Looking Ahead – New Releases in 2009

 Books, Recommendations  Comments Off
Dec 262008
 

Below is my personal shopping list (so far) for 2009!

January 5th – Karen Miller – Hammer of God (Godspeaker, Book 3)
January 27th – Gail Z Martin – Dark Haven (Necromancer, Book 3)

January 27th – Lois McMaster Bujold – Horizon (The Sharing Knife, Book 4)

February 26th – Kim Harrison – White Witch, Black Curse (The Hollows, Book 7)
March 3rd – Anne Bishop – The Shadow Queen (The Black Jewels, Book 7)
April 7th – Jim Butcher – Turn Coat (The Dresden Files, Book 11)
April 7th – Karen Chance – Curse the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, Book 4)
May 26th – Kim Harrison – Once Dead, Twice Shy (YA) (Madison Avery, Book 1)
June 24th – Jacqueline Carey – Naamah’s Kiss – (Kushiel, Book 7 – New series)
June 30th – Vicki Pettersson – City of Souls (Signs of the Zodiac, Book 4)

Banned and Challenged Books by Title

 Procrastination, Writer's Life  Comments Off
Dec 182008
 

Courtesy of The Forbidden Library.I’ve marked off the ones I’ve read. It’s more than I thought. I challenge all my readers to read at least one book from this list in 2009. Post in the comments which one you choose!

  1. 1984 , George Orwell
  2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , Mark Twain
  3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Lewis Caroll
  4. Analects , Confucious
  5. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl , Anne Frank
  6. Arabian Nights or 1,001 Nights , Anonymous
  7. Beloved , Toni Morrison
  8. The Bible
  9. Brave New World , Aldous Huxley
  10. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee , Dee Brown
  11. The Call of the Wild , Jack London
  12. Canterbury Tales , Geoffrey Chaucer
  13. Catcher in the Rye , JD Salinger
  14. The Celluloid Closet , Vito Russo
  15. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory , Roald Dahl
  16. Clan of the Cave Bear , Jean Auel
  17. The Color Purple , Alice Walker
  18. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm , Jacob & Wilhelm Grimm
  19. Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems , Galilei Galileo
  20. Different Seasons , Stephen King
  21. A Doll’s House , Henrik Ibsen
  22. Don Quixote , Saavedra Miguel de Cervantes
  23. Earth Science
  24. The Egypt Game , Zilpha Keatley Snyder
  25. Fahrenheit 451 , Ray Bradbury
  26. The Figure in the Shadows , John Bellairs
  27. Gone With the Wind , Margaret Mitchell
  28. Grapes of Wrath , John Steinbeck
  29. The Graphic Work of M.C. Escher , M.C. Escher
  30. Grendel , John C Gardner
  31. Gulliver’s Travels , Jonathan Swift
  32. Hamlet , William Shakespeare
  33. The Happy Prince & Other Stories , Oscar Wilde
  34. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , Maya Angelou
  35. It , Stephen King
  36. James and the Giant Peach , Roald Dahl
  37. King Lear, William Shakespeare
  38. The Koran
  39. Le Morte D’Arthur , Sir Thomas Malory
  40. The Life and Times of Renoir , Janice Anderson
  41. A Light in the Attic , Shel Silverstein
  42. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe , C.S. Lewis
  43. Little House in the Big Woods , Laura Ingalls Wilder
  44. Little House on the Prairie , Laura Ingalls Wilder
  45. The Lorax , Dr. Seuss
  46. The Lords of Discipline , Pat Conroy
  47. The Martian Chronicles , Ray Bradbury
  48. My Friend Flicka , Mary O’Hara
  49. The Odyssey , Homer
  50. On the Origin of the Species , Charles Darwin
  51. Paradise Lost , John Milton
  52. Raisin in the Sun , Lorraine Hansberry
  53. The Rolling Stone , Jim Miller
  54. The Satanic Verses , Salman Rushdie
  55. Slaughterhousep–Five , Kurt Vonnegut
  56. Song of Solomon , Toni Morrison
  57. The Stand , Stephen King
  58. The Talmud
  59. To Kill a Mockingbird , Harper Lee
  60. Tom Jones , Henry Fielding
  61. Twelfth Night , William Shakespeare
  62. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
  63. Vasilissa the Beautiful: Russian Fairy Tales
  64. Welcome to the Monkey House , Kurt Vonnegut
  65. Where the Sidewalk Ends , Shel Silverstein
  66. Where’s Waldo? , Martin Hanford
  67. The Witches of Worm , Zilpha Keatley Snyder
  68. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle
  69. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings , D.T. Suzuki

So that’s 29 out of 69. 40 more books yet to read. My goal is to read Paradise Lost this year. How many have you read?

Sony's Reader or Amazon's Kindle?

 Book Tech, Books  2 Responses »
Dec 182008
 

CNN’s Business Traveler posted reviews this morning of both Sony’s Reader and Amazon’s Kindle. For those of you that don’t know both the Reader and the Kindle are electronic books: little gadgets about the size of a paperback that will hold lots of books in their large electronic memories. In other words – pure heaven to anyone who’s both a bibliophile and a technophile!

I don’t know anyone personally who owns a Sony Reader, but several of my friends have Kindles. They’ve been very pleased with them so far, and I’m happy for them. For myself, though, I want a little bit more from my e-book gadget.

I want an e-book gadget that costs less than $200. I want e-books that are priced around $5.00 or less. I want to be able to read them in .mobi or .pdf or any format I like. It would be really nice if someone combined the talents of the Kindle with those of the Peek. A portable e-book reader with email and SMS messaging capabilities. THAT sounds like a gadget for the ages, doesn’t it?

Do you own a Reader or a Kindle? How do you like it? And if you could request new features or upgrades, what would they be? Post your comments here.

2008 NaNovel Blurb

 Progress & Processes, Writer's Life  Comments Off
Dec 182008
 

Interested in hearing a little bit about what I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year? Well check out my book blurb below!

Wil Rainolds is a painter, a father, a husband. His marriage is crumbling, his son is in rebellion, his daughter is about to run off with a military boy, and even his paintings haven’t been cooperating lately. He could also very well be humankind’s last and only weapon against the monstrous invaders known as the creatures. What is it about Wil’s talent that makes the creatures hate and fear him? Can he save the world and still manage to keep his struggling family together?