Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

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Love in the Asylum

March 1, 2004 Stephanie Leary

Friday night I bowed to deadlines and picked up Lisa Carey’s new book, Love in the Asylum. I was reluctant. I loved her first two books, so much so that I tend to push them on unsuspecting friends at every opportunity. This one wasn’t enticing me. The cover art and blurb suck (and turned out to be totally inappropriate besides). But I’d agreed to review the book for HarperCollins, and the deadline fast approacheth, and so.

The story is about a junkie and a formerly suicidal manic depressive who meet in an asylum. In the library there, the woman finds unmailed letters from a patient in the 1930s that (unsurprisingly, to those familiar with Carey’s style) turn out to be relevant to our heroes.

I loved it. Substance abuse and mental disorders are emphatically not my favorite subjects to read about, ranking right there with child abuse and multiple amputations (and just about every other subject covered in The Butterfly Effect). I couldn’t put this down. It helped that the backstory involves one of my pet subjects: Mary, the author of the letters, uses her dreams to change things in her waking life. But I was entranced with Alba and Oscar, too, and I thought their ending was absolutely perfect.

Carey’s style (as I mentioned above) is to have two stories going on at once, one at some sufficiently distant point in history and one in the present, that eventually intertwine. It’s a nifty trick, and she does it beautifully. This is the third time she’s used it, though, and I hope she tries something a little different next time.

Books

Fascism Watch

The Fascism Watch is a daily(ish) news roundup. View all the previous Fascism Watch posts »

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

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WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

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