For the last decade, if you’ve worked in a bookstore then you probably have a Harry Potter story. You probably worked a late night HP Party when a new book came out, or you probably had interesting discussions with customers who berated Potter for teaching kids about wizardry. My own story begins in the year 2000 when I first started working in a bookstore.
Jana Pryor witnessed it all. Her grandmother, Jane, suffered for 5 years from Alzheimers and Jana was her caretaker for every day of it. The book is Jane’s eye witness account. Told in 9 chapters, a quick 90 pages, Jana takes you through each slow stage from beginning to end.
These days, I keep my lawn green using a Miracle Grow spray, but being interested in alternative and “greener” methods of caring for my habitat, I found Marc Remillard’s book, Compost Tea Making, to be quite appealing.
It’s hard to imagine people out there still unfamiliar with The Internet. Even harder to imagine teaching one, a grandparent say, who suddenly gets a Netbook or other computer and wants to go surfin’. As daunting as sharing a skill one takes for granted, like a parent teaching a child to drive perhaps. This is where Untangling The Internet aims to help.
I’ve said it before in other historical or nonfiction books I’ve reviewed here: I was not a fan of history class back in school, and I blame the bland teachers who doubled as coaches and only taught history because they had to teach something besides kick ball. History was boring to me thanks to those boring teachers. But I have authors like Michael E. Newton to thank for bringing me back to the fold. If you are not a fan of historical nonfiction, I absolutely beg you to pick up his book and at least give it a try. I have only one word to describe it: Brilliant!
I’d been following the journey of Judith Schwartz’s book for several months now, mainly because she used the Espresso Book Machine to publish it. The first Espresso Book Machine in the U.S. belongs to the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont where copies of Judith’s book can be born in a matter of minutes. The word therapist in the title pretty much kept me away from reading it, but after Mrs. Schwartz’s approached me with her book, I decided to give it a try. And I’m glad I did.
In March 2009, I began writing an article for LLBR about how to market your book on Amazon. The result of that article turned into a longer project that I decided to publish as a small book. Taking advantage of Lulu’s free ISBN at the time, I released it as a 93 page guide that included my POD Diary which I wrote throughout the first year of marketing my book, Stealing Wishes.
The subtitle of Marc Zirogiannis’s book is A Guide to Life Outside the Asylum. I admit it was this subtitle that immediately caught my interest. After reading the preview, I decided to to commit to reading the full book. The manuscript is packed into only 78 pages, which is a bit unfortunate because there is a lot of good material here which I believe the author could build upon in order to give us a more full bodied story.
For years, I was a true crime buff. I still possess more useless knowledge about some of America’s infamous serial killers than I care to admit to. Give me a good “true” ghost story or A&E/ Travel Channel historical haunting feature or reality ghost hunting show and I’m glued to the television for hours. So, when Curt Rowlett approached us with his three books devoted to mysteries, murder, and the occult, I immediately wanted to read all of them!
As a grandfather to five grandchildren, aged seven to ten, I was interested to learn what this book has to offer in the way of advice on how to be a grandparent. The answer is it has much to offer. The two authors offer great insight with ideas and suggestions that should be beneficial to any grandparent, but especially to the new grandparent.
