the 1960s. Moreover, she was academically advised and supervised to produce a Memoir that is clear about the value of our personal memory in a Memoir, especially when dealing with historical events. I think that shows. There is some sort of detachment in the narration at times, that comes from a sound approach to the genre.

Johnson is a Jungian classic, and there is a reason for that. He mixes with easiness, elegance and clarity depth psychology and Jungian Psychology, mythology and dream work. He makes of Jungian conundrums something fun. Johnson, like Campbell, knows inside-out Western Mythology, Eastern Mythology and Philosophy and Christian/Catholic Mysticism.

 "She" is a collection of lectures given by Johnson (first published in 1976  and reviewed in 1989) revolving about the analysis of the Myth of Eros and Psyche (aka Amor and Psyche). The book is very enjoyable to read. Even if you are not interested in Depth or Jugian Psychology, you will enjoy the reading, and the way Johnson de-constructs a myth and gives it psychological  meaning. It is like seeing an orange being squeezed through a macro lenses. Fascinating.

"She" is not only an exploration of the female psyche, but also an approach to "the feminine in all of us", and also a tale of exploration of inner expansion and a dive into the unconscious. As a woman, I could relate to many of the things Johnson unveils.

 Much of the turmoil for a modern woman is the collision between her Aphrodite nature and her Psyche nature. (p. 8)

Bingo!

There are  two distinct parts in the book and in the myth examined: the one before Psyche's tasks and the one after the tasks start. Johnson says of the second is the one that shows more clearly the patterns of development of the feminine principle. However, although I could relate to many of the things he mentions there, I thought that some of the comments could also apply to the male psyche or to humans in general.

Despite the book being so old, is still fresh. Johnson's reflection on the validity of mythology for the modern world is wonderful, as myths contains a distilled imprint of human psychological structure, which is universal and timeless. Johnson does even more, he links myth and dreamwork in a two-way path. He shows, for example, how the myth herewith analysed replicates itself in an apparently unrelated dream of a female patient of his. Most importantly, he points out that some dreams have a mythological structure which makes them perfect to delve into our inner self and psyche. 

A WHINE

I have to congratulate HarperCollins e-books for ripping-off customers. Being charged 11+ bucks for 99 pages of an old book on Kindle sucks.

I always find pearls of wisdom in anything Johnson writes, his approach to the world and our psychological humanity make me ponder, always. Besides, he is a kindred spirit, an humanist in the proper sense of the word,  always worth of my time, even though, too often, I end lamenting that he is keeping most of his secrets to himself.

This book is a collection of four small essays, one of them dealing with projection. Unfortunately, the common denominator of the articles is not projection, but rather inner work and the concept of Maya or illusion. That would had been a more honest title and descriptor. If you are looking for a in-depth book on psychological projection, or a basic approach to psychological projection, this is not your book.

1/ Inner Gold
Half memoir half  simple approach to  psychological projection, it is a lovely piece of writing, with a Memoir sort of tone that I love. 

We barely understand how much of what we perceive in others and the outside world are actually parts of ourselves. Please observe the energy investments you make. (p.30)

To understand what Johnson says, you need a basic understanding of what projection and shadow are. Johnson does not explain readers what projection is, how projection mechanisms work, why is formed, and how to do something he insistently tells readers to do: to reclaim our inner gold or to return it to somebody else. How do you do that? No answer. Most people have the level of consciousness of a thermostat, they do not know they project, nor recognise that they are projecting or that others are projecting on to them, nor know anything about it, so unless Johnson gives the "recipe", there is no way to go. You expect a recipe because Johnson was an active psychoanalyst, and he must have it! The beans must have been spilled in the Garden of Eden, not sure if my Animus can get there and bring me a few. 

2/ Loneliness
This is my favourite piece. Again, there is a nostalgic feeling and Johnson's memoir approach to it. I love the way he categorises loneliness in three varieties (loneliness for the past, loneliness for the future, and loneliness for being close to God). Johnson basically says that loneliness is a state of mind and the soul, an interior matter, if you feel lonely you have to do inner work to solve it, connect with your essence, restore your connection with your unconscious, ground yourself in the energy of the world, bear your pain and:

 If you can transform your loneliness into solitude, you’re one step away from the most precious of all experiences. This is the cure for loneliness.

Did you need of Jungian Psychology to learn this?  If I were feeling lonely, I would love to ponder on many of the things Johnson says, but I think that would not be enough to cure my soul. Perhaps therapy? 

3/ Love Story
This is a very short reflection of the figure of  Beatrice in Dante's Divine Comedy. Beatrice is presented as a  soul guide or psychopomp. There a few pages sketching some wonderful thoughts but, overall, they are superficial and uninspired. 

4/ The one and future King
This chapter is odd and intriguing at the same time. Johnson is deeply religious (an ex-Benedictine monk) and it shows here, as this is a reflection on the meaning of the doctrine of the Second Coming of the Christ from a non-literal and archetypal point of view. Even if you are not religious, you will enjoy his approach. I think some of the things he says are beautiful and spiritually soothing, and his reflection on literalism is brilliant:

Literalism knows no end, and literalism is the death of insight. But that sublime archetypal structure is always available in its true, interior way, for anyone who chooses to touch it and is capable of touching it. Sometimes the point of contact becomes accessible only in our deepest, darkest moments. (....) Speech is literal and rational and cannot easily contain the depths of the mystery. For that we need symbols and symbolic language. (...) We can discover within ourselves the capacity to sustain both the presence of the divine and the holiness of daily life. The two are, in fact, one. (pp. 75-76)

Johnson speaks of God often, so if you are an atheist or agnostic you have to decide what God means to you. I thought that he connects well with some of the teachings of the New Thought Church.

This is a basic introduction to editing, no matter you are a beginner editor, a peer-reviewer or just want to edit your own texts.

One expects the book of a professional editor to be good, easy to understand, and well organised, and, generally speaking, this is the case.

Although many of the things Dunham recommends are a bit too obvious (especially if writing is part of your job or just your job) they should never be forgotten. At times, it is painful seeing academics doing the sort of mistakes that Dunham mentions in this book. Actually, these are some of the mistakes I do make while writing for work, or writing a review.

An editor basically reads a text at least twice, and systematically checks the relevance and precision of the content, whether the focus of the author is there or not, if the grammar and orthography of the work are correct, and if the language used is good or not. Editors follow style or criteria rules and guidelines generally imposed by the publisher, although if you are self-editing you can create yours to keep consistency while writing. Then, comes the hard task of checking things systematically, for which you create a checklist or task-list to avoid tricks and treacheries of the eye and the mind and make sure that everything you should have checked is, indeed, checked.

The structure of the book follows this sort of order.    

The book is clearly written, without any pomposity or technical jargon. A priori, I thought this would be a dry book, but I found it to be not only useful and practical, but an enjoyable light reading as well.

The chapter I find most interesting and useful is chapter 9 (The Editor's Tools), which not only provides us with a commented bibliography and a list of online resources, but also an example of check-list. I also enjoyed Dunham's comments on the relationship with editors and authors in chapter 9, which are great to level your head when correcting somebody else's work or peer-reviewing, something that I tend to forget because I get exasperated by some people's "crappola". And also his comments on the use of Wikipedia for references.

Some of his comments on common grammatical and orthographical mistakes are spot on and very easy to understand, therefore, very useful. I also like some of the explanations Dunham gives about confusing (fusing) words. I noticed that, while he explains the rule on how to use brackets, just to put an example, he says it in a way in which brackets are used and incorporated into the explanation without the need of any example. Cool, even tubular :)

The book examines and includes all types of editing. You will find similar challenges and methodical approach to editing any type of text. However, editing for a newspaper, for an academic journal or the Government are intrinsically different as they target different readers, and they do so in different ways regarding language used and length and depth of the text. You cannot expect the general reader to understand technical stuff, but you expect academics working on a given discipline to deal easily with that stuff without the need of dumbing down their writing. So, I would have liked a chapter devoted to the challenges that different publications and texts demand from the editor, and the way editors face them. 
 
Some of the explanations about punctuation were just sketched and not clear enough or not well explained, for example, the use of Em and En dashes.

Although the book is well organised and I like the structure, a few things were off, to me. I would have placed chapter 9 after chapter 10, included some of the subjects mentioned in the appendix in chapter 10 and enlarge them, and offer a separate bibliography and resources section. Besides, the bibliography mentioned is a bit old. Even though the books are classics, or manuals that any editor should have, there must be most updated improved editions, and  why not including other specialised books dealing with specific matters?  

I found odd that the some articles mentioned in the endnotes have no pages mentioned. They come from newspapers and other periodical publications, I guess. I was taught, that even when the news comes from a newspaper, you provide the reader with the page where the article is found. That is for academic writing, of course. There must be a reason why pages are not mentioned with those articles. Were they retrieved online? Is there any rule about this that professional editors follow?

Now, how much quoting is too much? Well... too many quotes is always too much. Elements of Style and Words into Type are mentioned ad nauseam, so I ended wondering, if these books are so great, why bothering writing anything else?  Dunham is a professional experienced editor, so I wanted to hear his voice loud and distinctly clear, even if he shares the same opinions and approaches his work in very similar ways other editors do. In fact, Dunham shines when he does so, when he is his own self, and speaks from his own experience without paraphrasing or quoting anybody.

Most of the grammar elements and common mistakes he discuses in his book are great, but we can find that sort of information in any basic grammar book, like Practical English Usage or a Practical English Grammar, just to mention two examples of exhaustive reliable books coming from Oxford University. However, I missed a chapter on footnoting or endnoting; too many writers and academics do not use notes properly, they do not know where to place them, or what sort of information to include in them. The same can be said of creating indexes, a bibliography, glossary or your own style sheet. Said differently, how would an editor approach endnotes, footnotes, bibliography, indexes and glossaries in a given text? How to edit those? 

IN SHORT

I found the reading good and entertaining, and, as a first good approach to editing, a great book with plenty of useful items of advice. I was expecting an ABC of editing, but for that you have to go elsewhere.

This is one of those books that everybody should have at home, whether a native English speaker or a foreign student.

Too many natives rely on their "nativeness" to write properly and, funny enough, they made many of the mistakes in orthography, spelling and word use described in this book. The book is great for foreigners, who will need to have explained many things that native speakers use by default without even thinking about or thinking why.

Practical English Usage is one of the best books in the market to help you write and speak English properly. You will find most of your doubts about the use of confusing words, orthography, sentence construction and structure, idiomatic preferences, grammar and writing etiquette, among many other things, clearly explained.

Practical English Language shows how a well-thought and structured index can make your consultation of any book and manual an enjoyable activity. Like diving. The book is structured in numbered paragraphs and sub-paragraphs with every entry and sub-entry in the index relating to those numbers (not the page numbers) -- the quickest easiest way to find anything. There is also a detailed table of contents at the beginning, but I rarely use that. The use of red epigraphs is just a hit with me, because it is just how things should make, red and black, black and red, so you have headings and important things popping up and saying hi to your eyes instantly.

The language terminology section is very useful if you have difficulties understanding some of the linguist and grammatical terminology used in the book. I would say that most people with a High School education would find most of those definitions unnecessary. Yet, great for primary school students.

I found the section on common mistakes in English (something that it is specially useful for foreigners), a bit disorganised, and too small to be of any use. There are specific books on this, that I would rather consult. The section has a bunch of common mistakes that primary, secondary, intermediate and advanced learners make. But the list is not structured within each group, so you have to read the whole section to find anything you are looking for. A waste of time, basically. I would rather have these pages removed and devoted to new entries, or just have them expanded and better organised.

The world of Internet and the digital era have changed the way we write, read and communicate at the speed of light. The book is, therefore, outdated regarding digital issues like writing emails, text messaging. tweeting, facebooking, tumblering, blogging or just reviewing online :O. Some of the things noted and stated in those sections sound like written for 90y.o. people who have never had access to the Internet and don't know how to write an email. I would have liked having a longer more detailed section on all Internet writing and more clear directives about email etiquette. There is not much email or online etiquette any time. We are all shrieks now.

This is an Oxford University Press book, always a sign of excellence to me. What is more, there is nothing as good online. You will find endless online forums, blogs and YouTube videos discussing and explaining English grammar and use, but many of them are not accurate, or are confusing or not clear enough, or they contradict each other. How to put it? I would not have spent my money on a hard-copy book if there was something as good online for free. 

I would love getting this book in Kindle format. I hope the OUP is working on it I am waiting. Tick tock tick tock.

Overall, I must-have manual.

Dataclysm is a fun popular approach to scientific data analysis and interpretation. This a very enjoyable fascinating reading.

There are many good things about this book: it deals with data  in a passionate and entertaining way,  and makes something a priori not that interesting to people who do not love data, really interesting! The book does so in a very clear and approachable language. Besides, Rudder is an insider who knows what he is talking about first hand so everything he says is worth listening to. After all he is not one of those lorikeets who repeat data analysis and statistics without understanding anything about them or even questioning the results. Rudder comes trough as a lovely chap, inquisitive mind, and passionate about the work he does. Most importantly, he comes through also as an unpretentious guy who wants to connect with the reader. We are connected now, baby.

Perhaps the main take from the book to me is that mathematicians and data analysts are coming down to something that Social Sciences and Humanities wanted them to come to decades ago, and, most importantly, they now have the tools to deal with humongous amounts of real-life real-people's life to do that. By reading the book, it became clear to me the need of interdisciplinary studies between Scientists and Social Scientists because, despite the a-priori bullxeet that the "academic establishment" has perpetuated for many decades, the contrary is  necessary. Dataclysm shows the many possibilities open to data analysis as a specific branch of Science and how data collection and interpretation affects us. It is like Mackos - I am loving it.  

The most interesting parts of the book, at least to me, are chapters 12 (Know your Place) and chapter 14 (Bread crumbs). The first because it shows, even at an embryonary level, that geographical maps are sometimes just lines drawn on a piece a paper, while other factors, beyond the place you live, have way more importance. The Dolly project seems to me the most fascinating thing in the world and I would have loved more details from the expert instead of having to go to  Mr Goo to ask him about it. The later chapter is, by far, the most interesting (to me) because Rudder is an insider and anything and everything he has to say about the collection, storage and use of our data or meta-data is relevant and important and needs to be taken into consideration. I would have loved that chapter way more developed and detailed. Rudder is just very clear about how things are and should be, or perhaps should not be, and I wanted more. Also, I wanted to know his opinion on the use of IP blinders, and the use of browsers like Mozilla or Duckduckgo, which are not that keen on recording our data or sharing it with anybody.

I am a critical reader, not a data muncher, so I tend to question or think about what any non-fiction writer says, as much as my limited knowledge allows me. I was pleased to find that some questions or objections that I found myself making to Rudder's statements while reading, were later presented and discussed. Those very questions are the ones are those that can make any researcher transcend data itself. In a way, Rudder has a Humanities sort of soul, which shines now and then when dealing with his mathematician core. I love the combo. 

I also loved al the details about data collection and use, and the games that Rudder and his pals at OkCupid playe, and especially Rudder's trends analysis examples. That is Rudder's forte and it does show! I loved some of his reflections on Google's auto-complete trends analysis, the healthiness of a couple by looking a the chart on dots interconnection on Facebook, or the discussion on racial attitudes in the USA.

The charts are beautifully presented and coloured, so many different styles and ways of organising the data. I am a tables kinda lady. There is nothing that cannot be presented in a table and be understood. And some of those were there. I love squares and red. So the book was visually enthralling.

Dataclysm could have been a better book on so many fronts that it is a pity that is not. Allow me the analogy - I have this distinct impression that, in a way, Rudder self-beheads himself for the sake of an applause in a reality show. That is painful to watch.  

TOMATOS OR TOMATOES?
The main downside of the book is the lack of a proper editor and of proper editing. A good editor can make wonders for any book, no matter how brainy you are. A good editor works not only on making the text more readable regarding spelling, sentence and paragraph structure, but also book structure, approach and level of focus, so the book is not only polished, but also makes sense and conveys the author's message better. Unfortunately, the book is not polished and the structure does not make Rudder any favour. Mind you, the use of verbal contractions is not advisable in a published book, unless you are translating or reproducing direct speech, while it is preferred in blogging. The use of long paragraphs with bad punctuation turns a stroll by the beach into a walk through thorny bushes. You get the image.

GOING BANANAS  - THE BOOK STRUCTURE
It is a pity that the author decided or was advised to present us with the current book's structure. I do not have a problem with general non-related chapters presented as such and bunched together in  three parts, because they make sense to me and they are well connected despite their diversity. However, I do have a problem with the general structure of the book, and the endnotes/notes system.

The chapter on sources and data is relegated to the end of the book, before the index. I consider this a big fall because Rudder is asking the reader to believe what he says with some sort of theological trust, while he could have easily earned the reader's trust and respect by just using the "coda" (Italian for tail or epilogue) at the very beginning. Why? Because this chapter explains exactly how he has approached data, and his methodology, what he has done and how he has done it. This is especially relevant in this book, because a good deal of its chapters are re-takes on his own blog posts, so it would have benefited him stating clearly, upfront, at the beginning, that those re-takes used new fresh data and the testing was done again from scratch and were not a copy-and-paste sort of thing. We have to wait to the end of the book to learn that. That is to me, a "going-bananas" sort of decision.

I am a bit anal about footnotes/endnotes while writing and while reading anything coming from academics or people with a high level of education. I also understand that if you want to write a scientific book on data for the general public you cannot do that, just for practical reasons. So, I consider sensible Rudder's restrain at using endnotes. Then, we get to the bottom end of the book, and we find this statement:

"We no longer live in a world where a reader depends on endnotes for “more information”or to seek proof of facts or claims. For example, I imagine any reader interested in Sullivan Ballou will have Googled him long before"

Yes, it is true, even I do that, but it worries me that any person coming from a decent University would say that or do that in a book. We are relying more and more on what the Wikipedia is saying or the Internet (who is the Internet here?) is saying, and not on what scholarly periodicals, books or encyclopaedias, peer-reviewed, properly edited and discussed, say about anything. I would strive to provide "serious" reference material, and add as many footnotes or endnotes or references as necessary.

Confession. I would have forgiven him for this, if then Rudder had not gone bananas again and contradicted himself by providing a "chapter" called "notes", right after the space devoted to the endnotes. Rudder wants to provide us with extra information on certain points mentioned in the book. Well, if that the case, add more footnotes/ endnotes. That is what they are used for, sweetheart! Those "notes" are actually embryo endnotes that Rudder birthed and give in adoption to himself. It sounds ridiculous isn't it?  It is. This is even more painful in the Kindle edition. The link from the note to the text works backwards, and takes you to the part of the text it relates to, but does not allow you to do so forward, because, hello Huston, there is not an endnote to do so properly. 

If this were my book, I would work on fixing this and introducing that information as endnotes in the text, properly. And also to link properly the references forward in the Kindle Edition.  

There it comes the Index, a proper scholar index, one of those beautifully made indexes that are so awesome to have in a book and so expensive to produce in printed books. There for us... Well, useful if you have a hard copy. Otherwise, no, because it is not properly linked in the Kindle edition, and therefore, useless. This is something easily fixable if you want to charge the client full price for any book.

To add to this going-totally-bananas sort of trance, the book, per se, ends when my Kindle showed 65% read. Yes, that is right. The rest is the footnotes, notes, index and info about the author and the publisher. I felt ripped off again.   

Why anybody with the brilliance of Rudder could self-behead himself is something that escapes me. And here it comes the main culprit for the failure of the book - Rudder's struggle to please both the general public and the academia. Mini-Miny-Miny-Mo sort of struggle (my impression). Many of his statements about methodology strive to convey a serious scientific way of work that matters and gets  the approval of his academic peers, because he is really a serious scientist. That struggle also explains why the "coda" and the "notes" were relegated to the end of the book but were not totally disregarded.

A scientist can present his findings and knowledge to the general public being rigorous and respected by their academic peers without trying to please both. Look at Kaiku, and the way he is able to do so with easiness. For that you have to be clear about who is the target of your book, and therefore what you have to sacrifice and what not. Not an easy task, but easier if have a good editor.

FLAW WITH ME
There are a few flaws in the a-priori reasoning used. Perhaps things were not explained sufficiently, so I give Rudder the benefit of the doubt, just because he is a gorgeous looking guy. Here some examples of those sort of arguments should be polished and looked at with a frowned forehead, if you know what I mean: 

+ Although most people are not on online networks and sites, most of them are or will be, so the analysis of the data and its result have some sort of universality. And well, Facebook and Google are the kings and everybody is there, not to say the phone and Internet companies, which are also collecting your data. Yes, it is true. However, my mini-me-on-the-shoulder sort of question pops up. Were do we put the gazillion Chinese on Planet Earth who do not use FB or Google or Western sites? What about Middle East Cultures, like, say Yemen, or Saudi Arabia or Qatar or Afghanistan? Do include them by default in the findings and analysis in the book and decide that we are all one?

+ Sometimes I had the impression that Rudder could not distinguish, although I am sure he does, that the USA is not the world, and that the Western World is not the whole world. For example,  are his analysis (which I really loved) about race in the USA pertinent, say, in Bolivia? in South Africa? in Botswana? Rudder probably never intended to imply that, for sure, but the book comes across as if the contrary was true at times. I think part of the epilogue should have been devoted to stating what he is doing and what sort of limits his analysis has. This is, unless he is using data from around the world from China to Bhutan, Uganda to Dafour. Then, I will vanish and disappear out of embarrassment. Of course there are some things that are universal because we are all humans, and we all have a human body, and want to relate: "no man is an island" However the other is there, in those places where life is most deeply affected by the religion you have, your gender, or the part of the world you live in. Way different. 

+ The author recognises that the important thing is not just what the data says about what humans do, but why they do it. Bingo! That got me excited. It was a quickie-sort-of excitement. Not for long, because beyond some truisms, nothing of substance is said or argued or even presented as a reply. That is because the data, to me, has a limit. It can reveal what we do, even that we do say something and do a different one, that hidden secrets of us "on the Internet", but cannot always explain why, or put the intention behind. Psychology, can be very helpful on that regard.

+ What a person searches for often gives you the person himself. Really? Well, sometimes, not always. For example, if I look up Google for skin rash photos I might be giving my me having a skin rash, or me studying dermatology, or making an assessment for High School, or my baby has a rash and I want to find what exactly is, or I have a sort of sickly morbid fascination with photos of skin diseases. You get the picture, searches on Google are never straight forward, or at least not all the time. Now, how do you interpret the intention behind the search?   

TRUISMS ARE TRUE NO MATTER THE HUE

Let me ask you some questions. Be honest with yourself. If I made the statements below, would you be surprised or think that a humongous amount of data has to be analysed, charted and studied for your to learn it? Would you be wowed?  
* Men usually prefer younger women, no matter their age.
* At the end of the day, looks aren't that important when you meet a person in real life, more the things you have in common.
* People say they are something but then they are another.
* People tend to hide or not to say things that are not politically correct regarding race, gender and what is not.
* Men-women connect better when they do not sea each other's photo.
* People vote for somebody and lie about at the exit of the polls booth, especially if the candidate is not popular.
* Asian Americans talk more about Korean pop or Korean films than white people, while the music that South American mention is Salsa or Bachata not as much as country music.
* With the Internet we all have a voice now and a larger audience.
* The better interconnected in the family a couple is, the more chances has of their relationship to succeed.
* And so on.

Yes, that is right. A series of truisms, common sense evaluations presented through flashy mathematically crafted charts, and complex data analysis. Isn't this a bit of a waste of the author's talent (to me undeniable) and time?

HIGHLIGHTED SENTENCE
"The era of data is here; we are now recorded"

Is that so new? Have you ever visited a historical archive? Yes, of course it is not the same, but I can envision Sumerian bookkeepers might have felt at the top of the world as Rudder does know, mind the volume of data, the detail and the people recorded of course. Yet, everything is relative. We have been recording our data and our data has been used for ages, literally, just a bit differently. Yes, Rudder possibly did not intend to imply this either, but we do not know. The flash is sometimes too bright to let us see properly.

BRIGHT IDEA
The cover of the book is dreadful. Go and get a decent designer Rudder! And another editor, did I mention that? 

FINAL CONFESSION
I would have not written such a long review if there wasn't something intrinsically good and thought-provoking in Rudder's book, so take it as it is. I still recommend the reading and I think it is really entertaining.