Study and Communication Skills for the Chemical Sciences

A few months ago I reviewed a book Study Skills for Science, Technology and Engineering Students. While I couldn’t fault the authors on the content or their good intentions to pass on useful information gleaned from years of experience of giving students advice, it reminded me of a book I once used as a student myself (long ago). For me, both of these books fell into two traps; they had a lot of densely packed pages full of text with endless tips and strategies that despite good intentions left the reader (if it was read at all) confused and secondly,…

Book Review: How to write a lot

How to Write a Lot, Paul J Silvia, APA Washington, 2007. This is a great little book. Apart from its content and central message (which is obvious), I love the style. There are no boxed asides, no “Top Ten Hits from the Best Writers“, no planning charts,  or any other visual false idols, which make you feel like you are going to be a better writer having looked at them. Instead, it’s like a book of old, containing just paragraphs of text (imagine that!), with a simple but elegant imprint. The occasional New Yorker cartoon matches the author’s dry sense…