Rating: 
Summary: Solid Content; A Little Wordy
Review: This book contains solid material for the person who has some experience in keeping a journal. For reasons set forth below, however, to the absolute beginner I would recommend _Journal to the Self_ or _The New Diary_ as a first book on the subject, not this one.The book has three sections: 1. The short opening section offers seven exercises (involving five senses and two literary devices) to limber up the journaling muscles, so to speak. They are well-presented. 2. The main body of the book offers extended excerpts from the journals of published writers demonstrating both techniques within the journals that the author recommends to us, the readers, and those published writers' use of journal materials to generate published works. Depending on one's temperament, the quoted excerpts can be either discouraging or downright intimidating. This book for this reason is not a suitable first book about journaling. In addition, in some cases the length of the journal excerpts in proportion to the amount of commentary and guidance that Ms. Bender was providing was somewhat excessive. On the other hand, the excerpts can also be inspiring, make no mistake about that. I found Robert Hellenga's journal entries describing the thoughts and experiences that eventually formed _The Fall of a Sparrow_ to be particularly strong. 3. The book concludes with its best section, a short one modestly entitled "add-ons." It contains a number of additional strategies for journal entries, most of which I had not seen elsewhere, and a chapter on creating journal-keeping groups and communities. Verdict: worth buying if you're a serious journaler; not the best single reference if you only have one book on the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: An absolute necessity!
Review: This book offers so many helpful writing exercises that I was astonished. It is an amazing tool for anyone who works with words. And it certainly improves journalling techniques as well.
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