“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates.” – Thomas Szasz

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Language Log: The Dan Brown code

I don’t think I’d want to say these things about a first-time novelist, it would seem a cruel blow to a budding career. But Dan Brown is all over the best-seller lists now. In paperback and hardback, and in many languages, he is a phenomenon. He is up there with the Stephen Kings and the John Grishams and nothing I say can conceivably harm him. He is a huge, blockbuster, worldwide success who can go anywhere he wants and need never work again. And he writes like the kind of freshman student who makes you want to give up the whole idea of teaching. Never mind the ridiculous plot and the stupid anagrams and puzzle clues as the book proceeds, this is a terrible, terrible example of the thriller-writer’s craft.

I think I also read it on an airplane and wasn’t impressed. And the movie wasn’t great also. Well so much for taste.

bookofjoe: ‘Swanson’s UnWritten Rules of Management’ — A surprise best–seller (even though it’s free)

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From The Telegraph

A schoolgirl who was nine years old when she wrote a self-help guide to cope with her parents’ break-up has secured a publishing deal, her mother has said. Libby Rees, now 10, wrote the 60-page book entitled Help, Hope and Happiness, outlining the strategies she used to cope when her mother and father separated three and a half years ago.

Libby decided to write a list of useful tips for coping with sad situations and then sent off her ideas to various publishers.

The following day, she was contacted by Aultbea Publishing, who arranged for Libby and her mother to fly to Scotland to sign a publishing deal with the Inverness-based firm, which has also commissioned a further two books from the primary school pupil.

Libby’s mother, Kathryn Loughnan, said: “We had been out for a walk in the forest and we had been having a chat. She was just saying that every time she threw a stick for the dog she was throwing away something that irritated her.

“We didn’t really take it seriously at first but she went away, wrote her list and then came back and said she wanted to use the computer. When we got a call from Aultbea I almost couldn’t believe it.”

Charles Faulkner, who runs Aultbea Publishing, said Libby was the youngest author they had signed up so far.

Some of the money raised from the sale of the book will go to children’s charity Save The Children.