books

I have no idea what this book is about. I didn't read the jacket, nor the blurb on Goodreads. I don't care. I've only read a couple of Heinlein books and my feelings were widely divergent. I loved 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress'. It was exactly what I needed to read when I read it. Years later, I read 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and found it dull and very much common, which made me understand the people I knew who loved that book (most it's the only Heinlein they've read). So, this book is just to see if there's a middle ground. So far, I'm delighted at the humor. That's a surprise from Heinlein (for me) and a little bonus. - Anika from Bookmarklet

Just finished the book and have a smile on my face. It was a really cute read, so surprising (for me) from Heinlein. I was telling my husband how it was funny reading it considering that Heinlein didn't expect the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War. To be sure, he did mention another war. Some things, in the future (2001) he got right and wrong at the same time; a 24-hr bank... more... - Anika

"With all the stop SOPA and PIPA stuff in the news, a bit of news from Tuscon has gone largely unnoticed. In schools, works by Chicano authors and oh yeah, that dude Shakespeare have been banned. Ok, so not banned but teachers can't talk about them, read them in class, have them in their classes, cite them or otherwise use them as part of their lessons. Seriously. Since when did THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET become dangerous? Really? How about LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE? Both of those books are on the list which you can find here. Luis Alberto Urrea has FIVE books on the list, some of the finest non-fiction reporting and essays I've seen written. I believe that vato even was a Pulitzer prize finalist for his writing back in 2005 for one of the very books on the list - The Devil's Highway which won the 2004 Lannan Literary Award. Of course it is about a bunch of immigrants lost in the desert of Arizona, so no surprise they don't want it cited. God forbid ARIZONA gets mentioned in a book! Hijole, quick yank that sucker off the shelf!" - Anika from Bookmarklet

"We're asking everyone, all over the world to submit a video of yourself reading a passage from one of the banned books. We will post EVERY single video submission we get. If you are an author of one of the works, we welcome your words, your quotes, your videos, your thoughts. We will link back to your blogs, promote your videos on Twitter using the hashtag #dearArizona and push as hard as we collectively can to bring those books back to the classrooms in Tuscon." - Anika

Like meaning I'm appalled and ashamed of my America #sadness - WarLord

"For her final university project, the young German graphic designer Maria Fischer produced Traumgedanken (Thoughts on Dreams), a one-of-a-kind book featuring ”a collection of literary, philosophical, psychological and scientifical texts which provide an insight into different dream theories.” The artistic twist comes in the form of colored threads which weave through the text, connecting important concepts and creating an otherworldy reading experience. At several points throughout the book, the strands converge to form abstract geometric illustrations related to the text. (...) All of the stitching took ”two weeks, working from early morning till late at night.” Even if the process was labor-intensive, though, the finished book looks like a dream come true." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"When a murdered alien is discovered near a creek, an exurban cop has to investigate the strangest case of his career — while dodging the Feds and pursuing an attractive EMT." - Anika from Bookmarklet

This is a friend's book. I haven't read much it, but excerpts on his site. He is a most excellent writer and it's only $1. Go buy it! - Anika

Also on the site is a link to his book 'White Pickups'. This one is a great read. You should get that one, too. - Anika

"A while back, we had a discussion on the blog about the cover art for my princess novels. For the most part, I really like these covers, but they’re not perfect. Now I could talk about the way women are posed in cover art … or I could show you. I opted for the latter, in part because it helped me to understand it better. I expected posing like Danielle to feel a little weird and unnatural. I did not expect immediate, physical pain from trying (rather unsuccessfully) to do the hip thing she’s got going on." - Anika from Bookmarklet

Those are great, Marianne. I also like that both authors (like myself) have light sabers. I told my husband they come in handy! - Anika

"Rachel described Brazenhead as a mecca for book lovers and as one of those rare New York City gems, an extremely fascinating, yet unknown, spot. (...) Rachel introduced me to Michael, the owner of Brazenhead and a lifelong bookseller. There was something about Michael’s extremely unpretentious approach to books and his engaging personality that really impressed me. Over a few drinks Michael and I had a conversation about his life as a bookseller and the current state of secondhand shops. I seem to be attracted to people who are extremely dedicated, borderline obsessed, with their passions (probably because I frequently find myself in this realm), and Michael was no exception. A few weeks later I asked Michael if I could make a short film about his bookstore and to my surprise he said yes. I know for a fact that Michael has turned down multiple interview requests in the past so I was extremely excited by his answer. (...) What you see here is a very small glimpse into his bookshop and... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"The digital revolution is not only changing how books are read—it is also changing the how they are written, produced, and promoted. (...) "Persistence, a fervent belief in the story being told, and the adroit use of digital promotion are the alchemy that can produce a hit" - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Digital text is ushering in an era of perpetual revision and updating, for better and for worse. (...) What the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein calls “typographical fixity” served as a cultural preservative. It helped to protect original documents from corruption, providing a more solid foundation for the writing of history. It established a reliable record of knowledge, aiding the spread of science. It accelerated the standardization of everything from language to law. The preservative qualities of printed books, Ms. Eisenstein argues, may be the most important legacy of Gutenberg’s invention. Once digitized, a page of words loses its fixity. It can change every time it’s refreshed on a screen. (...) Movable text makes a lousy preservative. (...) What will be lost, or at least diminished, is the sense of a book as a finished and complete object, a self-contained work of art. Not long before he died, John Updike spoke eloquently of a book’s “edges,” the boundaries that give shape and... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Melvyn Bragg traces the evolution of writing technology from the time of classical antiquity to the invention of printing. He discovers the origins of the book, and encounters the earliest surviving intact example in the Western world" - Amira

"Sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design--guidelines for needing less and actually getting more.Maeda--a professor in MIT's Media Lab and a world-renowned graphic designer--explores the question of how we can redefine the notion of "improved" so that it doesn't always mean something more, something added on. Maeda's first law of simplicity is "Reduce." It's not necessarily beneficial to add technology features just because we can. And the features that we do have must be organized (Law 2) in a sensible hierarchy so users aren't distracted by features and functions they don't need. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less. (...) Maeda's concise guide to simplicity in the digital age shows us how this idea can... more... - Amira

"Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away." -- Antoine de Saint Exupéry - Amira

"Thirteen passengers are stranded at an airport. Tokyo, their destination, is covered in snow and all flights are cancelled. To pass the night they form a huddle by the silent baggage carousels and tell one another stories. Thus begins Rana Dasgupta's Canterbury Tales for our times. In the spirit of Borges and Calvino, Dasgupta's writing combines an energetically modern landscape with a timeless, beguiling fairy-tale ethos, while bringing to life a cast of extraordinary individuals-some lost, some confused, some happy-in a world that remains ineffable, inexplicable, and wonderful." - Anika from Bookmarklet

Started reading this earlier tonight and was instantly gripped. I've read the first 2 stories so far and each were fantastic in their telling. I think my heart pounded reading both of them! Good read, so far. The blurb mentions the Canterbury Tales and rightfully so, I'm also seeing (obvious) shades of Hyperion in the telling, though I'm not yet sure of the interactions between the passengers. - Anika

"Four FREE Apps That Make the Grade NEW! Mobile Web App From CourseSmart The first mobile Web app for the ultimate eTextbook reading experience now available. No download required. Automatically available when reading eTextbooks from CourseSmart on browser–enabled Kindle Fire and Android™ tablets OS 3.0 or higher delivering these rich features.* Superior Page Fidelity – Pages look exactly the same as print. Convenient Bookshelf – See all your books in one place. Easy Navigation – Find what you need fast. Study Tools – Search on topics, take notes and more. Automatic Updates – No repeated downloads for enhancements." - Anika from Bookmarklet

"It Calls You Back opens with RodrÍguez’s final stint in jail as a teenager and follows his struggle to kick heroin, renounce his former life, and search for meaningful work. He describes with heartbreaking honesty his challenges as a father and his difficulty leaving his rages and addictions completely behind. Even as he breaks with “la vida loca” and begins to discover success as a writer and an activist, RodrÍguez finds that his past—the crimes, the drugs, the things he’d seen and done—has a way of calling him back. When his oldest son is sent to prison for attempted murder, RodrÍguez is forced to confront his shortcomings as a father and to acknowledge how and why his own history is repeating itself, right before his eyes. Deeply insightful and beautifully written, It Calls You Back is an odyssey through love, addiction, revolutions, and healing." - Anika from Bookmarklet

From all my friends there, only one friend has won a book and it was from an author she knew personally. - Anika from Bookmarklet

Cool! - John (bird whisperer)

did you see this ;-? "The previous owner of this English translation of Newton's Principia cut and tore the jacket into pieces, and then placed the pieces inside the book. It is unclear why one should do this." http://www.flickr.com/photos... - Adriano

hmm... maybe he/she was looking for the most thematically selected bookmark... ;-)) - Amira

The History of Thought from Ancient Times to Today (1998) is a book of intellectual history written by Martin Seymour-Smith, a British poet, critic, and biographer. - Amira

See also: The 100 Best Books of All Time compiled and organized in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Amira

"A dog (Jack) and his person (The Tall Guy) decide to write a book, mostly about the dog. But don't worry, no dogs die at the end of THIS book! (Unlike some other books about yellow Labs) Aren't you tired of reading books about vampires? Wouldn't a book about a zombie puppy be more interesting? Yeah, I thought so too. I guess I'll have to work on that for the next book. In the meantime, here's a book about a dog named Jack." - Anika from Bookmarklet

"From book-burning to the iPad, or what Pompeii has to do with Gutenberg and the future of reading. Books are a tremendous presence and inspiration around here — we’ve previously explored how they’ve been made from the Middle Ages to today, what the future might have in store for them, and why analog books still enchant us. (...) - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Few would question looking at a great painting twice, or watching a favorite movie again and again. (...) What rereading tells us about ourselves, and how we have evolved intellectually, is as important as what it tells us about the books, Spacks believes. She’s endlessly interested in “how our minds, hearts, experience, personal and cultural situation, or all of the above … have changed since the last time we read those words.” (...) - Amira from Bookmarklet

"What do six books in a custom-made wooden case add up to? A $2,175 price tag at Anthropologie. Just six books. And that's not all -- here's the catalog copy: A one-of-a-kind set in a custom-made case, curated by Kinsey Marable, who left his job as an investment banker to deal with a more exotic commodity: rare and out-of-print books. His passion to create distinctive libraries led him to select these books; the mahogany-stained Baltic birch bookshelf is custom built for the custom collection. That's right, the creator of this book set left his job as an investment banker to create a set of books with a small wooden shelf that costs so much it would take a minimum-wage worker almost two months to earn enough to buy it. Because the set is custom-made for the books included, and the books are used, Anthropologie has just a handful available; each is organized by theme. The $2,175 "society" set is the most expensive. The "drinks" set is several hundred dollars cheaper -- at $1,400, the... more... - Anika from Bookmarklet

I'm pretty sure I could cobble together a few themed sets from my own library and make a few of these bookcases for them. Screw trying to be artsy-fartsy. - Hookuh Tinypants

"Time is the most fundamental common denominator between our existence and that of everything else, it’s the yardstick by which we measure nearly every aspect of our lives, directly or indirectly, yet its nature remains one of the greatest mysteries of science. Last year, we devoured BBC’s excellent What Is Time? and today we turn to seven essential books that explore the grand question on a deeper, more multidimensional level, spanning everything from quantum physics to philosophy to art." - Amira from Bookmarklet

"Peterson, a Professor of Physics and Mathematics, explains the book’s origins: The beginnings of this project were some observations about mathematics and the arts in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. I was especially intrigued by some mathematical ideas that I had noticed in Dante, unexpected mathematical sophistication centuries before Galileo. I also became fascinated with Galileo, and I began to wonder where he had come from. This question seemed to organize my thoughts. What was Galileo’s intellectual inheritance, and how did it form him? Galileo’s education was in the humanities and the arts, so the question is a sprawling one. And even that is not enough, because Galileo’s ultimate enthusiasm was for mathematics, and that is another broad intellectual stream. Where all these streams mixed, that is where Galileo came from, or so I imagined. To understand it, I had to follow the streams back to their sources. The book summarizes the classical legacy in mathematics and... more... - Amira from Bookmarklet

I still don't understand what the claim is? 'Mathematics of Renaissance arts'? Like perspective and golden ratio and junk? - Eivind

"More than 11,000 participating libraries can now loan out ebooks for the Kindle, Amazon announced Wednesday. The move had been expected -- in April, the online bookseller announced plans to enter the library market -- but exactly when readers could check out Kindle ebooks had not been known. In a statement, Amazon explained how the process of checking out a Kindle ebook from the library will work: Customers will use their local library's website to search for and select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose to "Send to Kindle" and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB. Customers can check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader. Although a Kindle device itself is not required, users will have to have to have an Amazon.com account." - Anika from Bookmarklet

Katy S - OK, gotcha. that makes more sense. Thanks! - Morgan

"Orson Scott Card has rewritten Hamlet. The back of this slim novella boasts that once we have read this "revelatory version of the Hamlet story, Shakespeare's play will be much more fun to watch—because now you'll know what's really going on." The author has previously updated other Shakespearean plays, rendering them more intelligible to modern audiences while supposedly retaining the “flavor” of the originals. Thomas and Harriet Bowdler did similar editorial work in 1818—mostly by removing any and all references to sex. (They had to avoid Measure for Measure entirely.) From them we get the word bowdlerize: "to remove material that is considered improper or offensive from a text or account, esp. with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective." Card himself makes the comparison in an introduction to his "translation" of The Taming of the Shrew, and answers the implicit accusation that he is producing Diet Shakespeare through prurient censorship: It seems to me that we might... more... - Anika from Bookmarklet

If you want to see how a retelling can be done well, check out Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams http://www.amazon.com/s... - Michael W. May

"The David Bowie song “Space Oddity” probably shouldn’t have been made into a children’s book: The haunting 1969 track about an astronaut who loses contact with Earth to float around the universe would probably give most kids nightmares. That didn’t stop illustrator Andrew Kolb from turning the space-rock song into an illustrated book. As seen in the gallery above, the artist lays down Bowie’s hit about a spaceman in a “tin can” line by line. It was an odyssey Kolb said wasn’t as easy as one might imagine. “It was one thing to make images that corresponded to the lyrics, but it was another to try to make it function as a visual story on top of that,” Kolb said in an e-mail to Wired.com. “In my early drafts it didn’t really work as a picture book, and that was my goal all along.”" - Anika from Bookmarklet

My daughter is gonna love this! - Anika

"The Atlantic has announced the first selection for 1book140, an online reading and discussion club that will span the publication’s presences on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, as well its website" - chaz2b from Bookmarklet

"Jezebel's sexual lasciviousness, Mammy's devotion, and Sapphire's outspoken anger—these are among the most persistent stereotypes that black women encounter in contemporary American life. Hurtful and dishonest, such representations force African American women to navigate a virtual crooked room that shames them and shapes their experiences as citizens. Many respond by assuming a mantle of strength that may convince others, and even themselves, that they do not need help. But as a result, the unique political issues of black women are often ignored and marginalized. In this groundbreaking book, Melissa V. Harris-Perry uses multiple methods of inquiry, including literary analysis, political theory, focus groups, surveys, and experimental research, to understand more deeply black women's political and emotional responses to pervasive negative race and gender images. Not a traditional political science work concerned with office-seeking, voting, or ideology, Sister Citizen instead... more... - Anika from Bookmarklet

"African American soldiers returned from Europe in a militant mood. "We have helped to gain the Victory for Democracy and we must share the fruits," wrote one black veteran. The willingness of white America to share those fruits can be judged from the comments of Mississippi Gov. Theodore Bilbo after he refused to stop the lynching of an accused rapist in June 1919: "This is a white man's country," he declared, "and any dream on the part of the Negro race to share social and political equality will be shattered."" - Anika from Bookmarklet

"The author's tempered optimism is the most notable feature of "Red Summer." "If you explore the whole story of those troubled months," McWhirter contends, "you are not left thinking of America's bald and cruel failings, but of its astounding and elastic resilience. The Red Summer is a story of destruction, but it is also the story of the beginning of a freedom movement." Cynics might... more... - Anika

"Saving a copy of every Web page ever posted sounds like an ambitious life's work, but one man has decided digital isn't enough. Brewster Khale wants to expand his effort by preserving a physical copy of every book ever written." - Amira from Bookmarklet

I like the Long Now efforts as well. - Todd Hoff