Bibliography - academic edition!
Jul. 3rd, 2009 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyCritical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates - Mike Wallace and Alison Wray
I picked this up mainly to work out how the hell one actually categories these bloody analytical thinking skills that everyone seems to think we should be nurturing. Thank goodness, there is a handy little table right at the front of the book that not only gives a list of critical skills used in reading, but also how to turn those around to apply to one's own writing as well.
This isn't to say that there's much here that's new, but it's rather handy to have a checklist to hand, especially now I'm revising articles and am going to be revising thesis chapters. You know that you shouldn't generalise, but to have the checklist and go 'right, now I am going to read for unsubstantiated generalisations' is better than having a manuscript come back with 'bloody huge generalisation!' written all over it.
Other than that, the book becomes less and less useful as it goes on; it's aimed at people in the social sciences, so its discussion of how to do literature reviews and structure ones dissertation is useless for me. Worth picking up for the initial information, though, especially the definition of precisely which skills need practise.
Writing a Woman's Life - Carolyn G. Heilbrun
Another book in the 'preparing to write biography' category. This is short and pithy, and takes a look at the specific topics that someone writing a woman's life has to think about in different ways than someone writing a man's life might have to. The question of how one constructs a narrative for a subject's life is especially interesting - a woman's life tends to be constructed around a marriage narrative (either its achievement or its denial), which strikes me as somewhat problematic. Other issues covered are middle and old age, appearance (and how that appearance is viewed) and female creative friendships. A good read - has its axe to grind, but it's a good axe and worthy things to be thinking of when undergoing a project like the one I am eyeing up ruefully from my corner.
The Academic's Guide to Publishing - Rob Kitchin & Duncan Fuller
A more UK-centric volume, this, but still fairly useless and flappy. The main points seem to be quite sensible comments like 'learn the rules of the game' and 'don't submit manuscripts with grammatical errors as it will get up people's noses'. The nice thing, it has to be said, is that in their list of 'things that you should be doing as a postgrad', I was already doing all of them. Which was a nice warming glow, but doesn't really get me much further.
That said, this slim volume tries to describe publishing in a number of different venues, including journal articles, books, setting up a new journal, editing a journal... I suspect it might be worth returning to when I'm doing more than trying to get a bloody article out there, but then again, maybe not. A decent survey of the various publishing options out there, but nothing I don't think I hadn't seen elsewhere.
I picked this up mainly to work out how the hell one actually categories these bloody analytical thinking skills that everyone seems to think we should be nurturing. Thank goodness, there is a handy little table right at the front of the book that not only gives a list of critical skills used in reading, but also how to turn those around to apply to one's own writing as well.
This isn't to say that there's much here that's new, but it's rather handy to have a checklist to hand, especially now I'm revising articles and am going to be revising thesis chapters. You know that you shouldn't generalise, but to have the checklist and go 'right, now I am going to read for unsubstantiated generalisations' is better than having a manuscript come back with 'bloody huge generalisation!' written all over it.
Other than that, the book becomes less and less useful as it goes on; it's aimed at people in the social sciences, so its discussion of how to do literature reviews and structure ones dissertation is useless for me. Worth picking up for the initial information, though, especially the definition of precisely which skills need practise.
Writing a Woman's Life - Carolyn G. Heilbrun
Another book in the 'preparing to write biography' category. This is short and pithy, and takes a look at the specific topics that someone writing a woman's life has to think about in different ways than someone writing a man's life might have to. The question of how one constructs a narrative for a subject's life is especially interesting - a woman's life tends to be constructed around a marriage narrative (either its achievement or its denial), which strikes me as somewhat problematic. Other issues covered are middle and old age, appearance (and how that appearance is viewed) and female creative friendships. A good read - has its axe to grind, but it's a good axe and worthy things to be thinking of when undergoing a project like the one I am eyeing up ruefully from my corner.
The Academic's Guide to Publishing - Rob Kitchin & Duncan Fuller
A more UK-centric volume, this, but still fairly useless and flappy. The main points seem to be quite sensible comments like 'learn the rules of the game' and 'don't submit manuscripts with grammatical errors as it will get up people's noses'. The nice thing, it has to be said, is that in their list of 'things that you should be doing as a postgrad', I was already doing all of them. Which was a nice warming glow, but doesn't really get me much further.
That said, this slim volume tries to describe publishing in a number of different venues, including journal articles, books, setting up a new journal, editing a journal... I suspect it might be worth returning to when I'm doing more than trying to get a bloody article out there, but then again, maybe not. A decent survey of the various publishing options out there, but nothing I don't think I hadn't seen elsewhere.
