"Living The Secular Life: New Answers to Old Questions" by Dr. Phil Zuckerman

Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN: 9781594205088
Copyright: 2014

This book is essentially a review of what it means to be secular, but it also juxtaposes this with what many people seem to think a secular person is. The book itself is oriented with a very American focus, which is understandable both because the author is American, but also due to America promoting itself as a christian nation, even though there is a large number of people with no religious affiliation down there.

Other countries are mentioned in contrast to America, such as Canada, Norway, Finland, and many more who are very secular and have crime rates that are essentially nonexistent, while the United States and numerous other religious nations have ridiculously high crime rates.

Dr. Zuckerman gained a lot of the material in this book from interviewing both secular and religious people and this gives the reader a very good overview of how people see those who are secular.

These interviews also give the reader into other areas that show how secular people deal with such topics as Morality, Society, The Rise of the Non-religious, Raising Secular Children, Creating Communities, Dealing with Hardship, and Death.

A very good book, that I think all should read.

"The Anatomy of Genres: How Story Forms Explain the Way the World Works" by John Truby

 

Publisher: Picador Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Copyright: 2022

ISBN: 9780374539221

I picked this book up to give me some assistance when I was writing a seminar on oddly enough writing - go figure. He breaks writing down into fourteen distinct genres: Horror, Action, Myth, Memoir, Coming-of–Age, Science Fiction, Crime, Comedy, Western, Gangster, Fantasy, Thriller, Detective, and Love. The book itself is quite well written, and easy to follow, but unfortunately while it gave me a fair amount of good information it wasn't wholly applicable to my project as Mr. Truby's examples are drawn primarily from movies, and not from books. 

This is understandable as he does coach and teach people writing, but does focus on the Hollywood end of things. He is the director of Truby's Writers Studio and "has an ongoing program where he works with students who are actively creating shows, movies, and novel series. He regularly applies his genre techniques in story consulting work with major studios including…"

Now while a good number of the techniques are the same, the lack of examples drawn from the written word I found to be a particular disadvantage. Reader's of this column (both of you) will see my point when you take into account my lack of enthusiasm for pretty much anything Hollywood puts out, as they seem to routinely ruin anything that is adapted from a book.

In any case if you are writer have a look at this book you may find fits your niche very well.