Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story is a simple and short guide to writing creatively with the instructions of Ursula K. Le Guin. This book is the rewritten version of the same title because Le Guin strictly wants to inform the readers of the specific writing crafts which is relevant to the twenty-first century. Le Guin provides examples of passages from notable writers in each of the chapters’ lessons and also includes her own humorous commentary to enhance the tone of the book. In Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story the author focuses on creating a thorough guideline for grammar, rhythm, sentence structure, sentence length and etc. I didn’t expect this book to focus so much on the nuts and bolts of basic writing which is why I was disappointed overall. The chosen passages from the notable writers were an effective way to demonstrate what each lesson was meant to teach. Also, this book lacks on providing the inspirations to actually writing a wholehearted story.

Fruit Basket, by Natsuki Takaya

Fruit Basket, by Natsuki Takaya, is manga series consisting of 23 volumes in total and centers around a young high school girl named Tohru Honda. Faced by continuous tragedies, Tohru Honda lives her lonely life as an orphan never hinting anything to any of her friends. Then one day she meets the mysterious Sohmas, a family guarded by ancient secrets and magical curses of the zodiac signs. When the generous Sohmas take Tohru in as a part of their family, she gets a glimpse of a breathtaking extraordinary world.

After reading Fruit Basket, I now understand why it has received so much praise for living up to the qualities of a slice-of-life genre. This lighthearted graphic novel is a great way unwind after heavy reading because the effervescent main character sets the mood to be quite relaxing throughout the entire first volume. Even though the artwork lack character and the dimensions are quite poor, considering the time it was published, the manga still leaves a strong impact upon its readers.

Reviewed by Anonymous, Grade 12

Glendale Central Library