Pat Dobie

User Experience (UX) Design Trends for 2018

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4 tips for effectively communicating with clients

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5 common myths about graphic design

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Cause and effect: The case for cause marketing

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Praesent tempus sapien odio, sed porttitor mauris pretium eu. Suspendisse ornare tincidunt diam, ornare auctor nibh varius ac. Ut vehicula neque nec mauris malesuada porttitor. Curabitur at sem lectus. Ut maximus est vitae risus facilisis facilisis. Aenean quis commodo dolor. Morbi feugiat sollicitudin nisi, ac commodo nibh. …

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Book Review: Ragtime

E.L. Doctorow, Ragtime. Wow. What a book. This is a page-turner (even with its unfashionably long paragraphs –some longer than a full page). We have an omniscient narrator fully in control of his material, a historical period (1910-14 or so) absolutely brimming with fascinating events and people (Magician Harry Houdini, Magnate JP Morgan, Architect Stanford …

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Book Review: The Journalist and the Murderer

Janet Malcolm. The Journalist and the Murderer.  Here’s another dark topic, though it’s not a dark book. And instead of the author’s website, because I couldn’t see one, I link her name to an interview in the Paris Review. This short non-fiction account examines the relationship (and lawsuit) between accused murderer Jeffrey MacDonald and journalist Joe McGinniss, …

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Book Review: The False Friend

Myla Goldberg, The False Friend. A compulsively readable novel about Celia Durst, a performance auditor in Chicago who returns to her small hometown 21 years after the disappearance of her childhood friend Djuna, when she starts remembering what really happened that day. But the deed she confesses to is not what everyone else thinks happened. Riveting. Back …

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Book Review: Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian. This novel follows a group of men in various degrees of sociopathy (my layman’s diagnosis) as they hunt Apaches through the high deserts of Mexico and the southern US, slaughtering the inhabitants and encountering the aftermath of carnage committed by their Apache prey. McCarthy seamlessly integrates historical detail and language into this …

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Story of a Novel

Or, how NOT to write a novel. Here, to celebrate Hallowe’en, is the story of 13 drafts of my historical novel, INVENTING PARIS: 1st draft—a dog’s breakfast; the story told from four points of view. Big holes. Barely a draft. Set in Dijon, France, in the summer of 1890. Tons of research on Japanese history, …

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Learning to write from the birds

Last night I was sitting in my office looking out the window at the darkening sky when a crow flew past. I watched him go on his birdy way, and it struck me that lately I had been spending a disproportionate amount of time on pointless stuff. What is pointless? To a writer, it’s anything …

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Book Review: Wake Up & LIVE!

Wake Up & LIVE! Dorothea Brande. The cover of this little self-help book, first published in 1936, says {A formula for success that really works!} Or, “What would you do if you knew it was impossible to fail?” The premise is that we fail (or don’t reach our potential) because we’re always second-guessing ourselves. We might …

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Book Review: The Happiness Advantage

Shawn Achor, The Happiness Advantage. In the usual writer’s quest to work harder (or at least, to avoid extinction), reading about how to gain an advantage over fate is, alas, mandatory. This book is one in a long line of positive thinking texts that go back to Samuel Smiles in the 1800s (and probably earlier). But …

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Book Review: White Noise

White Noise, by Don Delillo. This novel is a black comedy about Hitler historian Jack Gladney, his fourth wife, Babette, and their kids, many of whom are from various prior unions. Gladney’s a large man who wears academic robes and dark glasses and enjoys a certain stature in his academic niche, despite an embarrassing inability to …

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Book Review: Jack Maggs

Jack Maggs: A Novel. Peter Carey. A third-person account of Jack Maggs, a Londoner shipped to Australia as a boy convict. It tells the story of Maggs’ return to London as a fully grown but immature man: now rich, physically imposing, dangerous, suffering from terrible headaches, determined to contact his son. Maggs is exploited by …

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Book Review: Carthage

carthageCarthage, Joyce Carol Oates. This is a big (482 pages) and disturbing novel about the disappearance of 19-year-old Cressida Mayhew from her home in Carthage, a small town in upstate New York. The main suspect is damaged Iraq war veteran Brett Kincaid, who has recently broken his engagement to Cressida’s older sister, Juliet. Kincaid, physically and mentally damaged by war, can’t remember what happened but he feels culpable.

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Book Review: The Twin

The Twin, by Gerbrand Bakker. Trans. David Colmer. This first-person novel about a man in late middle age shows the power of clear, simple language in drawing the reader into the character’s world. The protagonist, a bitter and laconic farmer who gave up his own plans 30 years earlier in order to replace his dead twin …

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Book Review(s): Two by Kent Haruf

RIP Kent Haruf, who died November 30, 2014 at the age of 71. Here is an earlier post about two of his books. A wonderful writer.

plainsong

Plainsong. In this moving story of family disintegration and re-creation, Haruf’s distant omniscient narration is balanced by the weight of scene over narrative exposition—over one hundred scenes in forty-four short chapters. He uses selection of incident, rather than interior monologue or narrative exposition, to create sympathetic connections between characters and reader.

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Book Review: The Brief History of the Dead

The Brief History of the DeadBriefHistoryOfThe_Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier. This novel connects the world’s dead to one character, a tenacious young woman named Laura Byrd, perhaps the last survivor of a global pandemic. Brockmeier does the seemingly impossible—makes us care about the dead. They’re dead! Who cares!? The point is, we all do. If we don’t yet have dead people we care about, we will.

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Book Review(s): Two by William Boyd

Any Human HeartAny Human Heart. This novel is in diary format. It’s a testament to Boyd’s skill that it’s an involving read. A trip through the 20th century via the life of Logan Mountstuart, whose ups and downs involve public figures and fictional characters, and who has reserves of strength and humour that keep the reader gripped right to the end. An emotional experience, and one of those novels where, after closing the last page, you miss the viewpoint character.

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Book Review: Death in Venice

Death In Venice and Seven Other Stories, by Thomas Mann. Trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter. Although it’s a hundred years old, this novella feels timeless and pretty near flawless. Gustave Aschenbach, esteemed writer, leaves his home in Munich for a vacation, seeking rest for his strained nerves. He alights at last in Venice, and there begins his doomed …

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Craft Book Roundup #1

readinglikeawriterFrancine Prose. Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for people who love books and for those who want to write themThis is one of the most useful books anyone who is interested in the nitty-gritty of writing could read. Chapters are organized by their topic, for example, “Gestures,” and Prose illustrates by showing how writers have used gesture not only to triangulate a conversation, but also to enrich the reader’s experience of character, to illuminate the people, place or situation, so that

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Book Review(s): Three by David Mitchell

blackswangreenBlack Swan Green

In this coming-of-age story—several months in the life of 13-year old Jason Taylor: stammerer, poet, bullying victim—Mitchell uses simple language, never showy, to tell Jason’s rise, fall and final rebirth into a new maturity. Mitchell nails the first-person voice and the historical details of early 1980s. Impeccable pacing and a hugely sympathetic protagonist make this a page turner and an immensely satisfying read. One of the few books I’ve wanted to read again as soon as I finished it.

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