Up and in my home office. It is 3:12am. Again around 3am. Here I am with the book Story Craft - The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction by Jack Hart. Am I eternally cursed by some dark magic force of 3am? I first fell victim to this probably in autumn 2005, living in Paddington, just … Continue reading Story Craft
Author: dpz
Reading as a Writer
This past week, I attended a one week Reading as a Writer program at Stanford, led by Jonah Willihnganz, Director of the Stanford Storytelling Project. There were about twenty of us, in a cosy seminar room up in the fourth floor of Sweet Hall, with gorgeous views of the campus. There are two beautiful windows, … Continue reading Reading as a Writer
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
I first read George Orwell’s “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” many years ago when I was in the process of learning English which turns out to be an everlasting endeavor. Some time last year, I picked this book up again, after listening to some BBC radio program that quoted … Continue reading The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
How to live on 24 hours a day
In 1910, Arnold Bennett wrote a small volume of non-fiction titled How to Live on 24 Hours a Day. It is probably his best-known work among dozens of books that he wrote. I listed this as my book of this week. I would be cheating if I do not inform you upfront that I … Continue reading How to live on 24 hours a day
Night
My book of this week is Night, written by Elie Wiesel and translated by his wife Marion Wiesel. Elie wrote about his experience of being deported from his home town Sighet in northern Transylvania to concentration camps towards the end of the WWII in 1944, at age fifteen. Elie’s mother and sisters were separated from … Continue reading Night
Reading Like A Writer
Prose introduces her book as “the book that follows represents an effort to recall my own education as a novelist and to help the passionate reader and would-be writer understand how a writer reads.” Reading Like A Writer talks about close reading, word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraphing, plots, creating characters and so on, … Continue reading Reading Like A Writer
Weddings and Funerals
I do not like weddings. Weddings make me cry. The moment the bride and bride’s father walk into the ceremony room in the town hall or church, the music in the background, the view of the two people. One is excited with some fear of the future. Uncertain how life will pan out but overjoyed … Continue reading Weddings and Funerals
Text Data Management and Analysis – Information Retrieval and Text Mining – Part II
The third and fourth sections of this book cover text data analysis and unified text data management analysis system. Since some topics covered in the latter half of this book are new to me, two attributes of this book were particularly helpful and eased the learning curve: the pictorial illustrations and comprehensive references accompanying the … Continue reading Text Data Management and Analysis – Information Retrieval and Text Mining – Part II
Text Data Management and Analysis – Information Retrieval and Text Mining – Part I
This week, I return to my profession as a computer scientist and read the book titled “Text Data Management and Analysis - A Practical Introduction to Information Retrieval and Text mining” by ChengXiang Zhai and Sean Massung from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In Part I of the two-part blog post about this topic, I … Continue reading Text Data Management and Analysis – Information Retrieval and Text Mining – Part I
Rubicon – the Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
My book of this week is Rubicon - the Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland. Rubicon tells the stories of the rise and fall of the Roman Republic, from the time when Lucius Tarquinius Superbus’ reign of Rome was demolished in a palace coup in 509 BC, the subsequent establishment of … Continue reading Rubicon – the Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic