Writing Great Fiction by James Hynes

Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques by James Hynes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Entertaining and somewhat informative lecture series on writing. There was a lot in here in though that we all learned in high school English class like the general structure of a novel.

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Death, Dying, and the Afterlife by Mark Berkson

Death, Dying, and the Afterlife: Lessons from World Cultures by Mark Berkson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This covered a variety of topics about death without going into a great deal of depth on any of the topics. For example, Berkson gave an entire lecture each to the Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist, and Confucian concept of death and death rituals (6 lectures total). I see why that's important but the course is already a summary of the concept and experience of death in human society. Throwing in summaries of all the world's religions - mostly information of which I was already aware- didn't leave a lot of time for everything else about death. I also felt like the lecture on vegetarianism- again, something I've read about at length in other more through sources- was really not to the point.

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