Memoirs are the new novels. True or not, artfully or artlessly enhanced autobiography now commands the kind of front-list attention usually reserved for heavyweight novelists. Why not, then, take a memoir to the beach or backwoods this summer along with the usual fiction? As this fourth Short Takes of 50 titles reveals, summer's offerings boast all the traits of a blockbuster movie. more
All That Happened At Number 26
All that happened at Number 26
by Denise Scott
With Denise's trademark candour, this is part memoir, part stand-up and completely beguiling. Showing exactly what it takes to hold it all together when you want to follow your career dreams, maintain the love in a marriage, bring up kids who will get up off the couch, and look after an aging parent, while remaining humorously sane.
Buy from Amazon
The use of PowerPoint as a presentation tool is well acknowledged and accepted. However, Fripp and Prost believe it is frequently used as a crutch that often distracts your audience from the main messages of your presentation. If you are using PowerPoint, why not learn the "inside secrets" of doing it the right way?
This 13-page eBook reveals those secrets by addressing different creation and presentation methods, as well as potential pitfalls that you should be aware next time you're using PowerPoint. It offers Fripp's PowerPoint Philosophy that allows you to best serve your message, as well as Prost's 21 Mistakes to Avoid when using PowerPoint. You'll receive practical advice and valuable guidance that is sure to provide a welcome improvement to your next presentation.
From the New York Times: In an essay called "I'm Y.A., and I'm O.K.," author Margo Rabb muses about the increasingly blurred line between YA and adult books.
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
Some failures lead to phenomenal successes, and this American nurse's unsuccessful attempt to climb K2, the world's second tallest mountain, is one of them.
Dangerously ill when he finished his climb in 1993, Mortenson was sheltered for seven weeks by the small Pakistani village of Korphe; in return, he promised to build the impoverished town's first school, a project that grew into the Central Asia Institute, which has since constructed more than 50 schools across rural Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Coauthor Relin recounts Mortenson's efforts in fascinating detail, presenting compelling portraits of the village elders, con artists, philanthropists, mujahideen, Taliban officials, ambitious school girls and upright Muslims Mortenson met along the way.
As the book moves into the post-9/11 world, Mortenson and Relin argue that the United States must fight Islamic extremism in the region through collaborative efforts to alleviate poverty and improve access to education, especially for girls.
Captivating and suspenseful, with engrossing accounts of both hostilities and unlikely friendships, this book will win many readers' hearts.
Available from Amazon
Sea of Poppies
Sea of Poppies
By Amitav Ghosh
Diaspora, myth and a fascinating language mashup propel the Rubik's cube of plots in Ghosh's picaresque epic of the voyage of the Ibis, a ship transporting Indian girmitiyas (coolies) to Mauritius in 1838. The first two-thirds of the book chronicles how the crew and the human cargo come to the vessel, now owned by rising opium merchant Benjamin Burnham. Mulatto second mate Zachary Reid, a 20-year-old of Lord Jim–like innocence, is passing for white and doesn't realize his secret is known to the gomusta (overseer) of the coolies, Baboo Nob Kissin, an educated Falstaffian figure who believes Zachary is the key to realizing his lifelong mission. Among the human cargo, there are three fugitives in disguise, two on the run from a vengeful family and one hoping to escape from Benjamin. Also on board is a formerly high caste raj who was brought down by Benjamin and is now on his way to a penal colony. The cast is marvellous and the plot majestically serpentine, but the real hero is the English language, which has rarely felt so alive and vibrant.
Available now at Amazon
Watchmen
Alan Moore (Author)
Dave Gibbons (Illustrator)
Has any comic been as acclaimed as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen? Possibly only Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but Watchmen remains the critics' favourite. Why? Because Moore is a better writer, and Watchmen a more complex and dark and literate creation than Miller's fantastic, subversive take on the Batman myth. Moore, renowned for many other of the genre's finest creations (Saga of the Swamp Thing, V for Vendetta, and From Hell, with Eddie Campbell) first put out Watchmen in 12 issues for DC in 1986-87. It won a comic award at the time (the 1987 Jack Kirby Comics Industry Awards for Best Writer/Artist combination) and has continued to gather praise since. It is one of the most influential graphic novels of all time and a perennial bestseller. Now it is attracting a lot of new attention, thanks to the feature film adaptation which opened on March 6. This is the graphic novel that director Terry Gilliam once declared “un-filmable”
Watchmen is a murder mystery, a political thriller and a deconstructionist superhero tale for adults, among other things. It examines a world where superheroes are real, and imagines the political and social consequences of this world. In an Earth slightly parallel to ours, masked heroes are forced either to retire or work for the government. Someone has been killing former heroes, prompting wanted vigilante Rorschach to track down the old team. Aging, arms races, corporate power struggles, human relationships and even the narrative structure of one’s own life are examined through the conventions of superhero comics.
... more about the book, the movie, the author and the illustrator
It was announced at Norwescon 32, in SeaTac, Washington, that the winner for the distinguished original science fiction paperback published for the first time during 2008 in the U.S.A. is a tie between:
EMISSARIES FROM THE DEAD by Adam-Troy Castro
(Eos Books)
and
TERMINAL MIND by David Walton
(Meadowhawk Press)
To Build the Life You Want, Create the Work You Love : The Spiritual Dimension of Entrepreneuring (Paperback)
by Marsha Sinetar
"appeals to the entrepreneurial spirit in this inspirational tome"
"The author's "spirituality" of entrepreneuring amounts to a popular Confucianism for twenty-first-century capitalism. This does not mean that Sinetar introduces readers to Chinese religion (though she does cite the I Ching) but rather that she defines spirituality as an embrace of roles necessitated by one's position within a social and economic system that has taken on a covertly religious significance.
Spirituality is a matter of embracing who one is and being where one is in the context of an economic system that is market driven and incapable of generating enough "jobs" in a conventional sense to go around."
"Well written, powerfully concise and to the point. For anyone who has been or is in a career transition, in the midst of finding and/or creating a business of their own, for anyone who has been looking for the "answer" in what to do next and how, for anyone who has been exploring and trying all kinds of stuff but hasn't found "that thing" that you can call fulfilling work - READ THIS BOOK!"
You can buy it from ....
Shopaholic Ties the Knot
by Sophie Kinsella
Another entertaining entry in Kinsella's unabashedly fluffy Shopaholic series. Life could not get any better for Becky Bloomwood, the irresistibly daft heroine of Confessions of a Shopaholic (2001) and Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (2002). She has managed to parlay her personal and professional passions into a dream job as a personal shopper at Barney's, and she and her wildly successful boyfriend live a life of relative peace and prosperity in Manhattan's West Village. Well, at least they would if Becky could manage to curb her extravagant spending habits a bit. When Luke finally pops the question, a euphoric Becky manages to entangle herself in another rather sticky predicament. Becky's cozy mum back in England has planned a homespun wedding for her only daughter on the same day for which Luke's frosty society mother has booked the Plaza in New York. Two weddings on the same day, what's a committed consumer to do? Chock-full of the charming antics and asides that made the first two installments hilarious best-sellers.
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