Playaway Audio Device

I decided to try a playaway audio book which is a new format. It is a preloaded digital audiobook. http://www.playawayaudio.com/ I checked out Petty Crimes by Gary Soto a few hours ago. The total playtime of the preloaded audiobook is 3 hours and 45 minutes. It consists of ten short stories. I will be able [...]

On Writing Well The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction– William Zinsser– Review

On Writing Well The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, Sixth Edition, Revised and Updated, c1998 by William Zinsser is a guide to writing nonfiction. I found this book to be quite interesting. It is one of the first books that I have ever read that specifically focuses just on nonfiction writing. Almost every previous work [...]

Solstice Wood– Patricia McKillip– Commentary, Morning Thoughts

Tom Thumb hitches a ride on a butterfly.

Solstice Wood by Patricia McKillip is a fantasy novel. I am not sure that I can review it properly because there were pieces that I did not quite comprehend, but I will try anyways. It is a myth set in modern times.

Sylvia Lynn is asked to return [...]

Robin McKinley– Sunshine– Review

This piece of artwork is free. It is a copyleft licensed image. The author wants to you use it as much as possible. http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/

Sunshine by Robin McKinley is an interesting novel. You might call it a lady vampire slayer story for adults. This book is a Mythopoeic award winner. Sunshine is a bakery worker, she [...]

Morning Thoughts

I’ve spent quite a bit of time looking through Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist at various titles which might be purchased. I also took some time to look at the New York Times Bestseller Lists and the Publishers Weekly Bestseller Lists. Only a few books on the bestseller lists interest me. Free Lunch by [...]

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders– Lawrence Weschler– Review

Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonders Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler is an odd and entertaining little book. It is the kind of book which a person can take a few evenings to sit and read. The writing is light and entertaining.
It is about the [...]

Stirring It Up How To Make Money And Save the World– Gary Hirshberg– Review

Stirring It Up How To Make Money and Save the World by Gary Hirshberg is about how to use environmental business practices to both save the environment and make money.
I would call many of the things he is describing as either industrial ecology or environmental technology. His main point is that environmental business in the [...]

Morning Thoughts, Gods Debris

I am still on jury duty which is turning out to be an odd experience. I ran out of books from the libray where I work to read. I went back to my local library and picked up a copy of Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! by Scott Adams. So far it has been [...]

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen– Review

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is a retelling of the story of Sleeping Beauty. It is a story of survival set in World War II poland. Becca has collected mementos from her jewish grandmothers death. There is very little known about her grandmother other than she came into the United States as [...]

Oil by Upton Sinclair Review

Upton Sinclair as seen on the cover of Time magazine in 1934

Oil by Upton Sinclair is a novel about the oil business in the 1920s in Southern California. It was written in 1927. Like most of Upton Sinclair’s novels it is about the struggle between different classes of people and how it destroys peoples [...]