Let's do the bad one first:
The Creativity Secret: How to get ideas like a genius - How to come up with ideas the easy way
has such a hopeful name, doesn't it? Like all designers, I'm always trying to come up with something new, and I thought this book might help with that. However... It was horrid. Here's my Amazon review:The book can be summed up by two sentences from the end of the introduction: "There is nothing really new. All ideas come from outside ourselves." Sounds redundant, doesn't it? The whole book is like that, repeating this in slightly different words over and over. The main concept is that you take what you like from various sources and put it together to form your own ideas. You'll come up with nothing truly original that way. I read this book hoping for unique ways to come up with ideas, but none of that is found here.
One of the examples the author gives is how he comes up with covers for his books. Some of his other book covers (that I see below where I'm typing) are good, with appropriate graphics and easy-on-the-eyes colors, but the cover for "The Creativity Secret" looks thrown together, and the book itself feels thrown together.
The writing feels stilted and has many redundancies (which I mentioned above, but I want to give you a feeling of how it would be to read the book so I'm redundant on the redundancies). The grammar needs work with odd comma choices and an "Is" where there should be an "It". I'm being particularly critical of this because this author has written a book entitled "How to Edit a Book Fast and Easy: The Editing, Grammar, and Punctuation System That Works". Since there's a grammatical mistake in the title (it should be "Easily", not "Easy") and since there are numerous errors in "The Creativity Secret", I don't give much credence to his expertise on the subject.
The last 16% of this very short book is a list of about 29 titles by the same author on a wide range of topics: writing (and editing, as I mentioned above), making money, memory, lie detection, cleaning, ironing, and more. I don't get a sense that this author is an expert on any subject and will not purchase any more of his books.
And now for the good one:
How To Make Money Blogging: How I Replaced My Day-Job With My Blog
gave me a lot to think about, and after reading my review I need to read the book again to see if I'm headed in the right direction.Here's my Amazon review:
The book is short, but it's packed with lots of tips on how to monetize your blog. I've just decided to start trying to make money with my blog, but I didn't really know what to do apart from signing up with Adsense. Bob fills in a lot of the details, and I'm looking forward to digging in!I have less to say if the book is good, it would seem. :) If you have a blog or are thinking about writing a blog, check this book out.
Speaking of making money blogging, I'd like to remind you that I have two ads on my blog over to the right. Don't click just to click, but I'd appreciate you clicking if you see something you might be interested in. Every click helps!
Have a great weekend! Come back on Tuesday for the exciting conclusion to the construction of my 2013 Challenge bracelet! (If you click that link, read from the bottom up.)
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