Jul
22
My Mother and The Hippy Mafia
July 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment
What’s your mother reading this summer? My mom happens to be reading the book Orange Sunshine – a book about the LSD culture in the ’60s and a group of smugglers and hippy-philosophers called the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, of which Timothy Leary was an integral part. This choice of summer reading may seem out [...]
Jul
1
Ephemera is transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved
July 1, 2010 | Leave a Comment
[Ephemera is transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved...] Need to jump start your muse? Have a hankering for some bright ideas? Need some fuel to spark your creativity drive? It’s summer now and high time we sit on a lounge chair by the pool with our notebooks (or iPads, [...]
Mar
4
Cryptofiction. It Lives.
March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Pardon me if my personal obsessions tend to float onto the screen via this blog, but what are blogs good for if bloggers can’t indulge in self-involved logorrhea from time to time? If it wasn’t already quite clear, I am interested in cryptozoology and the book I am struggling to complete happens to relate to [...]
Feb
24
The Etch-a-Sketch for Grown Ups…
February 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment
It’s time to legitimize my eBook complaints and praises. I’ve finally, actually read some things on both the Kindle and the Nook. I was really surprised by the “etch-a-sketch” technology on the reading surfaces of both of these eReaders (this ingenius black-and-white display technology was developed by E Ink.) As a result, reading on them [...]
Dec
16
Getting inebriated on books…
December 16, 2009 | Comments Off
There’s a lot of book stuff online and it helps if someone curates it. Here’s my attempt for you for the week: More intelligent perspectives on the print and digital divide, this time from Loud Paper: The future of traditional print publishing is, well, no future at all. The model has long since morphed, leaving [...]
Oct
8
Would you buy that book if it was only $4.00?
October 8, 2009 | Comments Off
Do we need $4.00 books? Have books become an expensive speciality, like caviar or hybrid cars? Mark Coker of Smashwords thinks so, and he thinks that ebooks are the saving grace economically for publishers and authors… Why We Need $4.00 Booksby Mark Coker (Huffington Post) The day has come for publishers to offer a $4.00 [...]
Oct
1
The Red Book
October 1, 2009 | Comments Off
There is nothing I love more than when an unknown or lost book is finally discovered, years later, in a secret vault in a foreign country – especially when that book is gorgeous in red leather with a spine etched in gold and is filled with esoteric visions of gods and devils – and the [...]
Mar
4
Will War Ever End?
March 4, 2009 | 1 Comment
The anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” This is an idea that finally solidified in my mind while enjoying Captain Paul K. Chappell’s succinct and very important book WILL WAR EVER END? A Soldier’s Vision [...]
Feb
9
Critical Eye
February 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Here is a highly intelligent group of bloggers to check out: CRITICAL MASS – the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors (And as a nod to John Updike, may he rest in peace, here is a recent post from Critical Mass on Updike’s rules for book reviewing. In a perfect, fair [...]
Jan
26
Teaching an old theory new tricks?
January 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Isn’t the narrative of Darwinism too sacred at this point to tinker with – a bit like if we were to change the story around the creation of our Constitution? Bound to be controversial, this book explores new, sensitive territory. I want to read it. Darwin developed evolution based on anti-slavery by William Atkins According [...]