jenny_grant_rankin_phd's reviews
105 reviews

From Preface: “This is a book full of secrets and shortcuts. It contains all the tips and tricks I gathered on my journey to share my expertise and research with the world. These strategies and sources allowed me to share my work widely (internationally and with a massive audience). Though my goal was expanding my reach in order to help students, a side effect was that I quickly reached career goals I hadn’t imagined possible. The most important reason for reading this book, however, is to make your expertise benefit more kids by reaching more of the folks who serve them.
The more time you have to devote to what you do best – like helping students, colleagues, and the field – the better for this world. So, this book is meant to save you time and introduce you to opportunities that can catapult your work’s influence quickly and effectively.”

In Create an Engaging Syllabus, Eng helps readers get to the heart of their course's purpose and appeal and to craft a syllabus that gets students excited to take the course. Eng's experience in both marketing and professorship enable him to paint syllabi in new and powerful ways. Pro tips, resources, and vivid examples make the content clear and digestible, and templates make it easy for readers to apply learned concepts. As a fan of Eng's book Teaching College: The Ultimate Guide to Lecturing, Presenting, and Engaging Students, I loved getting this expansion on syllabi. Every professor can benefit from this engaging read, just as those professors' syllabi and students will benefit.

I just finished Stalag-X and O... M...G!!!! It was SO fabulous! Being a fan of the work of Steven Sears I had extremely high expectations, and Stalag-X lived up to every one of them; I was immediately enraptured! It was super cinematic: with a format where inner dialogue only happens occasionally, the experience of action and dialogue driving the story was thrilling and so fast-paced! I really loved it! I enjoyed (both from the standpoint of sheer entertainment and from the standpoint of fascination studying the authors' writing style) how the authors planted mystery, surprises, and ingenious ideas throughout, when and where they placed them to keep me on the edge of my seat, etc.! As if that's not enough, the inclusion of "Deacon's Story" and more original artwork in the back were awesome bonuses! I appreciated how women were handled in the story, too (so refreshing!): strong in different ways, clever, and brave. The male characters were intriguing too (the protagonist's comments and the hints at his backstory were especially fun). The story was super original, and I'm dying to see it as a TV series or movie!

Very valuable read.

I LOVED this book! It has all the components I love in a novel: gray characters so well-imagined they could walk off the page, a vivid world both familiar and fantastical so that it transports you while simultaneously seeming so real, a kick-butt heroine, plot twists and surprises that keep you turning the page for more, and an ending that is fitting yet leaves me yearning for the next book (The Second Sin) so the adventure doesn’t have to end. I can’t wait to read more from Jessica Brawner!