Sunday, February 28, 2010

Book Review – Lights Out by Halffast

Like One Second After, the earlier Lights Out by David Crawford a.k.a. Halffast, is about he aftermath of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States and comes with my highest recommendation. EMP affects modern electronic devices but not older electronics using tubes.

This story play out on the outskirts of a medium-sized town in Texas in the vicinity of San Antonio. The main characters are caught completely off guard – they are not survivalists or preppers, but they are intelligent and self-sufficient types. Any regular reader of this or other survivalist blogs likely is better prepared.

The main characters slowly end up becoming leaders in their subdivision, and a key element in this book is that it takes a group working together to provide community security. Those trying to go it alone come to untimely ends. The situation for the main characters is less dire than in One Second After, but the need to form a community and populate it with persons with the right skills is highlighted.

Many basic needs are covered, including repairing some care to function after an EMP, farming, weapons and security, travel on post-apocalyptic roads, community security and patrols, etc.

Lights Out has been posted on the net as a free eBook for several years. In my opinion, it is excellent and has my highest recommendation. While it offers less of a how-to approach than Patriots, the characters and dialogue are much more natural. The full Adobe file is just over 600 pages, and while the first 200 pages or so are slow, it’s a real page turner after that.

The first twenty chapters are currently available for download at Frugal Squirrels, but the author apparently has a movie deal in the works so the full version of the eBook is scarce. If you can’t find one, contact me and I’ll send you a link.

It is important to be clear on one point; whether or not the effects of an EMP attack on electronic devices are exaggerated or not is largely irrelevant – the consequences for the collapse of our society would still likely be the nearly same since it very likely would take down the networks needed for modern life in the U.S. We would have the benefit of power, communications, and transportation for a bit longer, but when supply chains disintegrate, so does the rest.

[Via http://suburbansurvivalist.wordpress.com]

Review: Baling by Carol Hanrahan

Baling

By Carol Hanrahan

Buy Link: http://www.amazon.com/Baling-Carol-Hanrahan/dp/1442168374

It was a snowy weekend in my little corner of the world, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend it than reading a story about long, lazy summer days in the country. “Baling” by Carol Hanrahan is a delightful coming of age story that chronicles one magical summer in the lives of two teenaged boys.

When Nick and his younger brother, John, find out they have to spend the summer at their Aunt Jess’ farm, helping out with the baling, they are not exactly overjoyed at the prospect. Especially Nick, the older of the two, who’d planned to spend his vacation watching movies, visiting Six Flags Theme Parks, and mostly, attending driving classes in the hope of obtaining his license. Nevertheless, they have little choice except to go along with the plan. From the day they arrive on the farm, life becomes one adventure after another, and they discover that a summer in the country may not be as dull as they’d first imagined. When the boys come across an old Civil War jacket and a packet of letters hidden away in their Aunt’s attic, they team up with Lainey Wallace, the beautiful neighbor girl, and go in search of hidden treasure. In the process, they encounter danger and uncover a family secret, and seventeen-year-old Nick discovers the magic of falling in love.

I really enjoyed this story. The author has a lovely talent for describing the joy of country living. Indeed, the writing was so vivid I could almost smell Aunt Jess’ chocolate cake baking in the oven, see the beauty of the starry night sky, and feel the soft whisper of the summer breeze. The story was very well paced, with a nice balance of action-packed scenes to keep the pages turning, and plenty of quiet moments where I could pause to savor the beauty of the landscape. The story is strong on family values, and is a refreshing reminder of life’s simple pleasures.

The storytelling was lovely, the plot, interesting, and the characters, likeable (if a bit underdeveloped.) All of this added up to a wonderful reading experience. I recommend “Baling” to anyone who enjoys heartwarming stories of life in the country.

–Honeybee

[Via http://workinggirlreviews.wordpress.com]

Saturday, February 27, 2010

PINOCCHIO: VAMPIRE SLAYER By: Dustin Higgins and Van Jensen

     How cool of a mash-up concept is this?  Pinocchio as a vampire slayer with a built-in wooden stake. This graphic novel based on the chilling Carl Collodi tale of a puppet come to life enjoys a modern twist when vampires are thrown into the mix. Dustin Higgins and Van Jensen combine their writing and drawing skills to create a Pinocchio tale that adds another dimension of creepiness to an already horrifying tale (who would have thought it possible — the story scared me half to death in so many ways when I was a kid).
     If you are curious at this point, which I know you are, read it. The Lycan Librarian’s only criticism is that the guys were a little lax as far as the plot goes. They begin with illustrated blocks that fly through most of the story with short “this happened and then this happened” curtness. I was hoping for more meat to the actual tale. If you have never seen or read anything except the Disney versions of this story, get your hands on a copy of Collodi’s original PINOCCHIO and prepare yourself for a wonderfully dark and vicious tale.

     I hope this concept is expanded into novel form because it is a book begging to be written, and definitely the type of idea a writer such as the Lycan Librarian hears and wishes they had thought of themselves.

[Via http://lycanlibrarian.wordpress.com]

Career Warfare

I have chosen Career Warfare as my first professional book to review. it is a thought provoking and interesting read. The book is written by David F. D’Alessandro. He came to prominence when he served as the chairman, chief executive officer, and president of John Hancock Financial Services from 2001 to 2004. The book contains many excellent practical tips with vivid examples.

My review will focus on the first three chapters in the book. If you want to be successful you must understand the lessons identified here. I provide several key points in bullet format from the book verbatim. The author provides excellent examples to support each observation. I will also speak to some of the key personal lessons I have taken from the book.

Chapter 1:

Your personal brand will determine your success. Guard it and promote it.

  • Know how other people see you.
  • Know what you don’t know.
  • Leadership is about people not theory

I agree that leadership is about people not theory. It’s fair to point out though that people and theory are not mutually exclusive as some people seem to think. It never ceases to amaze me how often some people will dismiss an idea because it has come from book. I have read many books on management. Some are better then others. They have certainly helped me be more effective in my role. Even though this book has 10 chapters if you only read the first 3 and REALLY live the lessons the author suggests you will recoup your investment many times over.

If you want to get ahead you need 5 key qualities

  • Make things happen in the organization (He says make money)
  • Tell the truth
  • Be discreet
  • Keep your promises
  • Make people want to work with you

When I evaluate my progress against these 5 I think I have matured a lot as a manager within the last year or so. I have a reputation for being impatient. I  bring a sense of urgency to whatever I do. This is often a good thing. Some colleagues would like me to be more of a team player. In my desire to resolve the problems I have often overlooked the politics of the situation. The problem gets addressed but many people are unhappy. I have worked hard to improve my performance in this area with considerable success. I certainly have more work to do here though.

Until a year ago or so I was always eager to hear the office “gossip”\speculation on impending re-orgs etc at Sage. I got myself in BIG trouble by”‘connecting the dots”  and trying to figure out what would happen next. What a waste of time and energy. My life has been a lot simpler ever since I stopped doing this. I am reasonably confident that many of my previous and current reports would recommend me as a boss. I believe this is because I am committed to their success and am very candid with them.

Chapter 2:

Your boss is the co-author of your brand.

Bosses want 3 things:

  • Loyalty
  • Good Advice
  • To have their personal brands polished.

What you need from your boss:

  • Trust
  • A fair exchange

I am fortunate in this regard with my current boss. I have the freedom to say what I like behind closed doors with Ken. Bosses who claim they are open minded but really want you to be an order taker are stifling to work for. As long as I disagree before the decision but commit to it afterwards Ken is fine. The author says experience is more important then money early in your career. I had no background in R&D before I started to work for him. I have enjoyed a lot of autonomy to add value as a project manager and functional QA manager. I get to leverage my strengths and demonstrate my ability to take on new and complex work. In return I have excelled in every role he has given me. To the author’s point my work and support has been an important factor in Ken’s success.

Chapter 3

Put your boss on the couch. (Figure out what type of  boss you have)

  • Good mentors  make sure your reputation rises in tandem with theirs.
  • Good mentors understand that your brand has to change as you gain experience.
  • Be tolerant of your bosses weaknesses if they give you an opportunity to build your brand.
  • Get out from a boss who is only interested in using you.

I think the author is exactly right here. The real challenge is how do you know what your boss is saying about you with other senior colleagues? My guess is Ken does try to promote my interests. I don’t and can’t really know for sure though. There are very few players with REAL power to promote people in the organization I work for. My suggestion is that you need to find out who these people are in your organization. Make sure your accomplishments are visible to them without undermining your boss. 

Rest of the book

The rest of the book while interesting did not capture my imagination the way the first three chapters did. I don’t agree with several of the author’s recommendations. For example, he says that it is a bad idea to work for an entrepreneuer in Chapter 5 if you want to build your own brand. I can’t say that I have worked for an entrepreneur but the advice seems a little bizarre and way too general. Management authors such as Marcus Buckingham share my opinion on this. There is bad bosses in every walk of professional life.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book. You DO need more then success and a strong work ethic to be  successful. You will learn some very practical lessons to be a more accomplished professional if you take the time to read “Career Warfare”. I hope this post encourages you to read the book.

If anyone has any comments or feedback I would love to hear them.

 

[Via http://donaldepaor.com]

The Child Thief by Brom

The Child Thief was a trip into the sort of fairy tale fantasy world so common in countless kid’s fantasy adventure stories, except this is not your typical children’s fantasy. The story is told through such a raw, unfliching style, which never shies away from showing brutal tragedy as brutal tragedy and terrible violence in all its terrible detail.

At its heart it is the story of Peter Pan, a Peter Pan which is in some ways more true to the original works by J. M. Barrie than the Peter Pan headlining in all the child friendly movies, records, and cartoons which most people are so familiar with. At least it is more true to the Peter Pan which was implied by Barrie’s works, and more true to the mythologies which inspired Barrie as well. Though even the original works by J. M. Barrie often glossed over death and violence without ever focusing on any sort of realistic psycholigical effects among the children invloved.

The Child Thief re-imagines Peter as a lost soul, outcast from both the world of the fae and the world of men, he fights for his survival among men and he fights for his place among the fae. Throughout the ages he develops a savage bloodlust and keen survival insticts, becoming both a cold strategist and a savage warrior as a reaction to the harrowing times and persecutions he lives through. Forever young, he eventually finds that he can bring others with him into the world of fairy, but only children, for only they still retain some degree of purity and magic which allows them to pass between the worlds, with Peter’s guidance.

So in order to fight against a great threat which looms over all he holds dear in the realm of fairy, Peter is driven to gather an army of children from the world of men. Children to fight and die in his war against a nightmare threat. Peter is often torn between his own noble ideals and the reality of bringing innocent kids into his war to bleed in battle and die for his cause, but the fact that he himself is still only a boy, combined with the very importance of all that is at stake, make it somehow justifiable in his mind.

The other children are mostly filled with a deep loyalty for Peter. They are children who were lost and alone when he found them. The unwanted, the enslaved, the abused, and doomed to die. He saved each one of them from something, he gave them a life, a family, and taught them to kill and die after giving them something to believe in, something worth killing and dying for. Of course they loved him for it. Except for those few that didn’t, the ones that resented him, hated him, feared him, and saw the insanity and cruelty of involving children in his personal war – of teaching them to enjoy it. Then there were those that never even made it to the land of fairy, those who Peter had saved only to be lost to the terrors and trials of the trip between worlds, lost to a fate worse than death – they had no idea what they were agreeing to, until it was far too late. And worse still, were those children who were just a bit too old, the magic of fairy would corrupt them, twisting them into vile, deformed, bloodthirsty shadows of themselves.

Peter is a troubled child, with an uncertain past and an uncertain future, in world frought with insidious bewitchments, on the brink of disaster. His deadly grim band of devil kids are troubled children too. Each with their own tragic tales to tell. And the whole magical fairy tale is delivered with such a ruthless clarity that it succeeds in really bringing the horror to life, and breathing real purpose into the rich tapestry of characters which B has assembled so flawlessly for us.

One thing which really impressed me about this book was that the writing itself was quite nearly perfect. I enjoy a great many books because they are good stories or present interesting or original concepts, but I often find the prose itself lacking. Not here. I did not find Brom’s prose lacking in the least, his writing compliments his imagination perfectly.

Many authors writing today seem to have either forgotten, discarded, or simply failed to learn many basic tenets of good story telling and writing.  Some of the issues which seem rampant in today’s novels are long, exhaustive descriptions (one of the first things writers learn is to show, not tell – but many writers today either fail to understand this or fail to see the value of it). Lack of active prose. Poor research. Tedious disertations on fictional histories in order to create some degree of internal consistency, or just failing to achieve internal consistency at all. Predictable outcomes, or unpredictable outcomes which are poorly executed and are obviously just for the sake of unpredictability. Gaping plot holes. Excessive repetition of tired cliches. Easy solutions that materialize virtually out of thin air. Etc.. Etc..

Not Brom. In The Child Thief I found his writing to be more impeccable than anything I have read in quite some time. He was not lazy about researching his subject and his keen attention to most of the tenets of good writing really pay off. He also doesn’t ever really take the easy path with this story, sometimes accomplishing spectacular feats of skillful writing and imagination in order to bring together a more difficult to compose, but infinitely more engaging and well thought out tale. Sometimes it may begin to feel a little predictable, but it seldom really is, once you turn the page. Truly a masterfully crafted tale by a truly multi-talented artist.

Brom takes a wonderful, classic children’s story to whole new levels of brilliance and poetry which is not for the kids anymore, or even the feint of heart. The Child Thief is certainly a page turner, and not likely to disapoint. Many stories I read are excellent right up until the last couple of chapters at which point the story falls into one of a small handful of overused and cliched outcomes and/or simply tie up the story with a quick, convenient and often internally inconsistent reckoning, which for me kind of spoils the whole story. Again, Brom has avoided this pitfall, and delivered a darkly poetic saga which maintains its appeal from beginning to end.  Some may take issue with how the story concludes, but from a critical standpoint the ending was flawless, though I’ll refrain from saying any more about that, lest I give anything away.

In summary: a masterpiece.

[Via http://unmortal.wordpress.com]

Thursday, February 25, 2010

THE SEVEN SAYINGS OF THE SAVIOR ON THE CROSS - A.W. Pink

The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross by A.W. Pink is a devotional look at the final words uttered by Jesus on Calvary’s tree.  But these meditations are more than mere musings.  To the contrary, Pink’s insight is theologically charged, mind altering, and heart transforming.

Pink turns the heart of the reader to the person and work of Christ.  He skillfully explains each of the seven sayings of the Savior on the cross and makes direct application to Christ-followers and calls the unregenerate to repentance.

Pink’s work is an excellent introduction to the basics of Christ’s cross work.  Readers would do well to proceed to The Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney, The Cross of Christ by John Stott, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross by Leon Morris and Pierced for Our Transgressions by Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach.

4  stars

[Via http://baldreformer.wordpress.com]

So push back...

Stop Being Pushed Around by Lynda Bevan is essentially a guide to building self-esteem. The majority of it focuses on romantic relationships, which makes sense because most self-esteem issues only become apparent when one is in a relationship or is just coming out of one.

 It should be noted that the book is merely a guide.The most effective practice is self-examination as is shown throughout the book by the questions Bevan poses to the reader. Stop Being Pushed Around does eventually does give a few examples of negative and positive ways to respond to criticism, disrespect, and other tools that are used to pick away at a person’s confidence. Also, throughout the book are several quotes sprinkled in just the right places to inspire the reader.

Overall, the book is a great guide on how to build one’s esteem. It presents several realistic scenarios and gives the pros and cons to different responses. I feel this is the most effective in showing the reader the most efficient way to counter those who are making them feel inferior.

[Via http://bwloca.wordpress.com]

Salt: Just Two Books

When I joined Twitter over a year ago, one of the first things I learned about was Salt Publishing’s Just One Book campaign. Evidently Salt, like many small publishers, was in trouble, and this was their approach to try to raise awareness and sales. The meme went around the literary community quickly, and drew a lot of attention to Salt’s books. I’d never read any of Salt’s authors, so I went and checked out their website, read some of the poems and decided to support them by purchasing my one book: Siân Hughes’ The Missing.

Hughes’ poems are excellent. They mine the regret and sadness of loss: loss of love, loss of dignity, loss of a job, and most poignantly, the loss of a child. I have no idea if Hughes’ life has taken any of these turns, but the poems feel devastatingly real, the book having an air of confession and intimacy–often relieved by a dark humor. If this is the caliber of Salt’s publications, I thought, I wanted more.

Read “The Send Off” by Siân Hughes, which won the Arvon International Poetry Competition 2006.

Watch Siân Hughes read several excellent poems from The Missing:

After reading an article in The Times about several young British poets  (“The Facebook Poets”) I became interested in reading more of Olivia Cole’s   poetry. Her debut collection, Restricted View, received some generous praise from Clive James and Cole was instantly being compared to Sylvia Plath (for her sake, I hope that doesn’t turn out to be entirely accurate). Thankfully, the poems themselves do live up to the hype, and fully deserve praise and readers.

Olivia Cole writes intoxicatingly about young love, first love, the excitement of discovery, and the general thrill of being young. (She writes about the end of relationships, about regret and failure, too, but it’s the celebratory poems that really stir the imagination and linger in memory.) The subject matter of the most-memorable poems almost makes Restricted View the thematic yin to The Missing’s yang. Cole’s work proves she’s not the party girl that the day-job as a literary and “party scene” columnist for a British paper might suggest.

Read “Matinee Idol” by Olivia Cole,  one of my favorite poems in Restricted View.

I’m often disappointed to find that new books of poetry from established poets only contain one or two truly memorable (to me, anyway) new poems. That’s not a problem with the work of Siân Hughes and Olivia Cole, both are curious, creative poets who write about a range of events and emotions. I don’t know anything about the biography of either beyond that on the dust jackets, so I can’t know if the poetry comes from great feats of imaginative empathy or from bitter experience, but the work convinces, the poems have the feel of truth, and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.

Watch Olivia Cole read two poems from Restricted View:

I’m contemplating which Salt poetry collection I want to read next, and I’d welcome any suggestions.

[Via http://wordhoarder.wordpress.com]

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"half a continent...changed hands at the scratch of a pen"

The scratch of a pen : 1763 and the transformation of North America    Oxford, England ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2006  Colin G. Calloway Treaty of Paris (1763) Hardcover. First edition and printing. xvii, 219 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-208) and index. Clean, tight and strong binding with clean dust jacket. No highlighting, underlining or marginalia in text. VG/VG

In February 1763, Britain, Spain, and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War. In this one document, more American territory changed hands than in any treaty before or since. As the great historian Francis Parkman wrote, “half a continent…changed hands at the scratch of a pen.”

As Colin Calloway reveals in this superb history, the Treaty set in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences. Indians and Europeans, settlers and frontiersmen, all struggled to adapt to new boundaries, new alignments, and new relationships. Britain now possessed a vast American empire stretching from Canada to the Florida Keys, yet the crushing costs of maintaining it would push its colonies toward rebellion. White settlers, free to pour into the West, clashed as never before with Indian tribes struggling to defend their way of life.

In the Northwest, Pontiac’s War brought racial conflict to its bitterest level so far. Whole ethnic groups migrated, sometimes across the continent: it was 1763 that saw many exiled settlers from Acadia in French Canada move again to Louisiana, where they would become Cajuns. Calloway unfurls this panoramic canvas with vibrant narrative skill,
peopling his tale with memorable characters such as William Johnson, the Irish baronet who moved between Indian campfires and British barracks; Pontiac, the charismatic Ottawa chieftain whose warriors, for a time, chased the Europeans from Indian country; and James Murray, Britain’s first governor in Quebec, who fought to protect the religious rights of his French Catholic subjects.

Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.

[Via http://oldsaltbooks.wordpress.com]

The Mayo Clinic Diet Book Review

Who doesn’t need to lose weight?  I fully admit I need to, especially after I made a cinnamon roll and cream cheese frosting bundt cake that was swimming in butter at 10:00 pm this evening.  (I know, shame on me.)  I’ve never ate a healthy diet in my life and my best attempts at nutrition are drinking water, taking fish oil pills and eating whipped yogurt.  The Mayo Clinic Diet is a book I was more than happy to review for this blog, especially since I was a patient of Mayo Clinic last year and was blown away by their campus and the doctors I met who finally diagnosed me with Dysautonomia. 

The Mayo Clinic Diet starts off with a quick introduction by Dr. Donald Hensrud, reminding readers that this book and it’s recommendations isn’t a fad diet and it was written due to the various bogus “Mayo Clinic Diets” that have been around for years.  The book starts off with a two-week plan to get you on track and losing up to 6 – 10 pounds right away.  And then it gets down to the nitty-gritty, and tells the reader the five simple habits they need to help them take off the weight, as well as gives them five habits to break so that you can keep it from coming back.  When I came across their healthy weight pyramid, I was thrilled to see they had added in “fats” and “sweets,” two very important food groups close to my heart.  I personally think this is why most other diets don’t work, because they usually keep fats and sweets away from you, when we all know this is impossible. 

The book is very cool, it is extremely visual and easy to read, and it includes everything from recipes to visual clues on serving sizes (page 88, you were my favorite, as you were filled with beautiful images of steak) to many strategies for all of the behavior obstacles every emotional eater and junk food junkie faces.  If you are nutritionally challenged like I am, you will find a solution to every challenge you face, especially important ones, such as “I can’t afford healthy foods,” “I don’t have time to exercise,” and “I’m not good at menu planning.”  I like the scare tactics section, where the book tells you why you are overweight and what this can do to your health.  Mayo scared me straight after learning that people who have gained over 10 pounds from young adulthood are at risk for weight-related conditions.  One of my worst fears is getting diabetes, and having a foot or leg cut off like my step-uncle.  When I was a young adult, I weight between 116 – 125 pounds.  (I was 5′10, so this was pretty skinny for a tall chick.)  I can assure all of you that I am most definitely at least ten pounds over that weight today, partly my thyroid’s fault.  I’ve always abused food my entire life and I know this book can cure me from that.  Because when I am hitting cinnamon and butter late at night and alone because I’m not feeling good, I know I have a problem and I’m close to hitting rock bottom.  If you are anything like me, then this book needs to be in your hands asap.

Buy your copy of The Mayo Clinic Diet here.

Mayo Clinic is the first not-for-profit integrated group practice in the world.  Doctors from every specialty work together to diagnose and treat patients.  Mayo is the largest integrated hospital in the world and they treat over a half a million patients every year.  When you buy a copy of this book, the proceeds will fund medical education and research at Mayo Clinic.  So, by helping yourself, you are also helping out people like me.

[Via http://thegirlfromtheghetto.wordpress.com]

Resources for parents from the Int'l Reading Assoc.

The International Reading Association has several publications available for free download on its website. These materials provide valuable information about reading and how to make it a part of every child’s life and “to help parents as they take on their critical role as their children’s first and most important teachers.”

The brochures listed below are particularly helpful in providing parents with a start to making reading an integral part of their family’s life.

Brochures
  • Getting Your Child Ready to Read 
  • Supporting Your Beginning Reader
  • What Is Family Literacy? Getting Involved in Your Child’s Literacy Learning

Go to this page, scroll down to see a list of brochures and select the one you wish to view (in PDF format).

The IRA has also a list of books compiled by children called Children Choices, which comprises reviews of books by children.  Since 1974 the IRA has been compiling such a list and it has become ”a source of book recommendations used by teachers, librarians, parents—and children themselves.” See the 2009 Children Choices booklist here.

[Via http://muslimkidsbooks.wordpress.com]

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Book Review - G.E. Bentley's The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake

Being the authoritative scholarly source for William Blake’s biographical information, G.E. Bentley JR’s “The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake” is a surprisingly likable read. Mixing both the in-depth research, rigorous investigation, and required cited sources of the best scholarly texts and an almost conversational narrative tone, Bentley’s Biography of Blake should manage to entice both ivory tower scholars and casual readers alike.

In this wonderful text Blake is looked at through the various phases that make up his life. From his childhood and his relationship with his siblings to his death and legacy to the world, the events in this biography are masterfully told. The romance story of Blake and Catherine weaved into the narrative could be considered a text in itself, and the vivid descriptions of Blake’s apprenticeship and life in general make the reader feel as if they were standing next to Blake some two hundred years or so years ago as he led his life as a poet, printmaker, painter, and prophet.

Blake’s relationships with his contemporaries are explained in Bentley’s wonderful narrative voice and evidenced by the text of actual correspondence that Blake and his circle exchanged, which are weaved masterfully into the narrative in a way that will remind the reader of masterful epistolary works like Richardson’s titles “Pamela” and “Clarissa” or Aphra Bahn’s “Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister” (minus the traditional nonsense parts of eighteenth century epistolary novels).

Many of Blake’s engravings and plates are faithfully reproduced in the text, allowing the reader to see what is so eloquently described in the text, and the references and appendixes allow for further reading for those who would be interested, not in reading additional information regarding Blake, as most (if not all) of it is included in this tome, but in reading worse written and more burdensome versions of Blake’s life.

In the end, Bentley’s biography is one of the best biographies based on literary figures, and were it not for the existence of Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson” it would possibly hold the place of best history of a literary figure ever written. I recall seeing the following line somewhere, I can’t remember where, talking about Boswell’s work on Johnson, but it certainly can be applied to Bentley’s work of Blake as well: when the reader finishes reading Blake’s biography they will feel like they have been in the presence of one of the greatest men in the last centuries. The truth is they have been in the presence of two.

[Via http://johanistan.wordpress.com]

We Know by Gregg Hurwitz

Years after a traumatic event uprooted Nick Horrigan from his comfortable life when he was 18, Nick thinks that he finally has a handle on his life. He has put his past behind him and now has a stable job in Los Angeles. As far as he knows, nothing extraordinary will ever happen to him again.

Then a SWAT team explodes into his apartment, whisks him away in a Black Hawk and tells him that a terrorist is demanding for his presence.

Thoughts: We Know’s premise called me like a siren; I like stories about folks with a tragic/shady past, and I sure wanted to know what in the world happened to Nick when he was 18.

But a few chapters in and I began to have my doubts about the book.

My biggest stumbling block in liking this book? It’s illogical and the characters can be downright silly in their actions.

To echo Nick – why couldn’t the SWAT team have knocked on his door instead of barging into his apartment, all commando style, and dragging him into a Black Hawk like he was a covert agent for Al Qaeda? And seriously, a Black Hawk hovering above a Los Angeles suburb? Way to be discreet, dudes.

And then you these super agents worrying about this terrorist who’s threatening to blow up a nuclear plant. They explain to Nick why it’s important not to have a bomb blow up in the nuclear reactor’s spent-fuel pool where the terrorist is only to … (spoiler!) get rid of the terrorist with a bomb? Hello, what if the terrorist threw the cell phone into spent fuel pool, which – if it blew up, apparently – will render LA uninhabitable for 500,000 years? (Though, having written an article on nuclear energy once, I think some nuclear scientists would have some issues with this. For one, it is not that easy for one unarmed(!) terrorist to get into the spent fuel pool!)

It doesn’t bode well for a book when you start to doubt the realism of the story just two chapters in. And when I finally found out what happened to Nick 18 years ago, I could only shake my head in disbelief. Nick must’ve been seriously naive when he was 18 to do what he did.

I just couldn’t read on after that. Though for the sake of completion, I flipped to the end to see who did the nasty deed. I wasn’t surprised at the revelation at all.

So, should you read it? To give Hurwitz some credit, it is a page turner and he writes reasonably well. If you could overlook its logic flaws you could get some entertainment out of it.

I say just borrow it from a library or a friend.

[Via http://imaginarylands.wordpress.com]

Jitterbug Perfume

Books are HEAVY. I discover this anew each time I move. Suddenly there are ten cartons of reading material that I’d convinced myself I couldn’t live without. Each weighs 50 pounds or more, and the older I get, the heavier they seem to weigh, and the more I reexamine their importance to my life. Chiropracter visits or not, I doubt I will ever learn to live without them. Yes, I know there are alternatives. Namely, digital devices like Amazon.com’s Kindle (or similar handheld iPod-type readers). Or a good old-fashioned library card. As for the electronic devices, it’s pretty simple: trade in your mouldering paperbacks and heavy-duty hardbacks for (literally) light-weight digital versions. I don’t own one of these things for the same reason I didn’t trade in my LP’s and CD’s for an iPod: there’s something missing from digital approximations. Not just the album cover art and liner notes–after all, you can download that stuff, too. But there’s a tangible reality that a mere digital file can never replicate. With books, it’s a love affair that goes deeper than words spelled out in ink on a piece of paper. In the same way that cybersex can’t replace the tangible feel of a woman, I will never be totally satisfied with digital approximations. Still…they ARE heavy, and I’m not talking about fat-bottomed girls making the rockin world go round here. So I’ve had some messy break-up’s over the years. I’ve had to reevaluate which books were important to me. Which books I am likely to revisit again and again, like a satisfying lover…and which one’s are just slutty paperback booty calls I probably won’t lay down with again unless I’m drunk and/or sitting on the toilet and need something a little heavier than an old Electronic Gamer or the morning paper.

     But among the contents of my pared-down library are a few old flings that won’t ever be kicked to the curb. First and foremost among them: Tom Robbins’ imcomparable Jitterbug Perfume. Like your first girlfriend, this novel has a special place in my heart. I’m re-reading it for the tenth (or so) time, and this first-edition sweetheart is starting to show her age. Though any review of this book–brief or lengthy, critical or descriptive–would fall far short of conveying its raw, sensual energy, one way to explain it is to share with you just how powerful the plot, insidious the imagery, and convincing the characterization has been on my life. In short, it is the most influential piece of fiction I’ve ever read, and I owe Robbins a debt I doubt I will ever be able to repay. A little over the top? Perhaps. After all, this is a man whom I last saw judging a cooking contest at a Spam Festival. And Jitterbug Perfume is a novel that features wonky characters like Priscilla The Genius Waitress (who was married to a famous South American accordian player and is searching for The Perfect Taco), Alobar (a 1000-year old chieftain from dark ages Bohemia), Marcel LeFevre (a French perfume executive who likes to wear whale masks), and Pan (the invisible but goat-odored Greek god whose turn-on’s include feta cheese, wineskins, and Nymphette sex). Even so, this book has given me solace during some pretty dark times in my life–and it has (more so than any other book) been responsible for my own love affair with words and writing. In a word, it’s a novel about immortality. Except that it’s also about lots of other things. Like following your bliss.

     Basically, the book follows the adventures of Alobar and Kudra (the Bohemian’s sexy Indian soulmate) as they run from death. And, as sex and death are in many ways inextricably linked (for example, the male orgasm has often been called “the little death”), we are told that plenty of sex is necessary for extending one’s life far beyond the normal human lifespan. The book follows Alobar (whose tribe puts their rulers to death by force-feeding them a poisoned egg at the first signs of aging) as he traipses across Europe to Hellas (Greece), where the rise of Christianity is weakening the smelly phallic power of Pan. Alobar continues east (after some Nymphette romping of his own), meeting Kudra for the first time as a small girl, horrified by the practice of suttee (in which a Hindu widow flings herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre). Some years later, Alobar is reintroduced to Kudra in a Tibetan lamasery, where she has fled rather than submitting to suttee herself. The two become lovers, and set out to find a mysterious band of immortals known as the Bandaloop Doctors. The novel is a sensual epic, and a feast of words.

     I came across the book at the Hitching Post in Mentone, Alabama in 1985. I was 14. The Hitching Post is one of those stores that sells everything from used books to antiques. Mentone is a little mountain-top arts community, and I suspect one of the town’s more bohemian residents most have sold it to the Post’s owner in a pile of unwanted Reader’s Digests, unaware that the novel had gotten mixed in. After all, the book did not look like it had ever been read and was less than a year old at the time. However it came to be there, I regard my purchase of the novel as fate. After all, it’s not every day that one picks up (at random) a book that will change one’s life. At 14, I already knew that I wanted to be a writer. Reading this novel just made me sure of it. Throughout the years, I’ve shared the novel with several people. I’ve TRIED to share it with several more–but some people just won’t listen to good advice. It spoke to me in a language of poetry, in a dialect of vibrant and vivid words that painted bright pictures on the insides of my eyelids when I slip off to sleep. The book held such a special magic for me that I wouldn’t marry my girlfriend Jenny unless she agreed to read it. I wanted desperately for it to mean something to her the way it meant something to me. She DID make an effort to read it…but she never got through the first half of the novel. We’re now divorced. I’m not saying that her inability to “get” the book had anything to do with our marital problems. But…well, she wasn’t much of a reader, anyway. In the end, being married to a writer just wasn’t in the proverbial cards. Later, I shared the novel with Ruth Smith (aka Ruthless), the well-known dominatrix that performs with the X-rated heavy metal band, The Genitorturers. By this time, the novel’s cover was all but falling apart, and she kindly had a librarian repair it. Aside from my ex-wife and a beautiful dominatrix, I’ve shared the novel with several other people. Usually, the one’s who get through the book and take something of its magic with them are artsy people who like to create, in one way or another. Makes sense to me.

     The book lists four distinct methods for achieving immortality, each of them tied to one of the four elements: air, earth, water and fire. Air equates to special “Bandaloop breathing” exercises. This is described as both a physical act (breathing in a circular way, by taking in air through the nose and breathing out through the mouth in measured, deep rhythms), and by visualizing breathing in energy with each breath, and expelling toxins with each exhale. Earth is relative to food: the exercise here is to eat many small meals throughout the day, rather than large amounts at once. Alobar and Kudra are also eaters of beets…and this lowly red vegetable comes up again and again throughout the book. Hey, I told you it was a bit wonky. Water relates to bathing rituals. The idea is to soak in hot water, then get out of the tub for a few minutes to cool before repeating the process. Lowering the temperature of the blood is the key to this: in a hot bath, the blood comes to the surface, where it can be rapidly cooled when the bather steps out of the water. Finally: fire. Fire is sex. The Kama Sutra and a type of Tantric sex practice are mentioned…but the point is to fool your body into thinking it is young and virile (in other words, tricking the system into believing you are still in your sexual prime) by having sex on a (very) regular basis. Thus, the novel is full of sex, but not in a cheap Penthouse: Forum way. Sex is just part of the hedonistic calculus of a long and pleasurable life.  

     Now, I suppose I should admit that I often have a bit of trouble remembering that this novel is a work of fiction. I find myself breathing in that circular Bandaloop way…and I’ve a penchant for long, hot baths. Plus, now that I’m diabetic, eating many small meals throughout the day is encouraged by my doctor. And, of course, there’s the sex. I suppose I’m still searching for my Kudra. Blondes may be more fun…but dark, exotic Indian girls raise my blood pressure (in a good way).

     So is sex one of the pillars of a long, healthy life? Of course! Do you have any IDEA how many hundreds of millions of Viagra prescriptions have been filled, in the U.S. alone?  But the book brings up a point that geriatric research has wrestled with for a long time: quality vs. quantity of life. After all, what good does it do to live a long, long time if you’re miserable? The novel asks few questions, but suggests many answers. Foremost among them is to question the control mechanisms (as beat writer William Burroughs would call them) of religion and the military-industrial (or medical-industrial, perhaps) complex that seek to prepare us (through acceptance of our mortality spiritually, or sacrificing our bodies physically through violence) for the cessation of life. Robbin’s asks, instead, why we don’t deserve (and demand) the same immortality that has, historically, been attributed only to the divine (and, perhaps, to the divine right of our Emperors, Kings, popes and potentates).

     It’s a question that rings true…even in fiction.

     “Jitterbug” will likely piss you off if you’re one of the easily offended…but give it a chance. I think you’ll soon count it as one of the most memorable books you’ve ever read.

[Via http://evilrobots.wordpress.com]

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Read My Valentines

Thanks to everyone who posted a heart during February for “Read My Valentine.”  Check out these recommendations from other Winfield teens  and  comment me with the book you love!

Get Well Soon by Julie Halpern

Sera read “Get Well Soon” by Julie Halpern and she loved the book because “it’s really funny yet twisted, and it has romance.”

Evermore by Alyson Noel

Megan read “Evermore” by Alyson Noel and she loved the book because it’s “full of romance and suspense with a little mystery.”

[Via http://winfieldya.wordpress.com]

Stonehenge by Rosemary Hill

I have recently read this book in an attempt to better my limited understanding of this site. The author has written this with an objective to better demonstrate the viewpoints and motivations behind the various historical individuals and groups who have made contributions into the continuing efforts to better understand Stonehenge’s enigmatic history. Much in the style of Ronald Hutton, she presents the documented facts with as much clarity as possible, but unlike Hutton, refrains from personal comments, preferring to present the possible / probable motivations and consequences for others to form their own idea’s. For this, in my opinion, she should be applauded and she only makes any sort of conclusion at the end of the book, with a keenly observed hypothesis about the relationship between the Durrington Walls and Stonehenge, that to me, is entirely convincing.

At just over 200 pages long, this was a hugely enjoyable read and much like Hutton’s recent book on the Druids, brings reality back into the considerations of this aging reader. Highly recommended.

[Via http://corvusrouge.wordpress.com]

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Hear No Evil

Speaking of hearing…it’s been a long time since you’ve heard from me!  Let’s just say that 2010 has been off to a surreal start and we’ll leave it at that.  On to the first book review of the new year.

Matthew Paul Turner’s Hear No Evil is a no-holds-barred look at how his fundamentalist Baptist upbringing could never quite extinguish his lifelong love of music.  Having never been allowed to listen to anything other than hymns, his ears and passion perked up at the sound of Contemporary Christian music [which had, naturally, been deemed "evil" by his church and family].  Guided by his dream of becoming the Michael Jackson of Christian music, he moves to Nashville to find that not only are his ears and eyes opened but his mind and heart as well.   His story is simulatneously hilarious and painfully familiar to anyone whose ever been told of the danger that lurks in a syncopated beat.

To learn more about Hear No Evil click the photo below.  If you would like to WIN a free copy, just leave a comment about this review.  One winner will be drawn at random from all comments left between 02/18/10 and 02/28/10. 

This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group.

[Via http://endofthestory.wordpress.com]

[REVIEW] Immortal - P. C. Cast with Leah Wilson (eds.)

P. C. Cast with Leah Wilson (eds.)
Immortal (Anthology)
BenBella (US: 6th October 2009)
Buy (US) Buy (UK) Buy (CA) Buy (Worldwide)

Ordinarily, I’m not much for anthologies. Generally speaking, the more contributors, the less bothered I am to read every story. Thus this collection of eight YA vampire romances is a welcome surprise. It hasn’t made me chase up every author’s backlist, but I read each short.

Cynthia Leitich Smith’s “Haunted Love” is memorable and cringe-free. Kristin Cast’s “Amber Smoke” is good, before readers’ attention wanes. Rachel Caine’s “Dead Man Stalking” gives insight into effed-up family relations. Tanith Lee’s “Table Manners” has wonderful psychological depth, but the lead character talks to the reader. Richelle Mead’s “Blue Moon” is a treat. Nancy Holder’s “Changed” steps up when the characters hit the high school gym. Rachel Vincent’s “Binge” is gold. And Claudia Gray’s “Free” provides a view into race relations in pre-Civil War US.

Despite both vampires and romances not being my cup of tea, Immortal is a strong collection with something for everyone. The quality varies from good to great, but every story is worth reading.

[Via http://tezmilleroz.wordpress.com]

Under the Snow in Northern Sweden

‘Under the Snow’ by Kerstin Ekman Translated by Joan Tate

I first heard of writer Kerstin Ekman when her latest book “God’s Mercy’ was selected one of last year’s best by the Internet site Pop Matters. Pop Matters is pretty much my bible when it comes to music, and their description of the book sounded promising. I couldn’t get that novel but did find Ekman’s 1961 novel ‘Under the Snow’. Only after I already had the book, did I find out that Kerstin Ekman is a crime writer, a writer of murder mysteries. I usually don’t read genre fiction with one exception. That exception is Ruth Rendell aka Barbara Vine whose books are so well-written I don’t consider them genre fiction. By the time that I discovered Kerstin Ekman is a mystery writer, I was interested enough to read the book.

Kerstin Ekman lives in a small village in northern Sweden. The novel ‘Under the Snow’ takes place up there near the Arctic Circle. Many of the people in this far northern area and in the novel are Samis, whom we used to call Laplanders or Lapps which are now considered derogatory terms, so from now on, I will use the term Sami.

‘Under the Snow’ has a unique rhythm that you won’t find in other books. The rhythm slows you down and has a definite small town charm all its own. The crime solvers here are a humorous pair, a by-the-book policeman whose regular police job is north of the Arctic Circle and a let’s say eccentric friend of the murder victim, David Malm. There is a lot of humor about drinking coffee, and I know from experience in small towns in northern Wisconsin during winter that coffee drinking is the center of social activity until night time when the party moves to the small bars.

The Samis are not completely integrated into Swedish society, and their participation in certain mystical rites gives “Under the Snow” a distinctiveness. The ending of the novel takes place in a long-deserted Sami village Poropirtti. I read elsewhere that Kerstin Ekman in her later novels deals with the underlying tensions between the Swedish people and the Samis, but in this novel everyone who lives in this small town gets along fine playing mah-jongg, etc., except for that little thing the murder.

Ekman wrote this book quite early in here career almost fifty years ago, and except for the unique style and the Sami mysticism, the novel is pretty much a standard murder mystery. I think the next time I read an Ekman novel, I’ll read either ‘Blackwater’ or ‘God’s Mercy’, her more recent novels. According to other Internet sources, she has moved somewhat away from genre fiction.

[Via http://anokatony.wordpress.com]

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

THE ENCHIRIDION - Aurelius Augustine (420 A.D.)

The Enchiridion (a book that contains key information on a particular subject), by Aurelius Augustine is a handbook of Christian doctrine that provides brief answers to Laurentius, one of Augustine’s friends.  The book is divided into three sections, the first of which is a brief exposition of the Apostles’ Creed.  The second part contains a basic exposition of the Lord’s Prayer.  The third part focuses on the Gospel.

Augustine begins by acknowledging the request of Laurentius, namely, a handbook with answers to the big questions of life.  The author articulates a few of these questions: “What ought to be man’s chief end in life; what he ought, in view of the various heresies, chiefly to avoid; to what extent religion is supported by reason; what there is in reason that lends no support to faith, when faith stands alone; what is the starting point, what the goal, of religion …”  Augustine maintains that his disciple can know the answers to all of the above questions, so long as he thoroughly knows the “proper objects of faith, hope, and love.”

Augustine boils down a piece of essential knowledge that is required for all who follow Christ, namely, that the goodness of the Creator created all things.  It is refreshing to hear the simplicity of Augustine’s message regarding origins; a message that comes almost 1,500 years before the scandalous musings of Charles Darwin: “It is enough for the Christian to believe that the only cause of all created things, whether heavenly or earthly, whether visible or invisible, is the goodness of the Creator, the one true God; and that nothing exists but Himself that does not derive its existence from Him; and that He is the Trinity – to wit, the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Son begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the same Father, but one and the same Spirit of Father and Son.”

Augustine wrestles with the problem of evil and holds that evil is the absence of good.  In other words, it is possible for evil to exist in a universe that was originally created as good.  Or to put it another way, evil is dependent upon goodness.  He writes, “There can be no evil where there is no good; and an evil man is an evil good.”

Augustine maintains the God, who is omnipotent is a good God, even when he permits evil: “Although, therefore, evil, in so far as it is evil as good exists, is a good.  For if it were not a good that evil should exist, its existence would not be permitted by the omnipotent Good, who without doubt can as easily refuse to permit what He does not wish, as bring about what He does wish.”

The author addresses the nature of free grace and responds to the Pelagianism that was corrupting the church in the fifth century (and continues to poison many contemporary churches): “Men are not saved by good works, nor by the free determination of their own will, but by the grace of God through faith … So when man by his own free will sinned, then sin being victorious over him, the freedom of his will was lost.”

Thoughtful readers will graciously pass by Augustine’s erroneous promotion of paedo-baptism; they will refuse to “throw the baby out with the bathwater!”  Draining the bathwater would preclude the reader from profiting from Augustine’s theological insight.  These insights include but are not limited to:

1) The importance of building a strong and biblical doctrinal foundation.

2) The importance of exercising discernment with professors of Christianity.

3) The importance of personal discipleship.

4) The importance of developing a Christian worldview, especially in regards to the Creator-creature distinction.

5) The folly of free will apart from grace and the liberty that new creatures receive in Christ.

6) The sinfulness of sin, the bondage and slavery of unregenerate man, and the necessity of a Redeemer.

Read the thermometer in our postmodern climate.  It nearly always reads, “trivial,” “banal,”  “superficial,” or “amusement.”  Augustine’s Enchiridion provides a much needed shot of meaty mercury! Read it with an open Bible and a pen in hand.

Tolle Lege!

[Via http://baldreformer.wordpress.com]

Books I read in 2009

It’s time for my annual review of what I read last year.  The books are not listed in any specific order of preference, though I have tried to loosely follow the order in which I read them.

1. Christless Christianity by Michael Horton – Michael Horton is a strong reformed guy of Whitehorse Inn fame. His book laments the loss of the gospel in much of Christianity, and its replacement by a form of moralism, ranging from the ‘be nice’ lite of Joel Osteen to the ‘do good works’ heavy of Brian MacLaren. I’d never seen those two compared before, and Horton’s analysis was quite good, challenging us to return to the gospel. I felt he overdid it a bit on going after Joel Osteen – it felt like he was shooting a fish in a barrel, and the first shot hit, and more shooting wasn’t necessary. He has written a sequel called The Gospel Driven Church that I have sitting on my shelf, which I think aims to give the solution to the problem he presented in this book. Recommended.

2. Don’t Stop Believing, by Michael E. Wittmer.  I didn’t buy this book for the 80’s Journey song title, but it didn’t hurt. Wittmer is a professor at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary and he wrote this book to challenge Christians not to give up on belief – i.e. orthodoxy as espoused by ‘conservatives’, and only have orthopraxy (as espoused by emergents). He argues for both. At times I thought it was really good, and at times it felt like he was being balanced, just for the sake of trying to be balanced. I’m all for balance, but on some issues, clarity is needed, and balance leaves you arguing both sides. The final illustration of the book was  a letdown for me, as it was meant to summarize the core of the book’s theme, but the situation was far-fetched and failed to make the point. But overall, recommended.

3. Reasonable Faith (third edition) by William Lane Craig. I wrote a full review of this one, that you can read HERE. This is an excellent apologetics book – heavy reading, no doubt, but well worth the effort. Highly recommended!  (Note: Craig Blomberg has an excellent article on Scripture in the 2nd edition, which is not included in this third edition, for reasons which Craig explains. I recommend this 2nd edition article as well.)

4. Tactics by Gregory Koukl. I wrote a full review which can be read HERE. Tactics is an apologetics book written to teach you how to interact in apologetics conversations. It teaches you some actual apologetics, but the value is in learning how to apply them. It’s easy-to-read and full of good suggestions for real life conversations. Highly Recommended.

I wrote brief reviews for the next three books HERE, which were all part of my summer reading.

5. With Wings Like Eagles by Michael Korda. This book was part of my summer holiday reading (though I read it before I actually went on holidays as it was so good I couldn’t put it down). I tells the story of Hugh Dowding and the Battle of Britain, an amazing aerial fight between Great Britain and Germany during WW2 in the summer of 1940. Highly Recommended.

6. Six Days of War, by Michael Oren. This book is a play-by-play history of the Six Day War of 1967 between Israel on one side and Egypt, Syria and Jordan on the other side. It is riveting military history and reads like a novel. Highly Recommended.

7. Masters and Commanders, by Andrew Roberts. M&C closely follows the interactions of Winston Churchill, Andrew Brooks, Franklin Roosevelt and George Marshall as four key leaders and strategists during WW2. It is an intriguing book to read from a leadership perspective, and though a bit long, worth it. Recommended.

8. Young, Restless, Reformed by Colin Hansen. YRR is a piece of investigative journalism into the surging movement of young reformed Christians that has become visible in the past few years. It was a good book in some ways, though I personally do not enjoy the basic style of much modern journalism, which uses a story to make an editorial point and move the writer’s story forward, rather than actually reporting what happened. For example, when Hansen visited John Piper’s house, I wanted to hear about what it is like to be at John Piper’s house and what they talked about in some detail, but Hansen only shared a few quotes. To be fair, maybe there are reasons I don’t know for this, such as Piper requesting Hansen not to share some things. But it is a good book to read, especially if you are having trouble figuring out why there are so many in the under-35 crowd running around so excited about Calvinism. (If you want the short version, read this article at Christianity Today) Recommended.

9. World War One by Norman Stone. This book is a brief history of WW1, which I realized that I knew very little about, other than that Canada won the battle at Vimy Ridge! It is a helpful overview, and gives a glimpse into a world that is very different than the one in which we now lived. The picture on the front is telling of how WW1 was a transitional time in history: It is a photo of a cavalry soldier on a horse carrying a spear (lance?) with a gun slung on his back while wearing a metal helmet and a gas mask. One of the most interesting things to me was that a key component of war-readiness in Europe was the strength of a nation’s railway lines for moving troops. War planners would get concerned if someone built too strong a rail network, and an opposing country had to match it to remain prepared for war. Recommended.

10. Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.  You can read my review HERE. Don’t waste your time on this one unless you are reading it for research purposes like I was. Not recommended.

11. Leadership and the One Minute Manager by Blanchard, Zigarmi and Zigarmi. I read this book as part of my leadership course requirements at Denver Seminary. It is a short, simple book with very practical suggestions for managing an organization.  Recommended.

12. Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels. I read this book soon after it came out around seven or eight years ago, and at the time I thought it was OK but not great. I am also not a big fan of the seeker-sensitive approach to church ministry, so I wasn’t totally excited about reading this book again. But I was really blessed by it and encouraged in my own leadership. Regardless of whether you think Hybels is on the right track in his philosophy of ministry, he is a gifted leader who loves the Lord and His church, and he has some great insights into church leadership that I found very helpful. Highly Recommended.

13. Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung. This is a relatively short book about God’s will and decision making. DeYoung encourages people to make wise godly decisions and not look for a voice from heaven on every decision you make. It is a very practical book and offers sound guidance to making decisions. Highly Recommended.

I think that’s it. I am also preparing another post describing books I partly read in 2009 – there’s quite a few of those as well!

[Via http://notinvain.wordpress.com]

Overcoming Sleep

Hello all,

This is the week! I am putting in all the time I can this week to try to finish my novel. My self-imposed deadline is February 20th! I won’t let it fall by the wayside this time. I’ve made good progress so far today, and I feel like I’m on the right path with things. My main character is currently having a huge fight with who he considered to be his friends. One by one I’m pulling apart this group, fanning the flames and watching as they soar. It’s been a lot of fun.

Writing is exhausting work. I’ve put out a good chunk of words today, met my daily goal and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open. So, I figure I’ll relax a little and do today’s Lord of the Rings read-a-long blog post. It’s mid-month and time for the check in to see how the book is going. Be warned of spoilers, all ye who enter!

Thanks go out to The Literary Omnivore for hosting this month’s read-a-long. She’s also provided some discussion questions that I’ll be going through.

If you’ve been with us since the beginning, how do you feel about the narrator compared to the narrator in The Hobbit?

I think this was the part I was most looking forward to. When I was younger and first tried transitioning between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I didn’t appreciate the change in narrative voice at all. I’m not sure it was something I completely recognized, being as young as I was, but I distinctly remember feeling like it was a completely different thing from The Hobbit. I missed the good-natured humor, the light voice, the easy flow of it. I was curious to see how I’d react to the change now.

I can’t say I’m disappointed at all. I love the change in narrative voice, and I find that it’s wholly appropriate. The tone has grown up a little, but it hasn’t lost a single bit of its charm. We’re not seeing such a light play of a story — Lord of the Rings seems less of a folk tale and more of a solid legend, etched somewhere in stone tablets. With The Hobbit, we often have Tolkien passing through what we would consider “present time” of the novel. He’ll occasionally mention events from further along in the book, or even elsewhere in the world. In The Fellowship of the Ring, we don’t get that — instead, we get a more sobering and realistic view. Tolkien is more firmly rooted in what is currently going on in the story.

What results is that we’re left with much more uncertainty of what will happen with Frodo and his friends. In The Hobbit, we get enough glances and peeks ahead to pretty much assume Bilbo is going to make it out alright. In Fellowship, we have no such guarantee. Still, the voice is charming, likes to poke fun where it can, and does not lack for wit. I think it’s a huge success, this time around.

How’s your pace going? Is it smooth sailing or have you found passages that are difficult to get through?

Like I’ve mentioned around here, I’m neck-deep (way worse than knee-deep!) in writing work, so I often only get a chance to read Fellowship during class breaks or before bed — as such, it can be frustrating to not have a vast amount of time to dedicate to it. Still, I’ve felt the pacing pretty smooth. I’ve more recently seen the movies than read the books, so it was interesting to see how much more time was spent between the Shire and the Prancing Pony, as compared to the movies. I enjoyed the lingering, slow and winding travel to the start of the journey. Tolkien takes his time, and it’s just the kind of thing you need to accept. If you can accept it, it’s a beautiful thing. He’ll take you through the woods by the hand and paint this picture of a vast world.

If you’re a little impatient, or if you don’t feel that you have time for the painting, I think it can get frustrating. Personally, I wanted to take my time with it, and I’m enjoying going along for the walk, watching as the shadows creep over and things get quite dreary, with hints of sunshine.

If you’ve read this series before, is The Fellowship of the Ring, for the most part, as you remembered? If not, is it what you expected or something else?

I’ve read this series before, but it was quite a while ago. Long enough that I don’t really remember reading it, so I have no memories to compare to.

The one thing I didn’t expect was liking Tom Bombadil as much as I like this time around. The first time I read the book, I remember feeling like I was slogging through that portion. Here was this goody two-shoes guy getting in the way of the action, singing, leaping around, what have you. Now, though, I love him. He is absolutely charismatic and such a strong figure. When he came for the Hobbits in the Barrow Downs, I cheered. He is magnificent. I love how Tolkien sometimes gives us these glimpses of characters that are near immortal, perhaps even demigod like, without overshadowing the rest of the story with it. Tom Bombadil is certainly a powerful man, but he knows his place and he has his boundaries.

Plus, I love his songs. They are so cheerful!

Are you using any of the extra features- maps and indexes, for instance- in your book?

My book is old and ratty, needing quick replacing (hopefully soon)! So, the most I have at hand is a single map at the front, which I actually haven’t really been using. I’m honestly a little bit afraid that the book will fall apart if I’m constantly trying to pry it open enough to look at the map. Oh well, haha, it will be much appreciated when I upgrade to new copies!

Overall, I’m really enjoying my reread, and I’m taking it nice and slow. I’ll finish it by the end of the month for sure. I’m greatly looking forward to reading more! Now if only I could keep my eyelids propped open for long enough.

[Via http://trinza.wordpress.com]

Sunday, February 14, 2010

More 50 Book Challenge

Books 10 & 11 were Deja Dead and Death du Jour both by Kathy Reichs. These were recommended to me by my American friend Sara and I ordered both off Booktopia. They’re books 1 & 2 in the on-going series about Temperance Brennan, a forensic anthropologist who works between North Carolina and Montreal. The first book takes place in Montreal, the second is split between Brennan’s two homes. After the last few books I’ve read were vaguely disappointing in some way or other, it was good to get a couple of reads in a row that were gripping. I love this sort of thing really, even though the gory details of autopsies and putrefying bodies can be a bit much at times! But I was a big fan of the TV show Crossing Jordan and I love the early Kay Scarpetta books. And these books are like the Kay Scarpetta books when the Kay Scarpetta books were still good!

Temperance is a bone expert – she can tell the age, sex, race etc of a corpse just by analysing the skeletal remains. Her expertise is used in Montreal in terms of identifying features about skeletal remains – firstly determining if they are human and dating their times of death and various other details. In Book 1 she is convinced that she has found the remains of the victim of a serial killer – both bodies were dismembered the same way and carry identical marks from the same tools. She connects these cases to others – even though some of the victims were not dismembered and different weapons were used, she is still firmly of the opinion that the murders were all done by the same person. She has a hard time convincing the detectives in charge of the cases of this though, so naturally, like all good heroines, she undertakes some investigating of her own to prove her point. Although I found one scene, where she goes to an abandoned monastery grounds where she suspects a body is buried, alone and in a violent storm, a bit over the top and unlike anything any normal, sane person would do, I absolutely loved the book. The pace was faultless, the facts incredible (the author is a forensic anthropologist herself and claims that she doesn’t describe anything in her books that she hasn’t personally done), the characters believable and likable. The end was downright chilling and even though I knew she survived (duh, I have book 2, lol) it was still a heart-in-mouth sort of finale.

4/5

Book 2 was a bit harder for me get into at first, as it involved the vicious murder of 4 month old twins. I found the autopsy scene a struggle and kept seeing tiny little babies in my head as I read it. This didn’t diminish my liking for the book, it’s just my personal “taboo” subject that I struggle with. Hurt and tortured babies are enough to make me weep. The book begins with Temperance being called to the scene of a house fire where at first they find two victims in a bedroom upstairs and then a third in the basement. Temperance recovers the remains and sets about finding out who the victim was, how old, etc before heading back to North Carolina for the commencement of her lecturing year. There she gets drawn into another gruesome discovery of a corpse and more bodies are found in the house fire, two adults and two infant babies. In a bizarre twist, the two cases, the one in Canada and the one in the US turn out to be connected. The ending is once again a bit of a life threatening confrontation with Temperance running headlong into it but I’m used to that from about every episode of Crossing Jordan ever, so I’m okay with a bit of a drawn out dramatic ending!

4/5

I liked them both so much I have already ordered book #3 from Booktopia. And I also bought season 1 of Bones on dvd as well. Bones’ main character is a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan, who is actually based on Kathy Reichs herself. Temperance in the show also writes novels…about a forensic anthropologist named Kathy Reichs, which I thought was a cute little swap. My mother has watched Bones for 5 years now, but I’ve never bothered with it as I don’t much like David Boreanaz. But I’m going to give it a go now as I know Kathy Reichs is pretty involved, as it is based on her. If I like it, I’ll start to pick up the other seasons.

[Via http://makeshiftwings.wordpress.com]

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Book Review - The Skeptical Environmentalist

However, we have to realize that investing in an ever better environment is only one of the many ways we can invest in a better world, and that we must prioritize the environment against better education, more health care, and better infrastructure as well as improving conditions in the Third World.

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg

This book is practically a college textbook. It looks like a textbook, it certainly weighs as much as one. It doesn’t, however, read like one. Which is good…I hate reading textbooks.

To get to the meat of the issue already…I really liked this book. Lomborg has written a very well-researched (almost 3,000 footnotes, with about half of them sources), easily read, thought-provoking book. He takes everything we’ve ever been told (things that most of us, including myself, never questioned) and looks at it critically. Very critically. And since Lomborg is a statistician, there are tons of graphs, clear explanations of exactly how the data were collected and interpreted, etc, etc. He leaves no stone unturned and certainly impressed me. Whether or not impressing me impresses you is something else entirely, however.

He makes a lot of arguments that I had previously not considered. Indoor air pollution? He points out that as we insulate our homes more and more in order to cut heating and cooling costs, we make this problem worse. He also argues that the increased cost of hurricane damage is not because hurricanes are getting worse, but rather because there are more of us living in hurricane-prone areas and we have more “stuff” to be damaged. Global warming? Possibly beneficial to developed countries, but detrimental to developing countries. And, by the way, it’s not as big a deal as it’s made out to be. Hell, the whole section on global warming was absolutely great and should be required reading for anyone wanting to discuss climate change.

A great example is his discussion on limiting carbon emissions. He finds that the more cost-effective route is not to limit emissions, but rather to fund R&D for alternative power. The argument is that by limiting emissions, we will be implementing costly programs that will have little impact while depriving ourselves unnecessarily.

One of the most interesting sections, for me personally, is the one on pesticides and conventional agriculture. Lomborg argues that by limiting or eliminating pesticides and herbicides (which, he finds later, are very unlikely to cause health problems) we would in fact be decreasing the amount of forest cover…because we would require more land to grow food as the percent yield goes down.

All those are simplifications, of course, and I strongly encourage anyone with an interest in environmental issues to read this book, if for no other reason than to consider his arguments. I found them, as I said, to be very compelling.

Here’s a nice quote from the book, which sums up a few of his findings very nicely:

“We will not lose our forests; we will not run out of energy, raw materials or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life, and although the nutrient influx has increased in many coastal waters like the Gulf of Mexico, this does not constitute a major problem – in fact, benefits generally outweigh costs. Nor is waste a particularly big problem…

“Acid rain did not kill off our forests, our species are not dying out as many have claimed, with half of them disappearing over the next 50 years – the figure is likely to be about 0.7 percent. The problem of the ozone layer has been more or less solved. The current outlook on global warming does not indicate a catastrophe – rather, there is good reason to believe that our energy consumption will change toward renewable energy sources way before the end of the century.”

Keep in mind, though, he doesn’t advocate the view that we have “solved” our environmental problems. In fact, he states several times that while it’s better, it’s still not good enough. All in all, a very sound way to look at it.

Of course, if this person is to be believed, we should give up on the environment altogether, as it’s “…crippled our economy, our lives, our budgets and worse our children’s lives.”

[Via http://tinyouroboros.wordpress.com]

In a Heartbeat by Loretta Ellsworth

In a Heartbeat by Loretta Ellsworth
Publisher: Walker Books for Young ReadersSt. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: February 2nd 2010
Buy it from: Book Depository (free shipping worldwide!)
Silver star (3.95/5 stars)

Synopsis: A touching novel of last regrets and second chances in
the tradition of Lurlene McDaniel and Gabrielle Zevin.

When a small mistake costs sixteen-year-old Eagan her life during a figure-skating competition, she leaves many things unreconciled, including her troubled relationship with her mother. From her vantage point in the afterlife, Eagan reflects back on her memories, and what she could have done differently, through her still-beating heart.

When fourteen-year-old Amelia learns she will be getting a heart transplant, her fear and guilt battle with her joy at this new chance at life. And afterwards when she starts to feel different — dreaming about figure skating, craving grape candy —her need to learn about her donor leads her to discover and explore Eagan’s life,meeting her grieving loved ones and trying to bring the closure they all need to move on.

Told in alternating viewpoints, In a Heartbeat tells the emotional and compelling story of two girls sharing one heart.

Review: When I first saw the cover for In a Heartbeat, I was intrigued. I am very thankful to be able to get an advanced copy for this — and signed, making it even more awesome.

In a Heartbeat is a beautifully written book which reminds us that we should live life without any regrets. It is told in the POV of a dead girl and the POV of the girl who received the heart. I instantly liked Amelia, I felt her struggles and thoughts were well-done but there was a part of me that felt that there was too little we know about Amelia. I felt that there should have been more of her background presented. After the transplant, she started developing preferences for things and her character changes. Which was why I felt that we needed to more about the old Amelia. But since the old Amelia had difficultly walking, I suppose when you’ve a serious illness, it is hard for you to have a personality when you might go any moment.

Eagan was very much unlike Amelia, she had a snarky personality and was not afraid to speak her mind. But one thing both girls had in common was that they both had a great voice. They were realistic and touched my heart in many ways. It’s interesting to learn about the relationships between the characters, Amelia and her parents, Eagan and her mother, Eagan and her grandfather. Eagan’s scenes are most flashbacks where she goes back to specific moments in her life. This bit reminded me of The Everafter by Amy Huntley. However, why a certain memory flashes in front of her was never fully explain and I still do not know what Miki was supposed to be.

I felt the crush was too cliché for my taste. I wished that it could have been more realistic, maybe another 50 pages to give time for the characters to grow. The book was short, hence, I found the ending a little abrupt. Everything wrapped up nicely — too nicely for my liking. But apart from this faults, I really enjoyed this book.

In a Heartbeat is not the most exciting and suspenseful book but it will warm your heart, and make you appreciate life. This book deals with so many different emotions, yet at the same time it deals with them in a way that is life affirming and in it’s own way uplifiting. I will definitely recommend it in a heartbeat. You will love In a Heartbeat if you liked If I Stay, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, Everafter and The Lovely Bones.

Take less than one minute of your time and check out the book trailer!

[Via http://readthisbook.wordpress.com]

A Review of the 2010 Caldecott Medal Winner, Jerry Pinkney's 'The Lion and the Mouse'

A vibrant interpretation of an Aesop’s fable roars its way to the American Library Association’s highest award for illustration

THE LION AND THE MOUSE. By Jerry Pinkney. Little, Brown, 32 pp., $16.99. Ages 6 and under.

By Janice Harayda

Whoever decided that Jerry Pinkney should do a wordless book was a genius. For decades Pinkney has been creating beautiful art that has earned him a place in the first rank of American picture-book illustrators. But some of his books have had words so much weaker than their pictures that they were hard to recommend as highly as their art seemed to demand.

The cover of 'The Lion and the Mouse.'

That’s been true whether Pinkney wrote the books or illustrated someone else’s. And until this year unexciting writing may have deprived him of a Caldecott Medal, which he won last month for The Lion and the Mouse. Caldecott judges aren’t supposed to consider the text of a book unless it interferes with the pictures, but whether or not it “interferes” is a judgment call. And by my lights, the writing in Pinkney’s books sometimes did get in the way. You just don’t want to recommend bad free verse, however attractively packaged, to preschoolers.

Pinkney needed to get words of out of the way of his pictures, and he did it in his near-wordless version of an Aesop’s fable, The Lion and the Mouse. Set in the Serengeti of Kenya and Tanzania, his adaptation teems with creatures lushly rendered in sunny watercolors: monkeys, giraffes, elephants, butterflies, gazelles and what appear to be wildebeest. Pinkney adds a few elements to the original tale of a mouse who repays a lion for saving its life by returning the favor: Most notably, he gives the mouse babies, which adds a dimension to the sparing of its life. But his art stays close to the original story and faithful to its theme: No act of kindness is ever in vain. And “the meek can trump the mighty,” as Pinkney says in an afterword.

Children over the age of 4 or so should grasp easily the plot of all this, though the only words are animal sounds such as the squeaks of mice. Whether children will grasp the moral that is indispensable to any Aesop’s fable is less clear. So some might also want to read a more traditional version or watch a lively one-minute video of “The Lion and the Mouse” based on Tom Lynch’s Fables From Aesop (Viking, 2007). Either way, the revival of this fable shows again why stories become classics: They never shed their truth but allow each generation to interpret them in its own way.

Best line/picture: The cover. Not putting type on the cover was great for two reasons. One is that it suggests that The Lion and the Mouse is wordless. The other is that cover image is so strong, type might have detracted from it. The detail is clear and rich that you can count the lion’s whiskers. Not sure why the lion is looking toward the spine instead of the pages, though, which seems to take your eyes in the wrong direction.

Worst line/picture: None. But you wonder if lions and zebras ever stayed so peacefully side-by-side as on the beautiful front endpaper.

Published: September 2009

Furthermore: Jerry Pinkney won the 2010 Caldecott Medal for The Lion and the Mouse.

Janice Harayda is a novelist and former book editor of the Plain Dealer. You can also follow her Jan (@janiceharayda) on Twitter at www.twitter.com/janiceharayda. She satirizes American literary culture on Twitter at FakeBookNews (@FakeBookNews), which you can preview at www.twitter.com/FakeBookNews. Some of her satirical tweets involve the Newbery and Caldecott awards.

© 2010 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

[Via http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com]

Thursday, February 11, 2010

THE REBELLION OF RONALD REAGAN - James Mann (2009)

The day was June 12, 1987.  President Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin and uttered these crucial and historic words: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate!  Mr. Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

James Mann’s, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan is a fascinating and readable account of the days leading up to the end of the Cold War.  Mann clearly describes the inner workings of the Reagan administration and the resistance from liberals and conservatives alike to the president’s approach and methodology.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan relentlessly presents the former president’s love for freedom and his passion to eliminate totalitarianism.   I was reminded of Reagan’s love for freedom  in 2005 as I stood on a bridge that spans the Moscow river.  As I gazed at the Kremlin and reflected on the new found and relative freedom the citizens of Russia enjoy, I glanced at the”goon-inspired” graffiti that was etched onto the bridge. The words, “Heil Hitler” were mindlessly inscribed on the edge of the bridge.  The graffiti reminded me that freedom will be short-lived if free people grow apathetic and fail to guard their liberty.  It reminded me that fascism is still visible in the rear view mirror.   And it reminded me that Marxism still has momentum and must be stopped at every juncture.

President Reagan was acutely aware of these concerns which helped fuel the fire of his policies and interactions with Gorbechev.

The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan is a helpful reminder of events in the distant past.  While the Cold War is over, the ideology that inspired Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler is still very much alive. Ronald Reagan reminds us of the importance opposing the enemies of freedom; he reminds us to stand on the watchtower and jealously guard our freedom.  He reminds us that freedom is not free; it is a precious commodity worth dying for.  And he reminds us that freedom is never guaranteed in the future.

President Reagan was aware of the protesters that gathered to voice their complaints over his appearance at the Brandenburg Gate.  His speech closes: “And I would like, before I close to say one word.  I have read, and I have been questioned since I’ve been here about certain demonstrations against my coming.  And I would like to say just one thing, and to those who demonstrate so.  I wonder if they have ever asked themselves that if they should have the kind of government they apparently seek, no one would ever be able to do what they’re doing again.  Thank you and God bless you all.”

The Reagan revolution is still alive and well, much to the chagrin of the secular progressives!

3.5 stars

[Via http://baldreformer.wordpress.com]

Iggy the Iguana by Melissa Williams

Get ready for Iggy the Iguana by Melissa Williams. Iggy is nine years old and starting at a new school. It’s hard to move and make new friends. Iggy is one nervous iguana. He’s got an annoying young sister too. And man does Molly have some outrageous outfits.

But soon Iggy starts to make new friends. He’s got his best friend, Snap Shell, a turtle,  and an off-the-wall cat named Kit Kat. His new teacher is really nice too. There is one tiny problem though–his friend Liz is also an iguana, and Iggy is crushing on her. Oh, and there’s that bully, Buddy the Bullfrog. Seems he’s the principal’s grandson and takes full advantage of that. Not only that, Buddy might like Liz too!

Will Iggy survive fourth grade?

I found a lot to like about Iggy the Iguana. In a fun and engaging way, this book explores the challenges of being the new kid at school, moving into a new place, making new friends, and dealing with people that are different from you.

The cast of characters is as fascinating as the storyline, and readers ages 7 to 11 will be totally captivated by Iggy and his friends. Though I adore Iggy and his circle of new friends, I found his younger sister Molly stole my heart.  One minute annoying and the next cute as a button, it looks like she will continue to be a thorn in Iggy’s side for several more years. I also like that Iggy’s parents play a significant role in this book. Iggy’s dad is a marathon runner. He has a big race coming up that the family turns out to support him in.

My only sticking point is that a good portion of the book deals with Iggy’s crush on Liz. As a parent, I have a hard time trying to imagine a nine-year-old boy having a crush that is strong enough for him to be jealous of the attention another boy pays to a girl. Now, this is a very innocent crush and I’ll admit to being a bit old fashioned in this regard, but I also have an eight-year-old daughter.  Boys are pretty much the farthest thing from her mind, and that doesn’t bother me one bit.  :) I think Williams did an excellent job in how she handled this particular aspect of the book, I just didn’t care for it.

The illustrations provided by Kelley Stengle are absolutely charming. I love the cover art on this one. And that picture of Molly in her wedding outfit made me crack up.

Iggy the Iguana is going to be a huge hit with readers. It helps kids appreciate their differences and lets them know that they are not the only one dealing with certain difficult situations.

Rating:  :):):):)

  • Publisher: LongTale Publishing Inc.
  • ISBN-10: 098180540X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0981805405
  • SRP:  $9.99
  • Iggy the Iguana

    Iggy the Iguana is the first book in the Iggy Chapter Book Series for ages 7 to 11. The story focuses on the major themes of acceptance, friendship, and diversity while Iggy starts a brand new school. The transition from a private “all-lizard” school to a public “all-animal” school is eye opening, as Iggy soon accepts that just because other animals are different doesn’t mean they can’t be your friends. By the end of Iggy’s 4th grade year, he realizes that changing schools was the best move he could have ever made!

    Summer League (Sequel)


    Summer League is the second book in the Iggy the Iguana Chapter Book Series for ages 7 to 11. After an exciting school year, Iggy and his friends kick off their summer vacation with some fun in the sun and … baseball! While playing on his All-Star little league team, Iggy faces a very difficult situation that could change his future in sports forever. Iggy learns many valuable lessons during the summer, most importantly, it is not wise to keep secrets from adults and we can’t judge others on the outside.

    Melissa M. Williams is an advocate for literacy and creativity in children. Her children’s chapter books were inspired by real life experiences with childhood pets she owned while growing up in Houston, Texas. While finishing her Master’s degree in Professional Counseling, Melissa started substitute teaching for elementary schools in order to understand the daily life of her young audience. The students helped her create relatable and realistic stories while including lessons, values and acceptance within the story-line. In addition to writing, Melissa spends most of the school year speaking to students about her own journey as an author and the process of creative writing, while encouraging each student to think outside the box, follow their inner passion, and write their own stories.

    Win the Iggy the Iguana Give Away!

     Including the Newly Released Items in Iggy Collection, Snap Shell the Turtle (Plush Doll), Iggy Collector’s Baseball Cards, and The Read3Zero T-Shirt … supporting the fight against illiteracy 30 minutes at a time. Be our most active visitor during the tour for a chance to win this Iggy Collection — the tour schedule is posted at http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2010/01/iggy-iguana-and-melissa-m-williams-tour.html to make it easy for you to visit and comment. To learn more about Iggy and Melissa Williams – visit www.iggytheiguana.com.



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    [Via http://childrensandteensbookconnection.wordpress.com]