Friday, October 21, 2011

Book Review: Rewriting by Joseph Harris

Title: Rewriting: How to do things with texts
Author: Joseph Harris
Usefulness Rating: 6/10
Referral: Required reading for my Fairy Tale Folklore class
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 130

 I think that if I were planning a career in academic writing, this would be a useful book to read as a graduate student. It contains many of the same ideas about writing that Booth, Colomb and Williams present in The Craft of Writing (which we used last year in the 311 class I taught), but the focus is more on academic writing than on writing research papers. However, the ideas of countering, forwarding, and responding are present in both books, and I think that The Craft of Writing is more accessible and interesting. However, the Harris book is more in-depth in its focus on academics.

I'll just say this-- reading Rewriting made me glad that I'm a creative writer. It's so much more fun to write stories than it is to write about things other people have written.

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