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Leatherneck Publishing 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Until I saw a press release regarding Leatherneck Publishing
, I hadn't realized that books written by combat veterans had become such an established genre in the book world. I knew, of course, of the mainstream books of that type that get national distribution and publicity but the idea of this being a publishing house specialty is new to me.On Saturday, January 27th the City of San Diego Public Library honored two of Leatherneck Publishing's books published in 2006 and written by San Diego County local authors. They are "Street Fight In Iraq" by GySgt Patrick Tracy, USMC (now 1st Sgt) and "An Angel Rode My Wing" by Lt. Col. H. Neil Levin, USMC, ret...."Street Fight in Iraq" is one of the most compelling chronicles of the Iraqi conflict and is a best seller in Marine Corps Association bookstores. The language is harsh, the writing brutally honest and the message clear. It's down and dirty and Marines love this book. "An Angel Rode My Wing" has all the elements of any great action n
Prior Bad Acts 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I'm not a fan of novels that read more like screenplays than they do novels, and I find myself avoiding authors who have fallen into that bad habit. Writers like James Patterson, Michael Crichton and Dan Brown (among others) come immediately to mind. I find, too, that books with 60 or 70 short, choppy chapters will almost always fall into this type and that's why I've only read one Tami Hoag novel other than Prior
Bad Acts. So I decided to take a different approach with this one and chose the audio book version rather than the more than 500-page printed version of the novel. And I enjoyed it because it was perfectly suited to the way that I listen to audio books in fifteen minutes spurts three or four times a day. As with all audio books, the "performer" can make all of the difference, and actor Holter Graham uses his voice to good effect in bringing the Prior Bad Acts characters to life and in setting the various moods of the novel.When the suspected killer of a woman and two
Main Street 1970-01-01 00:59:59 When Main Street
was published in 1920 it struck a chord with everyday Americans in a way that few books had done up to that time. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was soon to be found in small town homes all across the country because so many people were able to identify with Main Street
's main character, Carol Kennicott. Through the eyes of Carol Kennicott, some readers saw their own "main streets" in a way that they had not considered them before. For the first time they noticed just how smugly narrow minded and intolerant were the societies in which they lived. Others, who had already recognized the limitations imposed upon them by their small town leadership, saw Main Street as confirmation that they were not alone in wishing for more from life than what was on offer to them in small town America.Ultimately, of course, Carol Kennicott resigns herself to living in the small Minnesota community that she once fought so desperately to change. Two years after moving to
Can an Audio Book Really Be Read? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Should listening to an audio version of a book be considered as having read that book? Audio
books have been common in libraries in cassette and CD form for a long time now and they seem to be ever-increasing in popularity. I generally have an audio book in some stage of progress pretty much all the time despite the fact that it takes me close to two weeks to finish one of them because I do the bulk of my listening while driving. Now I'm even starting to see little self-contained gizmos in bookstores that are one-book players that include batteries and headphones. It's as simple as taking the book out of the package, plugging in the headphones and turning on the little player (Playaway Digital Audiobooks) .I'm all for using MP3 players for studying and I applaud schools at all levels that encourage their teachers to make class notes and lectures available in MP3 format for repeat-listening by students. We have all become accustomed to multi-tasking (whether that's good or bad Read more:Audio Book
Printed-on-the-Spot Books Are Given to Young Utah Students 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Utah State University's Center for Open and Sustainable Learning Microlibrary has a 2007 goal of delivering 5,000 "printed-on-the-spot" books to Utah's elementary school students. In addition to getting books into the hands of young readers, the project seems to build an excitement about books in the classrooms lucky enough to receive a visit from the traveling print shop.Project Director David Wiley Sr. manages more than 20,000 holdings - enough books to stretch the length of several football fields. Yet his "library" weighs fewer than 100 pounds and easily fits on a rolling cart or in the trunk of his car. A laptop, printer, paper cutter, heat-binding tool and a DVD loaded with best-loved books - available to the public free through Project Gutenberg - combine to make the traditional Bookmobile look like a lumbering giant. ... Gutenberg offerings - books with expired copyrights - are converted into a format that can be printed and bound inside of 10 minutes, Wiley Jr. said. There Read more:Books
, Given
The Perfect Thing 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I'm a technology freak, I admit. As an early adaptor of new technology, I've wasted enough money on new gadgets to pay for a small car. I have suddenly-out-of-date electronic players and recorders stashed in closets and drawers all over the house, so many of them that I can't even remember how some of them were intended to work or what they were to do for me that some previous generation of machine didn't already do.I love my iPod, "love" being the key word in that phrase. But my 60-gig iPod photo is not quite two years old and I'm already lusting after one of the new, smaller 80-gig video ones. Only a display of more than my normal level of willpower has kept me from relegating my first love iPod to the closet so that I can replace it with the electronic version of a new trophy wife. On an almost daily basis, I shuffle the 15,301 songs I've uploaded so that I can experience an always new mix of some of my favorite music and artists. That bit of personal history m Read more:Perfect
, Thing
Thanks, But No Thanks 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I have to admit that the bit of news that this 50 Cent character now considers himself to be both a "gritty" author and a "self-help guru" made me chuckle just a bit. And then I remembered all of those struggling writers out there who actually write their own books, have something to say, and still can't find a publisher, and I quit laughing. There's a sucker born every minute, for sure...but I'm not one of them, fittycent.The headline of the article reads "50 Cent Teams Up With Self-Help Writer To Work On New Book." Why do I suspect that Mr. Cent will be warming the bench while the rest of his "team" writes the book?"We are living through chaotic times; the standard models for success in business and life don't work so well anymore. 50, as the consummate strategist of the street and boardroom, exemplifies the new entrepreneurial spirit required for the 21st century. The 50th Law will reveal the secret to his success and how we can all apply this to our lives."Yep, you bet. Read more:Thanks
Shameful Self-Censorship 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I haven't heard of books being burned in a while. Of course, books are still being banned by certain governments, churches, schools, etc. It happens every day. But why make it this easy? COPENHAGEN: A Japanese publisher has refused to publish a novel written by a Danish author amid fears that it could upset Muslim readers, the writer's Copenhagen agent said yesterday.The Shimanaka Shoten company has "cancelled the planned publication" of The Enemy in the Mirror by Leif Davidsen, who has written a number of spy novels that have been translated into several languages, agent Anneli Hoejer told TV2 News."It's a suspenseful thriller and absolutely not controversial in my opinion," she said, referring to the novel which is set the day after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. The climate of intimidation continues to spread as we censor ourselves for fear of "offending" the Muslim population. No other group gets that kind of "respect" or self-censorship on its behalf. Read more:Censorship
Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Google Video has made available this interesting 53-minute film about the famous Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company and its owner George Whitman. If you have a high speed internet connection, this is well worth your time. What a strange place...but wonderful and unique. Read more:Portrait
, Bookstore
, Old Man
Martin Dressler 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The subtitle to this Steven Millhauser book is: "The Tale of an American Dreamer" and, if nothing else, Martin
Dressler was one hell of a dreamer. Martin Dressler is the story of a young boy who grew up in a room over his father's small cigar shop, a room from which the youngest Dressler schemed and plotted ways to grow his father's cigar business. Each early success encouraged Dressler to build on dreams ever bigger than the ones that preceded them as he moved from one restaurant, to a chain of restaurants, to small hotels, to larger and larger hotels, and finally to something that the world had never seen before, a self-contained vertical city that became his ruination.Sadly enough, Dressler never had much of a personal life, preferring work to relationships, and he was really only close to one person before his downfall, his sister-in-law. Married to a woman whom he found to be more physically attractive, too late he found that he had made a terrible choice of a wife, a wife
Assume the Pose, Charlie 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Charlie Shugarts lives on in Denver's Tattered Cover bookstore despite the fact that he passed away on January 31 at age 88. "Charlie" was moved to the bookstore in 1990 after a couple of years at a downtown mall where he didn't "weather too well" and he's been delighting store customers and its owner ever since. According to the Denver Post:Shugarts often visited the Cherry Creek Tattered Cover and, later, the new location on East Colfax Avenue. He would sit down next to the statue and assume the pose, said his wife, Beverly.Shugarts would say later: "People would look at me and not know whether I was dead or alive."Shugarts' outgoing personality and affability were the reasons his niece, Margaret Quinn, chose him for a project to put art on the downtown 16th Street Mall in 1988.Just something else you will never see in your local Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstores. Read more:Assume
, Charlie
Dickens Lust 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I can't help myself. I love buying books and adding them to my personal library, and with eBay and other internet books sources making it all so easy these days I really have to watch myself. Here's a good example of what happens to me on a regular basis. The other night I spotted ten very attractive Charles Dickens
novels that were published in 1885 by Belford, Clarke & Company of New York. The original owner of the books signed and dated each of them when she received them for Christmas 1886.Now, right up front, I realized that I could not afford all ten of the books since each one of them had a starting bid price of $5.00 plus $5.00 in postage and handling fees. But imagine my surprise and delight when I picked up two of them for bids of only $5.50 and $7.50, respectively. Two of the books were subsequently withdrawn from the eBay auction but two others were still available when I checked last night. At least one of the ten went for something over $20.00 but I didn't follo
Charming Billy 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Charming Billy
is not an easy book to read for several reasons, not the least being the fact that its central character, Billy Lynch, a hopeless alcoholic, is already dead by the opening scene of the book. And despite the book's title, Billy Lynch is only charming in the usual manner of alcoholics who stay drunk as many hours a day as they can get away with it. Sadly, as part of the close knit Irish community in which he worked and lived, Billy fit right in and no one was able to save him from himself.But subject matter aside, this was also a difficult book to read because of the way that Alice McDermott uses flashback and vague narration in order to reconstruct and explain the life of the recently deceased Billy Lynch. She doesn't offer the reader much help in piecing together all the bits and hints that she discloses over the course of the book. So many names are thrown out by McDermott, and her narrator is so vague at times about who the new characters are and how they relat
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith 1970-01-01 00:59:59 With Tom Ripley
, Patricia
Highsmith created one of the more memorable sociopath serial killers of fictional history. And, despite the fact that parts of her plot are not quite believable, The Talented Mr. Ripley, written in 1955, has to be considered a classic crime novel.Tom Ripley was not the kind of man who was willing to work hard for the finer things that he felt that life owed him. Rather, he found it enjoyable to manipulate those around him into giving him some of those things and, if that didn't work, he was more than willing to take those things however he could get them. When Dickie Greenleaf's father asked Ripley to go to Italy in an attempt to talk his son into returning to the family's New York business, Ripley immediately recognized an opportunity to escape his unhappy New York existence at the expense of someone else. Unfortunately, for Dickie Greenleaf, Tom fell in love with Greenleaf's European lifestyle and decided to take that for his own, too.Patricia Highs
Low Tech Books Still Offer More Than High-Tech Replacements 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Whitney Gould of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned yesterday that a friend of hers has dubbed her "Gutenberg in the Digital Age" because she doesn't own things like an iPod, cable television, a digital camera or a Blackberry. She disavows any interest in new technology and explains why she much prefers a good book over any electronic version of the same thing. While I am Gould's complete opposite when it comes to new technology gizmos, I completely agree with her that a good book beats a new tech version of the same thing hands down.Recently, when I was convalescing from back surgery and a fractured foot, my techno-aversion took on new dimensions. After a brief fantasy about gizmos that might make my confinement more palatable (now is the time to finally call the cable guy; I really should get into text messaging, etc.), I reverted to my primitive ways. What I craved more than any high-tech gadget, I realized, was time to read.And read I did - 18 books in four months. Novels Read more:Books
, Offer
, Replacements
The Original Help Desk? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 This is very clever and thank goodness for the subtitles because I'm not real sure which Scandinavian language I'm hearing... Read more:Original
, Help Desk
The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Debra Marquart was born to a North Dakota dairy farming family and she got away from the farm and the state just as soon as she could, ready or not. She is the youngest of three sisters and one brother and, in her own judgment, was pretty much a disappointment to her parents until she neared forty years of age. Her career path is an interesting one but it is not one that would make it easy for parents to sleep at night: singer for traveling bands that covered the gamut from country to punk, college dropout, college professor and, now, coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Iowa State University and musician with a rhythm and blues project called The Bone People.The HorizontalWorld
is Marquart's frank account of what it was like for a girl with her temperament to grow up on a farm that that already been in her family for several generations and in a community in which everyone knew exactly who she was and everything about her. Despite her haste in leaving all that behind, Mar Read more:Growing
, Nowhere
Steinbeck Collector Wins Big at Auction 1970-01-01 00:59:59 There are book collectors like me who feel guilty about paying more than $50 for a book and then there are book collectors like Jim Dourgarian who jump at a chance to buy five personally inscribed John Steinbeck first editions in one 30-minute span.By the end of the auction Sunday, Dourgarian was the owner of five first editions from the collection of Elizabeth Steinbeck Ainsworth, the author's sister. Another buyer paid $47,800 for a copy of Steinbeck's Depression-era masterpiece "The Grapes of Wrath,'' which is believed to be the world record for an auction sale of a Steinbeck novel....... Dourgarian made the time to jump into the auction and ended up with five first editions, including a copy of Steinbeck's first book, the 1929 "Cup of Gold,'' which he purchased for $21,510.The price is a relative bargain for a book that's truly a one-of-a-kind piece for collectors, he said."These are the last of the closely held family books,'' Dourgarian said. "There's not a lot to trum Read more:Collector
, Auction
But Who's Counting? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So how many books does the average reader finish in a year? That's a question that I see on many book blogs and over at the wonderful Library Thing website all the time. In my own case, I've found that my aversion to today's television programming has resulted in a steady increase in the number of books that I read each year. In fact, because my television viewing has averaged less than one hour a week for the last three or four years, I have been reading 80-100 books a year. That's at least 40 more books per year than I read when I was an All-American couch potato with a remote control in his right hand.Kurt Hackemer, a University of South Dakota history teacher, has noticed the same effect on his entire family since he moved them to a small South Dakota town and didn't bother to connect the family television set.Since moving to rural Vermillion without cable TV, Kurt Hackemer says he and his family read more.It's not like they banned television from their household - they j Read more:Counting
Down for the Count? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I still try to tell myself that there is a future for small, independent "mom & pop" style bookstores even though all the evidence and my own logic tells me otherwise. Here in Houston we are down to a precious few of those stores and I suspect that there will never again be as many of them here as there are today. Shrinkage of this type is hard for a book lover to watch.The San Francisco area has long had the reputation of supporting some of the best independent bookstores in the country, but it appears that those stores are suffering the same fate that their cousins are facing everywhere else. We all recognize the culprits: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, eBay and the countless other websites on which books are bought and sold. Sure, I know who the "bad guys" are supposed to be. But I spend a lot of money with most of those "bad guys," in particular with Barnes & Noble because of their brilliant scheme of sponsoring their own credit card that takes the place of their ol
One Man's Trash... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Here's another one of those stories that will make book lovers around the world sick to their stomachs. It seems that a used book store owner couldn't (or wouldn't) pay his rent. As a result, his stock of 500,000 used books was locked up by the owner of the building. And, yes, you guessed it. All 500,000 were eventually just thrown into the dump. The books belonged to used bookseller Paul Saindon, who was evicted from his store in the Vieux Longueuil district three months ago for not paying rent. After the building's owner threatened to throw the books into the garbage, the city decided to put the books into storage temporarily at its own cost, La Presse reported.The city tried to find someone to take the books before dumping them, but no one wanted them, a spokesperson said.I suppose that I should try to be more understanding when I read this kind of news. After all, the city in question should not have had to foot the storage costs or the cost of shipping these books to othe Read more:Trash
, One Man
Just What We Need - An Anna Nicole Smith Book Is Rushed to Market 1970-01-01 00:59:59 How did we sink to this? I have to admit that it doesn't surprise me because the world's mass culture seems to sink to a new low on a weekly basis, but I'm impressed with the speed in which this piece of junk is being rushed back onto the market. "I just thought, so much has happened in the ten years since the first book came out that it would make a good trade paperback," Carole Stuart, the publisher of Barricade Books, told the Times. "Then of course last week she dies. And so we suddenly got really, really attractive to the distributors and book buyers." She added: "We didn't kill her or anything."I've been pretty much aware that Anna Nicole Smith
existed for a long time but I tried to ignore her because, frankly, I was always embarrassed when she claimed Houston as her home. I never could figure out what she did to earn her fame other than to take her clothes off for the cameras, prostitute herself with a man old enough to be her grandfather, make a public nuisance of hersel Read more:Rushed
, Market
Probable Cause 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Probable Cause
is Theresa Schwegel's follow-up to her Edgar Award-winning novel, Officer Down. I was not much impressed by Officer Down but I did enjoy that one enough to give it a rating of 3.0 and the implied recommendation that fans of detective fiction give it a shot. I'm sorry to say that I can't do that with Schwegel's second novel.Schwegel manages to tell a fairly interesting story about a group of Chicago cops who are just "bent" enough to force rookie policemen to commit burglaries on their behalf as part of the initiation into their police brotherhood. But in the process of telling that story she is unable to create even one character that is particularly likable or even wholly believable. Even the ultimate hero of the piece, Ray Weiss, remains pretty much a stereotypical womanizer of a young policeman despite Schwegel's attempts to make him sympathetic by having him carry the burden of parents who are disappointed in his life choices.But the biggest failure of the b Read more:Probable
One Man Revisits His Old Books 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I believe that most of us are overwhelmed at times when we look at our bookshelves and realize how many of the books are still unread despite having been on the shelves for months or even for years. Then we begin to think about those books that we read one or more decades ago and which have remained closed ever since we finished them. And, of course, there's the problem that we all have in finding shelf space for the dozens of books that we continue to bring home every year. The forest has indeed become so large that we no longer can spot the trees.Dmetri Kakmi, a senior editor at Penguin Books
Australia, has recently recognized the problem and has done something about it. He's completed a massive culling of his shelves, eliminating everything that he no longer holds in high esteem or which he is not likely to read again. And he claims that he feels better for having done it. I don't know if I will ever have the nerve to take this particular approach with my own bookshelves b Read more:One Man
The Accidental 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The audio version of The Accidental
is made especially memorable by the excellent ensemble cast that reads it. Each of the actors has been expertly chosen to read the thoughts and experiences of one of the four members of the Smart family and the young lady who "accidentally" enters into, and radically changes, their lives. And as is almost always the case, I have to wonder how differently I have reacted to the audio book version of The Accidental in comparison to how I might have reacted to the written version of the book. The readers are that good.The Smarts, a London family living in a Norfolk cottage that they have rented for the summer, are a family coming apart at the seams at the beginning of the novel. Michael is a university professor who spends more time trying to seduce his female students than he does in educating them. Eve, his wife, is a second-rate novelist who specializes in re-creating the lives of people who were killed during World War II by changing the circum
I Don't Like This Book So I'm Keeping It 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A group of Florida parents have come up with a unique way to censor the books that are in their children's school libraries. While I don't agree with what they are doing at all, I do have to kind of admire the method to their madness...but only if they reimburse the library for the unreturned books. Come to think of it, that could start a never-ending cycle of these particular books flowing in and out of the libraries and should make the authors very happy.A group of parents in Miami-Dade have come up with a unique way to get books they considered controversial off the shelves at their children's schools libraries. They check them out, but never return them.Dalila Rodriguez admits she checked out "Discovering Cultures, Cuba" from the library at her son's school Norma Butler Bossard Elementary at 15950 SW 144th St. earlier this month, and doesn't plan to return it. Rodriguez said this book, like another controversial book she's checked out "Vamos a Cuba," contains fa
2007 Tournament of Books Contenders Announced 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The Morning News.org has announced this year's nominees for its "prestigious" Rooster Award. For those like me, who missed this event last year, let me try to explain how it works. The website has come up with a list of what it considers to be 16 of the best novels written in 2006 and, much like what happens in the NCAA Basketball tournament, will next divide the books into brackets in which each book will go head-to-head against another book. A judge will read each of the books and will choose one of the two as "best" so that that book can move on to the next round to face another of the 16 books and a different judge. It's not clear to me if all 16 books are in the same bracket to begin with or if the tournament will begin with two groups of eight or four groups of four, etc. But the main point is that at the end of the readings only one book will be left standing as 2007 Rooster-winner.This really sounds like fun and something to watch over the next few weeks, and it's anoth Read more:Tournament
, Books
Book Blogs vs. Newspaper Book Supplements 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Author Susan Hill is also a book-blogger and she hit the nail squarely on the head a few days ago when she described what it is in the nature of book blogs that makes them so appealing to book lovers. It's the fact that we don't have to read about the same old 20 or 25 books that appear on the various Best Seller lists each week, the same books that we find in every major bookstore in the country. Suddenly we have choice, such a vast choice that it's hard to keep up with the abundance of books and authors that we discover every week.Literary editors focus almost exclusively on new books, that is their remit; the trade focuses a lot on what is New New New. But one of the joys of book blogging is this absence of stress on the new. I read and re-read. I pick up something recently published. I embark on the Anthony Powell Dance to the Music of Time sequence, which I will eventually write about here. I re-read a Dickens. I enthuse about a novel to be published in August, a proof copy o Read more:Blogs
, Newspaper
Does Anyone Really Read These Things? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The New York Times had an article yesterday concerning a "minigenre of publishing" that it labels "candidate lit." As this country rather painfully (and way too early) makes its way toward another presidential election campaign, many publishers are releasing new books by hopeful candidates and are even emptying their warehouses of leftovers from previously released books that they hope to unload on a gullible public.For candidates, writing a book is a way to make money, build gravitas and grab media attention. (They can also use a memoir as a dumping ground for past unpleasantries, paving the way for the campaign-trail line "I addressed that in my book")For publishers the 2008 campaign season is the time to rerelease forgotten titles, sign unpublished candidates and, if they're lucky, laugh all the way to the bank as they reap sales from best-selling political books. "What you have, essentially, is a celebrity with built-in press coverage," said David Rosenthal, the publish Read more:Anyone
How Can They Let This Happen? 1970-01-01 00:59:59 The article's subtitle tells it all: "County libraries get ready to shut down April 6 from a lack of funding." When I spotted this Mail Tribune article I almost passed it by, thinking that it was just another article about a library being shut down temporarily while renovations to the building were being completed. It seems to be happening a lot lately in Harris County, Texas, where I live and I assumed that the article was just going to explain the alternatives that library patrons had while the work was underway. But something about the length of the article made me take a second look. How can this be allowed to happen, Oregon?Talent's new library will open today with much fanfare even as all 15 Jackson County branches set in motion a timetable to mothball the system indefinitely after their closure April 6.This twist of fate doesn't faze local donors who have put their heart and soul into the new building next to City Hall. The donors have opened their pocketbooks to enlarge
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