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Award winner coming through…

It not me but F.S. Michaels, author of the book Monoculture which I have mentioned around here before.  Here are the details. FIRST-TIME CANADIAN  AUTHOR WINS AMERICA’S GEORGE ORWELL AWARD NCTE George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language Canadian author F.S. Michaels has won America’s prestigious 2011 George Orwell [...]

A DIY Book Journal

Last year it took Mark forever to get started on his written assignments.  He would just freeze and get all stressed and I would have to calm him down and get him focused on what to do.  I thought we had made some progress but he wanted a book the other day and tried to [...]

30 of the harshest things one author has said to another

Of course the harshest remarks are probably left anonymously on Amazon.com Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Mark Twain on Jane Austen: “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize [...]

Other

I am not sure where I first started following Kester Brewin’s writings.  Probably I found some of his stuff on Vaux’s old site and I assume that I heard of his book from either Jonny Baker or Steve Collins’ blog but I ordered The Complex Christ when it came out in England, paid a fortune [...]

The "Homicide Lexicon" and its rules

I am reading Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon and really enjoying it.  Throughout the book, Simon frequently refers to a set of 10 informal rules that apply in the majority of homicide cases, as detectives soon learn. They are as follows: Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses [...]

The (literal) Order of Phoenix

A spreadsheet plot written out by J.K. Rowling. Her approach to spreadsheet plotting is to divide the columns by chapter number, story timeline, chapter title, main plots and subplots. via

The Tipping Point?

Seth Godin is done with publishing. Traditional book publishers use techniques perfected a hundred years ago to help authors reach unknown readers, using a stable technology (books) and an antique and expensive distribution system. The thing is–now I know who my readers are. Adding layers or faux scarcity doesn’t help me or you. As the [...]

You had me at Wifi

This looks like the Kindle that will finally make me purchase a e-book reader. There are a few new features as well, the most important of which is a new WebKit-based browser. WebKit is the open-source base for all of our favorite mobile web browsers, including those used by the iPhone, iPad, Palm Pre, and [...]

Goodreads

Three of the four of us are using Goodreads around the house.  You can find me at www.goodreads.com/jordoncooper, Wendy at www.goodreads.com/wendycooper and Mark is now at www.goodreads.com/markcooper.  If you want to follow what we are reading and what we think about it, you now can.

Refresh

I don’t take a lot of vacation days.  Part of it is the nature of work… about the time I want time off, we are often short staffed.  The bigger issue is me.  I don’t enjoy vacations very much and it’s something that I have worked on more as I have gotten older. This week [...]

Other by Kester Brewin

Kester Brewin released his latest book Other.  It’s only available in the U.K. right now but if you want to pay the Canadian government a lot of fees, you can get it shipped here (I paid more in taxes and fees for The Complex Christ than I did for the book but it was worth [...]

Jesus Manifesto

Thomas Nelson is releasing a new book called Jesus Manifesto: Restoring the Supremacy and Sovereignty of Jesus Christ by Leonard Sweet and Frank Viola. This book will be on special discount from Amazon.com on June 1st, the date of the release. I got to know Frank Viola a little bit at Soularize in the Bahamas [...]

E vs. ink

My friend Karen posted some thoughts on Twitter about ebooks and readers. Been thinking about how e-books/Ipad exclude poorer readers. Continued…. Folks with literacy/soc. justice concerns should keep zines/broadsheet etc. in mind. If medium is message, cost of readers excludes many. It would easy to dismiss Karen’s thoughts because of her history with paper but [...]

A three word review of The Gamble

As emailed to me earlier today.  If you haven’t read it yet, you are missing out with an incredibly brilliant book that offers an important look at what went wrong in Iraq and how some worked hard to fix it.

The Gamble

While at the cabin this week I finished off Chris Czajkowski’s book, Cabin at Singing River, Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, and Thomas Rick’s The Gamble. It was a good day to spend with three of my favorite authors on some pretty diverse topics. Here are some thoughts that I had while reading The Gamble, [...]