Brooks Landon

Landon explores a topic that is often overlooked in writing instruction: the craft of building sentences. The last time I remember discussing sentences specifically in a formal writing course was in seventh grade, and there our attention was mainly on diagramming sentences rather than composing and refining them. For writers and non writers alike, it's as if sentences are part of the air we breathe, so abundant and commonplace that we hardly pay them any attention, despite how essential they are in our social, communicative human existence.

While expressing his own strong bias toward particular kinds of sentences and phrases, Landon does a good job of pointing to others--writers, linguists, grammarians--that condone and use the same kinds of strategies he discusses. I'm not sure if anyone would find his ideas controversial, but, at the very least, I feel a greater awareness after reading the book, a greater awareness of the choices a writer makes, of the little parallel universes of alternative possibilities that converge around an idea waiting to be expressed.

I was actually exposed to this material first in Landon's Teaching Company course covering the same material (Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft). While the content is essentially the same, I have to admit that something is lost in the book version. You can't hear the delight in Landon's voice as he reads sample sentences from master writers, and it's not as easy to hear how expressive the cumulative sentences he condones can be. At the same time, the book makes it easier to browse through the material, to find particular examples and quotes, and I'm glad to have access to the book along with other resources for writing.… (mer)

Landon explores a topic that is often overlooked in writing instruction: the craft of building sentences. The last time I remember discussing sentences specifically in a formal writing course was in seventh grade, and there our attention was mainly on diagramming sentences rather than composing and refining them. For writers and non writers alike, it's as if sentences are part of the air we breathe, so abundant and commonplace that we hardly pay them any attention, despite how essential they are in our social, communicative human existence.

While expressing his own strong bias toward particular kinds of sentences and phrases, Landon does a good job of pointing to others--writers, linguists, grammarians--that condone and use the same kinds of strategies he discusses. I'm not sure if anyone would find his ideas controversial, but, at the very least, I feel a greater awareness after reading the book, a greater awareness of the choices a writer makes, of the little parallel universes of alternative possibilities that converge around an idea waiting to be expressed.

I was actually exposed to this material first in Landon's Teaching Company course covering the same material (Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer's Craft). While the content is essentially the same, I have to admit that something is lost in the book version. You can't hear the delight in Landon's voice as he reads sample sentences from master writers, and it's not as easy to hear how expressive the cumulative sentences he condones can be. At the same time, the book makes it easier to browse through the material, to find particular examples and quotes, and I'm glad to have access to the book along with other resources for writing.… (mer)