Dekker's new Book



In a place far away

   At least I think it is his new book. He is such a prolific writer at the moment, it seems to me. Since I pick up his books at the Santa Monica Library and it appeared in the new book section, I think it is new.
   It's The Priest's Graveyard  and I have always enjoyed his writing style. Tight. Good charaters. Concerning the battle between good and evil in the world.
   This concerns a priest who is going around cleansing the world of bad people. A priest who acts like the grim reaper. He meets up with a young woman who has been ill treated and now has the goal to destroy the man who abused her.
     I am still in the midst of reading it so I don't know how it works out, but the two of them are on a vengence kick. I suspect if it follows the resolution of his other novels, good will win out in the end, Although I wonder about the message that it is okay to take the law in your own hands when it comes to evil.
     Dekker handles the subject well and it is a good read for those who like this type of story.

Importance of Reading

I might have mentioned this earlier Books whether in EBook form or hard cover contain so much good material. Where else can you get an education for little money and time?
    Non-Fiction is very important. How to do it books sell well because people want to know. No ones' education, that is formal education, can  cover everything you would need to know as you go through life. But someone has put it in a book to share with others
  Also non-fiction includes biography. Get to know people this way. Meet people you wouldn't run into every day. There is the memoir called "Jennie Out Of The Bottle"  by Barbara Eden. You remember her. The woman who played a genie that came out of the bottle to help the Astronaut played by Larry Hagman. yes, her. Chances are that you won't meet her every day. But you have a book you can read and learn something about her.
  Or you can read books on Abraham Lincoln. Him you aren't going to run into today.
   Keep reading. Keep growing.

Further Books

Books are very important to a persons life. You get enjoyment from them as well as information. I am very grateful having learned to read.

                                                                                     

 I guess I have always been a reader. It is very important to me. I also guess I am the few of those who weren't distroyed by the required books to be read for English Classes in High School. I never really disliked Dickens or other writers. Although there were a few authors, looking back, I would never have read unless they were required in school. Sir Walter Scott is one of those. George Elliot is another. As well as Thackery.
Now that I am out of school I find it easier to go back and read those authors I have missed reading when in high school.
    Moby Dick is still a hard one to get interested in. As is Gone With The Wind   which I was able to plod through. Cancer Ward  is a great piece of writing.
   I have also found that American Literature really isn't. Geater themes and plots are found in Soviet Literature and English Literature. But more about them later.
  The EBook has not done a great service for us by releasing these books and others as free downloads. But that seems to be where you are most likely to find the titles  limping along.

I can't believe it's a Harlequin

Okay. So I have this EReader and I downloaded Hide in Plan Sight by a Marta Perry. I was surprised to see it was a Harlequin suspense. Harlequin has the formula that it is to be category romance and women's fiction. I just downloaded it because I saw suspense and mystery suspense is a genre I enjoy.
  The story is told in multiple viewpoint. Being a romance it is told from a male and a female viewpoint. Being suspense there has to be a mystery to it.
  Andrea returns to her home in Amish country. Her younger sister has been in an accident and is in the hospital. When the story opens Andrea has  an accident also Her car goes off the road.. Enter our male lead, Carl, who is hiding out from something. Andea is coming back to  find that her grandmother is thinking about turning the family house into a B& B. The family fortune is used up and this seems to be the only way to keep the house in the family.
   Someone doesn't want them to open it as a B&B. Accidents are happening. Carl is our male lead. As in all Harlequin books there is the formula repulsion and attraction going on.
  Who is trying to keep them from opening the Inn? Why all the accidents? Who actually is Carl and what is he hiding from?
  This is written with a strong Christian viewpoint. Which opens the question.. should a Christian be doing this type of romance writng? And the answer may be, why not? It is time the Christian writer competed.
  In a later post I want to go into how to choose a book to read. I don't recommend reading just anything. Too much trash out there. Nor do I insist on it being one type. But there are real guidelines, I think, and in  a later post I want to share them with you.

Others Are Reading

Doing my search for others to recommend along the line of book to consider. Some links I was able to find--and these are areas that I myself won't be covering-- are these. http://www.ablogofbooks.blogspot.com/ which covers children's books. When it comes to Sci-Fi/ fantasy you can look at http://www.fantasticreviews.blogspot.com/. If you are a lover of mysteries I recommend http://www.stacyjuba.com/.

Death of an outlet

Sad to say but I have just been informed by Daniel A.of the Santa Monica Daily Press, our Santa Monica paper, that he has decided to stop carrying the book review column in the paper. This means there are going to be many in the area who are not going to be able to have good books reviewed.
Book reading is not dead. If you don't have a hard cover or paperback book you could have an EReader. These people still need a good book reviewer
 Be that as It may be, this makes it more important that I keep this blog up.
  Presently I am sitting keyboarding this in our local library. I am surrounded by books. True, there are books on tape and CDs and  other medias here. Yet there are books here. Hard cover. Soft cover. Graphic books. Dictionaries. And so on
  Reading is important. The reason we read is for information and for entertanment. Hopefully when we get out of school we keep reading.
  People will tell you that it was the required reading in school that killed or lessened their love of reading. True, Dickens will not be a favorite of mine anymore. I have reread Christmas Carol again. A Tale of Two Cities is still out there for EBooks. But you don't have to read them now that they are not on your English teachers recommended list.:-)
 That was just an example. I am sure  you have many more you have no desire to go back and read. I don't blame you.
 Keep reading and write back to me. Leave a comment and I will respond.

WordPress Help

The other day I was looking around for a book to help me with my blogging. I ran across "Sams TEACH YOURSELF WORDPRESS in 10 Minutes" by Chuck Tomasi and Kreg Steppe. Now I realize you are reading this post in blogpost but I figured that the concepts atre transferable.
  This small book has 13 chapters. Some chapters are longer than others because the information covers a bit more details. You learn how to configure your profile, how to create your posts and pages, also how to use RSS. These subjects are also needed in any form of blogging. Since this is a blog I find that I need information so as not to make a blog that makes no sense. We all need instuction.
  I only wish I could find one on blogspot so that I could better post to this.
  Please comment if you have suggestions. Any input would be welcome.

Lakers Score

Back on April 2, 2010  my book review on "50 Amazing Years in The City Of the Angels" by the Los Angeles Times Sport Staff was published in the Santa Monica Daily Press. This is a collectors item. They haven't always been on the winning end of the game. And with the recent mishaps they may not be on the winning end this year. But when it comes to history and basketball, the Lakers are a team to be looked up to.
 Basketball is a contact sport. The price of being a winning team is high.
 What I liked about this book is the collection in one place of all the columns detailing their long history in the sport. The time period covered in this table sized book is from 1960 to 2009.
  The losing years are detailed here also. but along with that is a recap of the recouping and effort to be number one for so many years.
Columns by Jim Murry, Ted Green,  Scott Howard Cooper.. they are all here. And the pictures from Times achieves makes this a must have for sports fans.

Books are Here to Stay

Books. They are important. I mean the ones you can hold in your hand and pursue slowly, letting the words simmer in your mind. I have nothing against Ebooks. I like Kindle, Kobo,IPads. They have their place. They can store lots of titles without taking up much space on the bookshielf.
   But I prefer to hold something with weight to it in my hand and slowly turn the pages. It is also hard to cuddle up to an Ereader, metal, breakable.
   Yes, over time the paper book gets old and worn and torn. Sometimes they go out of print and before they do it is neccessary to put them into pixels.on disks and CDs. We are seeing that  today... the transformation of bound books into pixels. And even that will pass. Look at what is happening to that form of storage known as microfiche.

Books to be enjoyed

  I am the book reviewer for the Santa Monica Daily Press. http://www.smdp.com/. Most of this discussion comes from the book I reviewed back in June 9, 2010 . It was called "The Case for Books:Past, Present, and Future." by Robert Darnton. It seems to be aimed for libraries and other bibliophites, but it is good reading for thought. We seem to be seeing a transformation from bound books to pixels stored on disks and CDs and Google Book Search. This is somewhat of a good move. But with the transformation of information there is also the possibility of what was added by publishers as the years went by. The classic case in point would be anything we have today by Shakespeare. But we accept the additions to the text, the lines subtracted, words left out. After all, that is stuff of days gone by and no one minds.
   A worning is given that we must be careful of what we accept from the intgernet,. "Students usually download tests from computers without askin gwhere they come from, aqnd they frequestly get garbage," Darnton. points out.
   Still that is no reason not to read.
  More discussion to come.