Once again I am looking for holiday gift books. Any ideas?

I am especially looking for a book for my daughter who is an avid reader and especially enjoys books with good reviews from the NYT Book Review. I know for sure I am getting her a Chicago Manual of Style since she told me this weekend that she uses Strunk and White!

Also, I have a 10-year-old niece who loves dolls. Are there any good children's books about dolls?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

Well, it's not exactly about a doll, but how about The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Dolls, Valley of the

Neveu, it sounds lovely...and perfect for my niece. I was familiar with The Tale of Despereaux, but not this one. Thanks so much!

I bought the book, neveu, and it looks wonderful.

How about recommendations for my daughter, Wordcrafters? She has great taste in literature, often referring to the NYT Book Review. I'd like to get her a fiction this year.

A list of books for all of us to refer to would be nice. Have you read any good books lately?

I'll start. My husband bought me the new book on Florence Nightingale by Mark Bostridge. It is a comprehensive biography including her family life and her passion for nursing and her work in the Crimean War. I very much enjoyed it and would highly recommend it. While of course it is about nursing, you don't have to be a nurse to enjoy it. If you like biographies, as I do, you'll love it!

I think one of the best things I've read in a long while is The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It would be a quick read for your daughter, but there are so many themes, and there is such a story. I found it riveting.

I also enjoyed My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams, but it is non-fiction.

I don't read NYTBR much, so I can't even tell you if they've been reviewed there.

Re: Edward Tulane

I read this when it first came out, and thought it was very creepy. Not at all a good book for the youngsters.

Well, too late, Val. I already bought it. It sure got some good reviews by librarians on the Web. CW, do you know anything about it?

Thanks for the suggestion, CW. I also read about another book, "A Woman in Jerusalem" by Yehoshua. I haven't read his books, but supposedly they have a Faulkner, Kafka, Chekhov feel, and that would be appealing to me. This particular one gets great reviews, though it sounds a little macabre, too. Has anyone read it?

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it was very creepy. Not at all a good book for the youngsters

I'm not sure what you found creepy about this book (unless it was just the generic creepiness of dolls), or what part of creepiness is inappropriate for children.

creepiness

I've never understood some folks' fear of clowns (aka coulrophobia, another badly coined word by those with little Latin and less Greek, cf. link) or dolls (partonophobia coined with tongue firmly in cheek). When I was young, the monsters that I just knew lived under my bed were frightful formless things, silent, faceless, and very scary. The few times I was exposed to clowns in the real world, I found them pathetic.

As for holiday books, the mention of Edward Tulane made me think of Edward Tufte (link) and his wonderful he Visual Display of Quantitative Information (link) and its sequels. Besides what's not to like about an academic who hates PowerPoint.

Did you see what the Boston Globe said about the Tufte book, z? "A visual Strunk and White." Hmmmm. It looks interesting, though.

The whole controversy on PPTs is an interesting one. The Carnegie study of nursing education (which will be published in the spring) came out with the recommendation to dump all PPTs. It was so funny because the presenter was using PPTs to tell us that! In all my conferences now I am hearing about the "horror" or PPTs. People want video clips and other more interactive modalities. That's all well and good. However, as one who presents a lot, the hotels and convention centers are going to have to do a whole lot better then with their IT facilities. I cannot tell you how many times recently someone has had a video clip or recording or other modality go awry, with people flying around, technicians being called, and the audience being disappointed at first and then downright angry. I just won't do it anymore because I cannot trust the IT technicians in Podunk, USA! So, it's death by PPTs by Kalleh. However, I have begun to limit the number of my PPTs, have little wording on them (mostly pictures, graphs, or whatever), and I never just read them, as some do. PPTs help me to organize so that I don't have to stand for 90 minutes with reams of notes. So for me, it's "Life by PPTs!"

"A visual Strunk and White." Hmmmm. It looks interesting, though.

But, did they mean it as a positive or negative criticism. Yes, Tufte is a little full of himself and a tad bit normative, but the book is full of cool visualizations. The best known one is Charles Joseph Minard's Napoleon's March(to Moscow and Back Again) (link)). My current favorite powerpoint presentation is Le Grand Content by Clemens Kogler (link). Another fascist of the Web is Jakob Nielsen, the usability consultant who hates PDF (at least until he went to work for Adobe, link). I had the opportunity to hear him speak to a group of technical writers at Sun for a brown-bag lunch. He seemed a little out of step with the realities of day to day communication: e.g., blogs, wikis, etc.

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The whole controversy on PPTs is an interesting one

No discussion of Powerpoint would be complete without a shoutout to my homeboy Peter Norvig and his classic Gettysburg Powerpoint presentation.
OK, it's complete now.

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My current favorite powerpoint presentation is Le Grand Content by Clemens Kogler (link).

But z, that's not really PowerPoint, is it? In the recent conference I attended in San Antonio that was the type of presentation the speaker said we should be doing, instead of "death by PowerPoint."

But z, that's not really PowerPoint, is it?

Well, it might not have been PowerPoint™, but it was something very much like it. I remember a program in the hoary old DOS days of the '80s called Harvard Presentation Graphics (link).

Our speaker, Dr. Diane Skiba, said that PowerPoints are being replaced by user generated video clips. They were similar to that link of yours, and I find them disconnected and distracting. Someone commented that no wonder we're seeing more attention deficit syndrome in children, and I felt the same way. Here's the user generated video clip we viewed.

However, I realize I should keep an open mind and give it more of a chance. If people learn from user generated video clips, so be it. They surely are more interesting than some boring PowerPoints with lines of unreadable content where the speaker reads every word in a monotone voice. How many times have we seen that kind of presentation?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

In my presentations skills training, the question I suggest all presenters ask themselves when deciding to use some kind of visual aid is a simple one. "What do I want this visual aid to SHOW my audience".

If the answer is that the presenter is expecting the visual aid to TELL the audience something, then that visual aid has no business being in the presentation. It's the presenter's job to TELL; it's the visual aid's job to SHOW.

Sadly very relatively presenters have taken advantage of my training - or anyone else's, for that matter. That is why "Death by PowerPoint" is so common.

But if you do insist on the Death by Powerpoint approach, do it properly. I still shudder at the memory of a presentation by our Basic Skills Department (the other half of the department I work for) which had slides riddled with grammar, punctuation, style and layout errors that even thirty seconds proof reading should have picked up.
It gave a very unprofessional impression.

I don't know if anyone will find inspiration here but I came across this article on the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards, innocently enough.

I've started reading John Updike's early novels, and when I checked out reviews on Amazon I discovered that he's been given a lifetime achievement award for writing bad sex, after four nominations but no cigar.

For other titles, including the winner (Rachel Johnson, sister of London's mayor) see here.

Pretty funny, Stella. I loved these metaphors:

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Johnson was singled out for her novel's slew of animal metaphors, including comparing her male protagonist's "light fingers" to "a moth caught inside a lampshade", and his tongue to "a cat lapping up a dish of cream so as not to miss a single drop".

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What do I want this visual aid to SHOW my audience".

When I talk to people who use PowerPoints successfully, at least in my view, they do it for the same purpose that I do. It's another stimulus for the audience, besides the speaker standing there talking, and it keeps the presenter organized. Remember, Richard, your speeches are often for 10 minutes only. Surely no one would need PPTs for that. However, when you have to speak for an hour or longer, it really helps to have prompts, as long as you keep them interesting (with pictures and the like).

Hi, Kalleh --
If it's not too awfully late, here's another suggestion. Many of my favorite book club books turn out to be winners of the Man Booker prize, so I turned to a list of the 2008 finalists. You couldn't go wrong with the winner, The White Tiger, first novel of Aravind Adiga, and reviewed prominently by the NYTBR. But for my money, the most interesting and readable selection looked like The Clothes on their Backs by Linda Grant. I couldn't find a Sunday NYTBR for it. Here is the Guardian's Sunday Observer review.

Happy Holidays to you & your daughter

Thanks, Bethree! It's a bit late for Hanukkah now, but I will definitely look at those books.

I did decide on "A Woman in Jerusalem" after reading a lot about it, and I think she will like it.

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However, when you have to speak for an hour or longer, it really helps to have prompts, as long as you keep them interesting (with pictures and the like).

The length of the speech has little to do with it. The world's finest speakers use no visual aids at all - except the very best of all visual aids - the pictures you create in your audiences' minds.

Visual aids do keep a speaker organised, I agree - but that is for the speaker's benefit, not the audience's. The best speakers need neither props nor notes - just take a look at a few of them - there are plenty of recordings around. Churchill, Kennedy, Hitler, Luther King - all wonderful speakers who never used a visual aid.

For a speaker who needs to SHOW an audience something that cannot easily be described (maybe it's a new concept or creation) then a visual aid is the right thing. If I were describing a new kind of car or aeroplane, then I would not hesitate to use a picture or video. Otherwise I would leave all such devices well alone.