The Book Stacks

Today author Dyan Garris is here to talk about her book and manifesting in your life.

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You’ve read The Secret. You think positive thoughts. You apply the laws of attraction. You visualize. You even clear pathways to abundance. And you manifest NOTHING. You long for someone to tell you the real secrets about money and manifesting so you can get out of debt and get out of the psychotherapy, which you have begun in order to discover why you cannot manifest anything.

As a clairvoyant counselor, I talk to a lot of people every day; and one of the main things that repeatedly came up recently was, “I’m applying everything I learned in The Secret, so why can’t I manifest?�? There is more than one reason; but mainly it is because it is not enough to think positively, apply the laws of attraction, and/or even have faith that what you’re putting your thoughts on is going to come to you eventually.

You must learn how energy functions and you must learn how to implement and integrate this learning into your life. It is also not enough to simply think about clearing limiting beliefs unless you know (1) where these beliefs came from (2) where and why they are stuck (3) what to do after you manage to clear them.

I wrote Money and Manifesting to help people take the basics of what they learned in The Secret many steps further. People should have the real secrets to what stands in their way of manifesting, how to unblock the energy flow of money, or anything, and how to actually transform energy to get what they desire.

And this is not just a book filled with helpful information. Parts of the book are fictionalized, so there is an interesting story here as well. It is a story that everyone can identify with. When we can identify with something or someone, we then have a platform for change. When we have a platform for change, we can use it to make the leap into transformation and subsequently shift our entire paradigm.

There is another benefit to reading this book. The way it is written takes the reader on a journey of left brain/right brain integration. You move back and forth inside the pages, from a story which is processed with one part of your brain, to information which is processed with another part of your brain. When you get done and you close the book, you will feel the shift. Automatically.

Dyan Garris is the author of Voice of the Angels Spiritual Cards, The Book of Daily Channeled Messages, Talk To Your Food! Intuitive Cooking, and Fish Tale of Woe – Lost at Sea. In 2005 she created a series of music and meditation CDs for healing, Automatic Chakra Balance,™ and vibrational attunement of mind, body, and spirit.

Today we have a special guest book review from author Nick Oliva. Join me in welcoming him to The Book Stacks and enjoy the review!

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Review by Nick Oliva
The Sun Singer is a book of calculated splintered realities. The line between the real and the metaphysical is blurred through the eyes of a coming-of-age teenager whose psychic ability mirrors that of his precious grandfather. His grandfather holds the secrets of a world that co-exists with and within us here on earth.

The plot of the book is revealed shortly after he is informed of a family trip to Glacier National Park for reasons that have been unclear to his parents, but because of the grandfather’s “gifts” no one questions this apparent pilgrimage and they faithfully bring the teenage boy to meet his destiny.

Mr. Campbell’s prose is burgeoning with all manner of intricate facts providing a most accurate description to the background through which the characters are exposed. It is obvious the author is an outdoorsman and his ornithological knowledge is deep and concise with each description of any winged creature that he brings to the forefront.

Each character that our unintentional hero meets places another piece of the mystery into play ever so much as to beg to want to ask even more questions. We breathe along with the main character, we feel his confusion and innocent bravery as he takes on a medieval persona, fighting soldiers and conjuring supernatural power from a magical wooden staff that has been given to him, another legacy of his grandfather. The maze of tunnels seem to be a metaphor for the possibilities or alternate paths that one can choose, having to take the responsibilities for choosing such paths.

If Faulkner wrote science fiction I would envision it would read much like this novel. I could easily envision a screenplay that would surpass “The Golden Compass” in scope and imagination. The only criticism that I can offer is that the language of this teenage boy seems a bit seasoned and older than his years, but I’ve been critiqued for the same reasons myself in my first novel.

I found myself running to “Google” latin words and phrases and noticed a few new words being added to the English language such as clairaudiently that means the hearing of things metaphysically through different realities. Mr. Campbell also employed the use of split columns that expressed the separate lines of Sonny’s or Osprey’s or Robert’s (the same boy depending on what universe and who he was with) thinking at the same time, again the constant alluding to parallel posturing within the writing itself. Are you intrigued yet?

The road to and from the magical universe that Osprey’s (I like that name it was my college’s mascot) is loaded with surprises and revelation. There are a cast of characters that have distinct and immediate personality and the rapid movement of the plot requires one’s concentration to keep it all in order.

This is not fluffy pulp fiction. The subject matter is fantasy but it’s presentation is far from it. It is a very structured intelligent novel, each word placed exactly where the author intends and this author intends to stretch the rules, so stay strapped in and bring along your bookmarker-it is not a book to be read quickly.

By Marvin L. Zimmerman
Author of The Ovum Factor

Every novel starts with an inspired writer - a person who draws from a fountainhead of emotions and feelings they have accumulated from reading the fictional works of others.

As a young boy, I was especially fascinated by tales of great adventure that took place in far off lands and overlapped with tales of tragic love - the best kind of all since it is short-lived and never withers. Books such as Knight Without Armor and Lost Horizon by James Hilton, captivated me from the moment I opened them and became immersed in their tales of people struggling against almost insurmountable obstacles.

At the time I could not realize it. But reading these masterpieces was setting the stage for my own novels some forty years later.

In The Ovum Factor, I have tried to create a story that pulsates with the same restless energy that drives its protagonist through one seemingly impossible trial after the next. The plot overlays a tale of adventure and survival with the emotional angst of an unlikely hero who becomes separated from the woman he loves just when she needs him most. His struggle to survive and find what he desperately seeks is made infinitely more complex by the fact that the person he loves depends so much on him.

From the moment the hero, David Rose, awakes in his Manhattan apartment asking himself: What am I doing with my life? until the time he finds himself alone and critically injured in the deepest Amazon jungle, there will be a steady escalation of tension. And if this were not enough, the stakes are the highest possible - maybe even the very survival of mankind in the face of ecological degradation and climate change.

The reader who gives my first novel a chance will I hope be rewarded a story that will transport them from the centers of high-finance in New York to the California Institute of Technology in beautiful Pasadena - from China to the crime-infested slums of Rio de Janeiro, and finally into the hidden depths of the Amazon jungle. In between, there will be more twists and turns than the Da Vinci Code.

By the end of his journey, David will have completed both an actual and a metaphysical journey toward his true destiny - something that should prove emotionally satisfying for the reader.

To view The Ovum Factor video trailer, please go to www.youtube.com/TheOvumFactor

To learn more about the book and the author, please go to www.theovumfactor.com

by Gary Maccagnone

There is a soccer trainer in Michigan by the name of Jordan Mitkov. As in the story, by chance, our paths crossed when my son Garrett went out for a team Jordan trained.

There was a moment early in the relationship when Mitkov explained to Garrett and I what type of individual and what type of temperament was needed to play the midfield position. He elaborated that a midfielder had to be a good person, a person who would sacrifice for the team, an individual with strong enough character to be willing to give up the ball and the glory for the sake of the team. For around ten years, that conversation burned in my mind while I wrestled with how to build a story around it.

Meanwhile, during that period of time, my son Garrett, who was considered to be an extraordinary player, had to deal with injustices based simply on the fact he was playing on a team coached by Mitkov and assisted by me. For instance, once after a game at an indoor complex, my son Garrett was approached by the Director of the boys program with the Olympic Development Program. Two other boys, who witnessed the discussion, now play for the University of Michigan varsity soccer team. The Olympic Development Program is sponsored by the national and state soccer organizations as a means to identify superior soccer talent.

In this particular case, I watched from the other side of the field as the Director put his arm around my son while talking to him as they walked. When the boys came over to my side, one of the boys, named Santos, told me the director was really hot for Garrett to play on the ODP team. “Coach,�? Santos said to me. “He said if there was ever a player meant to be on ODP it was Garrett.�?

Two weeks later, when I arrived at the ODP tryout, I noticed a blank stare on the Director’s face when I walked up to sign Garrett up for the team. His Adams apple plunged like a fishing lure underwater when he recognized me as Garrett’s father. Two hours later, when the names were called off from the first cut list, my son’s name was read aloud. My son, who was the leading scorer in the league, and considered to be one of the best players in the State, was cut from the ODP team on the very first cut.
It was from moments like that, and many others I could write another complete novel about, that the story of “St. John of the Midfield,�? was incubated.

The book chronicles the hypocrisy, the hyper-sensitivity and the antipathy, of the soccer establishment toward an aging coach whose approach to the game is totally misunderstood. Unfortunately, in life, and in the story, those who are innocent get caught up in the destructive force such hatred brings about.

“St. John of the Midfield,�? is a story that clearly defines for the reader the nature of good and evil. Though the soccer theme is only one thread of the entire story, the treatment of Jordan Mitkov and my son was the catalyst for the creation of the story.

Hello everyone! We have a special guest on The Book Stacks today. Camille Marchetta, author of The River, By Moonlight (which will be reviewed on this site) has joined us to talk about her writing experiences.

I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her.

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This is my first guest post, ever, and honestly I’m not quite sure how to go about it, especially since the parameters Jaime gave me were pretty broad. But there’s nothing like a new adventure, so I’m going to plunge in, do my best, tell you how I came to be a television writer, a producer, a novelist, and what I learned along the way. And when you get to the end of the piece, I really hope you’ll post a comment because I’d like to know how you think I’ve done.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to write. Before I could even read (according to my mother), I would sit at my little doll’s table, home to my father’s old Underwood typewriter, and pound away, pretending to write a story. So why did it take me until my mid-thirties to become a produced and published writer? Lots of reasons, but chief among them was lack of confidence.

When I was eight, I began a novel, but abandoned it after a few chapters. I wrote articles for the high school newspaper, stories for the college magazine. I entered contests and won prizes. I took a writing course at the New School in New York City and came away with a story I submitted to one or two magazines, but the rejection letters, even the nice ones, discouraged me. I ignored invitations to send another story because I didn’t have another to send.

Of course I should have sat down to write one, but I didn’t. I thought I just wasn’t good enough to get published. Instead of writing, I began reading biographies of writers, hoping to discover the secret of success. Hemingway wrote standing up, I learned. Faulkner wrote drunk. Edith Wharton wrote in the morning. Thomas Wolfe wrote endlessly and left it to his editor to whip his work into shape. There didn’t seem to be just one way to become the writer I dreamed of being.

The obvious lesson was that nothing mattered but writing, just sitting down, and doing it. But somehow I didn’t get it. Not then.

(more…)

Hello everyone! I have a special guest here on The Book Stacks today. Deborah Woehr has been kind enough to stop by and speak her mind. Please welcome her to the site and check in at Fiction Scribe where I will be interviewing her.

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I was still a few years from finishing Prosperity when I realized something very important: marketing. How was I going to let my prospective readers know about my book? This question sent me on another quest for book marketing. I bought a handful of books on the subject, but still had only the foggiest clue as to how I was going to reach people.

Then I discovered blogging in 2004 and instantly fell in love with this technology. I didn’t have to rely on email, and I no longer had to tread carefully on forums. Blogs are the perfect platform for writers not only to buzz about their upcoming books, but to build relationships with their readers. I set up my account with Blogger, posted a few articles, and waited for the comments to come. When they didn’t I became frustrated.

This sent me on another Internet search, this time for blogging. I felt like I had hit a bonanza. There were other, better software programs than Blogger. I ditched my Blogger account, paid for a domain name (deborahwoehr.com/blog/) that would make it easy for people to find me, and signed up with an account with Blog Explosion. The last move turned out to be my best because I began receiving comments on a regular basis from repeat visitors, who eventually became friends.

While blogging is still a popular networking tool, social sites such as MySpace and Ning are booming. Podcast and video technology is growing. This year, I watched several book trailer companies launch. Many writers produced their own book trailers and posted them on YouTube.com. I don’t know how many sales came from their book trailers, but the exposure they got for their books was huge.

Thanks to the Internet, the playing field for writers of all skill levels has opened wide. Today, you can build a huge following of loyal readers on a global scale that was nearly impossible twenty years ago, unless you had a sizable marketing budget. So many doors have opened up for writers, both in the publishing world and in freelance. As the technology continues to evolve, I see the Internet opening more doors for writers.

About the Author

Deborah Woehr is a writer, designer, and problogger who lives in San Jose, California with her husband and two children. She earned her A.S. in Computer Graphics in 1993 and began writing in 1997, publishing one short story and several articles. Currently, she is a freelance writer for Syntagma Media. In 2006, she edited and published the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, a collection of essays and poems written by bloggers. Her novel, Prosperity, will be available on Amazon in February. For more information about her books, please visit her website at DeborahWoehr.com

by Aram Schefrin

In Chapter 23 of Marwan: The Autobiography of a 9/11 Terrorist, as the hijackers meet in a Las Vegas hotel room to discuss which planes they are going to take, there is an unexpected knock at the door. Everyone’s afraid they’ve been discovered. But it turns out to be a man from Domino’s with two thin-crust pizzas Marwan has ordered up.

This completely fictional incident is a key to understanding my approach to Marwan.

For one thing, it illustrates that people do not stop living their normal lives while they, for instance, plot mass murder. We tend to think of these men as monomaniacs. But even monomaniacs have to eat.

But, more importantly, it illustrates another point.

Although some of them were highly educated in Saudi Arabia, most of the Saudi muscle brought in to handle the rough details of the hijacks had never been in the West before. Like bin Laden himself, all they knew of America was what they had seen on TV or what they had been told by others – and the effect of American policy in their own region. So they could not understand, and were indifferent to, what they saw here.

But the pilots were a very different matter. Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar lived in San Diego. Hani Hanjour had spent a lot of time in California, Arizona and Florida. Ramzi al-Shibh, Mohammad Atta, Marwan and Ziad Jarrah were living in sophisticated Hamburg, Germany, and Jarrah came from a westernized Lebanese family. Atta, Marwan and Jarrah spent over a year in Florida. All of them had a great deal of exposure to Western ways. They knew very well what they were attacking.

Al-Shibh, because of his religion, his personality and his politics, was immune to the attractions of the West. Atta had consciously rejected them, out of outrage at Western doings in the Middle East. But al-Hazmi and al-Midhar immersed themselves in some Western behavior – particularly involving sex shows, alcohol and prostitutes (much like the Saudi princes on the French Riviera). Jarrah was nearly an American kid: he had been educated in a Christian school, he played basketball, and his romance with a Turkish girl was very un-Islamic. The perception that these men were from an alien culture is, therefore, only partly true.

That was the point which interested me most about these people – and the reason I felt I could approach them from Western eyes and turn them into characters Westerners could understand because of their somewhat Western behavior. And I wanted to make one of the characters almost completely Western – in the way he thinks and the things he does and believes – so that the story rang true to American readers. With the actual histories of these characters, I didn’t think that was farfetched.

I knew that in Germany Marwan had rented fancy red sports convertibles to make the club circuit. And there were other details I knew about him – plus the fact that there were many, many details completely unknown – that made him the perfect nearly blank-slate candidate to illustrate this point of view.

Although he was raised in an Islamic backwater, he was influenced by American TV and very aware of what was happening in Europe and America – and went to Germany because he wanted to play a part in that. I suspected that his personal weaknesses and flaws had led a kid who might have become another Silicon Valley clone to become, instead, a killer – or, as he saw it, a soldier of Islam. He was the perfect character to illustrate the process by which your perfectly sane neighbor boy might find himself doing insane things.

The point of Marwan, and of the book, being: some of these people were not so different from us. To understand what they did – and what others like them may yet do – I think it’s important to look at them as we would at any other sad case and try to learn what it might take to stop the continuing creation of people like them.

And that’s what Marwan is about.

My third or fourth grade teacher asked us to write a paper entitled “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.�? Ever since I can remember, I wanted to tell stories. I wrote, “I want to be a best-selling writer, but since that is almost impossible, I guess I want to be a dress designer or an interior decorator.�? Even back then I realized how hard it would be to become an author.

Some dreams die hard and I found myself in my mid-fifties still wondering what happened to the childhood dreams I still nurtured. I had lived an incredible life filled with pain, promise, radiant joy, and tragedy. I had gone from living in a 900 square foot house with five adults and three children sharing one bathroom to an 18,000 square feet with nineteen bathrooms no one had to share back, then finally to a reasonable sized home. There were times in my life when I led an incandescent existence surrounded by everything money could buy, and times when I cursed myself for not having the courage to kill myself.

I found the God of my childhood and that is how I stayed alive and sane. Slowly, He healed me and showed me that no matter how difficult life gets, if we refuse to surrender to the pain, promise blooms in the desert. Dead dreams are resurrected in ways we never dreamed of. I once heard, “One idea from the Lord can change your life.�?

My journey to fulfilling my dreams happened on a country road in Colorado. In my mind’s eye, I saw a young lady standing in the field wearing pioneer clothes. From a distance, I felt I knew her. She was young, hopeful, and passionate. She looked forward to life eagerly, but it was clouded with sorrow. I knew I had to write her story.

Pieces of the story flowed into my mind almost as if I were watching a movie. The wagon train journey to the California Gold Rush. The beautiful horses. The young man whose eyes held her madly pounding heart. The thrill and hope of first love. The violence and passion swirled around a story so shocking I began researching wagon trails. And there on the Internet I saw it, the Mountain Meadow Massacre.

I cried when I read the story. I cried when I wrote it. I cried when I saw it filmed. And I cried the first time I saw the words come to life on the big screen. This was a story that needed to be told and retold so that this horror would never happen again.

My next screenplay is a happy family film because “September Dawn�? tore at my gut and haunted me for the two years I spent writing the screenplay with director/producer Christopher Cain.

I looked at the thousands of pages of research, discarded scenes, and the character profiles I had written and knew I wanted to write a novel. There was so much more I wanted to say that couldn’t be told in two hours. In order to understand why my characters did what they did, I had invested a lot of time creating a past for them. The naysayers of my movie had no idea that Micah, the younger brother of the hero, was one of my favorite characters. He radiated life, there was a haunting innocence about him. He was a man-child thrust into a role so horrible, the essence of Micah could no longer exist. He represented all the young Mormons who remained haunted by their actions on the dawn of September 11, 1857 for the rest of their lives.

Although the heart of September Dawn is a love story, it is much, much more. It is a morality play, a dire warning against blindly following any leader, and fanaticism of any kind. I hoped that people would see the boy next door, like Micah, could do horrible deeds given the right set of circumstances. I had hoped that by his example, we would all cease to demonize terrorists but see them as only ten degrees of separation from us. I know we are all flawed human beings, every single one of us.

This is not about Mormons being good or bad. There are bad Christians as well as good Muslims. “September Dawn�? is a warning. Forgive your enemies for the enemy may very well be you.

*Interview with Carole Whang Schutter

Hello once again everyone. I am pleased to present Mr. JM’s (my husband) review of his Christmas present, Larry Niven’s Fleet of Worlds.

Enjoy.

Fleet of Worlds – Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner
Disclaimer: This book is probably not a good introduction to Larry Niven’s Known Space – there are answers here to plot points found in other books.

Larry Niven created a new genre decades ago when he virtually invented the concept of writing many of his books and stories within an internally consistent universe. No matter when he actually writes the story, it fits into a common history and early plots will be referenced in stories told of Known Space that lay hundreds of years in the future.

An example is the story of Beowulf Schaeffer’s journey to the centre of the galaxy – the result of his trip has repercussions that change the course of Known Space and provide the impetus behind the setting for Fleet of Worlds.

Larry Niven (and some other established writers) break a rule to which novice writers must adhere. When starting out, before making the kind of name that has readers seeking out their books, authors need to remember that they have the cover, the blurb and maybe 3 paragraphs to grasp the potential buyer and cause them to buy the book. Writers like Larry Niven are good enough, consistent enough and famous enough to open with an explanatory Prologue to describe the basics of ramjet travel.

It is a puzzle, as regular readers of Niven would not need the explanation and new readers might easily reject the book as too dry to purchase. I don’t recall having read any of Lerner’s works, but Niven is an excellent storyteller who uses hard science to create scenarios that boggle the mind. He uses well-crafted characters and well-told stories to explore ideas that stretch the possibilities of physics and does it so well some of his works have been used in Universities and schools as educational tools.

Kirsten, Sven and Omar are Colonists, humans raised far from any human planet of Known Space. They begin as favoured agents of Nessus, a Pierson’s Puppeteer and one whom regular readers will know well from other books.

Pierson’s Puppeteers are aliens, the only herbivore sapients known across Known Space and cowards by nature. As Niven portrays them, they are loveable creatures and it is only after a while he makes the reader aware of the power they hold. Puppeteers have three legs & small, one eyed heads at the ends of two tentacular necks. Prehensile lips with knobby fingers give them hands with a sense of taste and the ability to move the heads well apart provides excellent stereo vision.

Kirsten, Sven and Omar grow into an appreciation of the reality of the beings who have, till now, been benefactors of all they know of Humanity. They work their way through puzzles and lack of knowledge while remaining ignorant of the deeper issues being negotiated by the Citizens, the Puppeteers who hold the lives of all Colonists in their mouths.

Once it gets moving, Fleet of Worlds is engrossing and a typical example of how Niven can show a story that seems straightforward and then alter its path in ways that make one cease reading while trying to work out the inherent possibilities and permutations of what just happened. Trying to understand just how a Puppeteer will view actions of humans who aren’t quite Earth-normal takes some doing in reading – creating it takes the hand of a master storyteller.

Definitely a good read for Niven aficionados, but I’d recommend newbies do some other reading of Known Space stories before getting into this one – there are spoilers here. Try Neutron Star (short stories) Ringworld, and other works to get some perspective for Fleet of Worlds.

(I’m still on vacation, so here is a book review from Guest Reviewer JM of Fiction Scribe. Enjoy!)

The Giving Tree
By Shel Silverstein

Shel Silverstein was one of my favorite poets to read when I was a child. I would check out his books over and over from the school library, delving into the pages with delight and wishing I could write poetry like he did. At that age, though, I wasn’t all that familiar with the word “poetry�?.

I gave the book The Giving Tree to my brother and now sister-in-law as a wedding present, hoping they would appreciate the simple, yet often overlooked messages it could provide.

The Giving Tree, simply put, is a book about unconditional love. We see a tree who loves a boy giving everything she can throughout the boy’s life with her only with being to see him happy. And, just when she feels she’s given everything she can give and has nothing left, her mere presence is all that is needed to fulfill his needs.

You may find yourself not liking the boy as he grows into a man because he never once thanks the tree. I certainly didn’t when I first read this book when I was a teenager and my great-grandmother gave me a copy. It took a few reads to see what the book, and my great-grandmother, was trying to say to me…but I’ll let you find your own message.

Read this book – no matter what your age – then give it to someone you love unconditionally.

Fiction Scribe, The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein

(Today’s Guest Post is brought to you by the mighty Gillian Polack. She is a writer, reviewer, and a mighty good cook who lives in Australia. Thanks Gillian!)

I’m hijacking Elisa’s space today. I normally blog food history on another 451 blog and about life, the universe and writing at my personal journal. Since I spent my morning writing book reviews, my head space today is that of a reviewer. Consider yourself lucky – when my head space is that of an historian I’m obscure and when I’m in my fiction-writer space I’m just strange.

Most of us get our book recommendations from friends or from friendly bloggers like Elisa. Basically, we find people who have similar taste to ourselves and we trust their judgement and read the books they suggest.

Some of us find out about new books through reading reviews. I write reviews for Australian Speculative Fiction in Focus, so I get feedback from readers and writers on my reviews. I thought you might like to share some things I have discovered.

Firstly, most writers don’t like even mildly negative reviews. Don’t listen to the writers. Don’t even listen to me as a writer, complaining about my reviews (even though all my fiction is – of course, entirely perfect and any reviewer who doesn’t instantly adore it is imperfect). The writer might be completely right about a review sucking, but they might also be 100% wrong. It’s always better to read the book or story yourself and find out what you think than to rely on a writer’s view of someone’s view of their own work. There are just too many layers of bias, one on top of the other, and the book is in too much danger of getting lost somewhere. So if you see a big argument between a reviewer and a writer, get hold of the book (or an excerpt- these days quite a few books are excerpted on the web) and make your own decision. Or find another review, one by someone you know you can trust.

Secondly, reviewers are not God. I would like to say ‘present company excepted,’ but I would be lying. It doesn’t matter how authoritative we sound, all we are writing is our views of a given book. It’s a skill, writing a good review, but having that skill doesn’t make us arbiters of taste.

The trick with using reviews is to find out how much the reviewer’s taste overlaps with yours. If – for instance – I have the same sense of humour as you (this would worry many people, so don’t admit it in public) then you can probably trust that we will find the same books funny. If you’re obsessed with historical accuracy, then that’s another reason I might be the right reviewer for you. And if you particularly adore young adult fantasy then I might be reviewing your next favourite book, because I often review young adult fantasy books. I don’t much enjoy hard-boiled cop stories, so if you find a review of one by me, move on and don’t bother reading it. Unless you’re reading it for the jokes – reading a review for jokes or for literary merit (and some reviews are so brilliant they’re an art form of their own) is entirely sensible.

These are the things to look out for: the personality of the review, the skills of the reviewer, and the sort of book the reviewer regards as particularly comfortable. Especially watch out for outstanding writing: a well-written review makes good reading, regardless of what the book’s about.

Before you read a review to find out the next book you want to read, check out a bunch of reviews by that reviewer. Think about them as a person – how they approach books, and how they think about writing. Work out if you can trust them. Make sure your next book is a good one.

Gillian Polack, Food Past, Book Reviews, Reader’s Advisory

(Not long ago, I made mention of a friend who is a huge fan of Shakespeare and defender of his name. Well, it turns out that she is currently in a production of The Scottish Play, and, as Shakespeare is an author and his plays appear in book form, she offered to write up some of her observations on the play for my blog. Thanks for the guest post, Eideann!! Oh, just so you know, her production is being done kabuki-style…and the costumes were designed by a mutual friend.)

Macbeth
A View from Behind the Curtain

By Eideann

I’m not a doctor, but I play one on the stage . . . in Macbeth during the month of July this year at the Sacramento Shakespeare Festival.

I have read Macbeth and I have seen the show, but participating in a production of it has given me an entirely different perspective on the play. Hearing the dialogue over and over again brought things out that I had missed before, and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.

It’s tempting to consider the character Macbeth to be simply an evil man who seized opportunities that came his way. To think that he started out evil makes his behavior comprehensible, and allows us to disregard any possible parallels to our own ways of thinking.

Yet, in the early scenes, he comes across as a man of conscience, a man of honor. People speak well of him, and he expresses himself with wit and sense. Then come the three witches, predicting great things for both Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, will gain another title and become Thane of Cawdor, then he will become king. Banquo will not be king, but his descendants will one day rule. Both men make light of the prophecies once the witches have gone, but then one of the king’s men arrives and announces that Macbeth has been granted the title, Thane of Cawdor, thus opening up a new path to Macbeth.

To make a long story short, Macbeth decides, at the urgings of his wife, to kill the king and take the crown. After all, the prophecy says he’ll have it, why not take it sooner rather than later? What I find fascinating is something he says after he has murdered the king, when he is pretending to have just seen the dead body for the first time. “… for from this instant, there’s nothing serious in mortality. All is but toys …�?

It has been said many times that once someone has committed his first murder, the second is easier, as if once that line is crossed, it becomes easier to cross each time thereafter. With Macbeth, Shakespeare seems to address that theme. Yes, Macbeth is a soldier, and has killed men on the battlefield, but that’s a far cry from murdering a man as he sleeps in the guest room of one’s own house. Almost immediately thereafter, Macbeth kills the two men that he and his wife have framed for the crime. It is an extremely foolish move, and causes suspicion to fall upon Macbeth from more than one quarter. But now that Macbeth has killed, he seems to have truly come to believe that “there is nothing serious in mortality.�?

From that moment forward, he sees all the people around him in terms of toys, of puppets to be used or discarded at his whim. In our production, that includes even his wife, whom he treats as an extension of his own desires from then forward. In the end it extends to himself. “I have lived long enough,�? he says in Act V, “my way of life has fallen into the sear.�? It’s as if taking that one life, the king he swore oaths to and has served, has made all life less valuable to him.

For those who are local to Sacramento and who are interested, here is the Shakespeare Festival website. http://www.sacramentoshakespeare.net/

Shakespeare, Macbeth, Sacramento, Shakespeare Festival

(Catslyn has been kind enough to write today’s guest post. Conveniently, she is discussing a book that I would *never* read. This blog is now that much more well rounded. Enjoy!)

Some houses are born bad. At least, that what one learns to believe when reading Shirley Jackson’s 1959 masterpiece, The Haunting of Hill House. The story of an ordinary but lonely woman named Eleanor and her sojourn in Hill House, the book is a true must-read-now! Eleanor is invited to spend the summer living in an abandoned, and supposed haunted, mansion that was built more than 130 years ago. It’s all part of a university professor’s attempt to prove the existence of the paranormal, and Eleanor isn’t alone in the experiment. The house, though old, is ordinary enough. Except… sometimes the doors close by themselves. The walls are too straight somehow, too perfect, yet the rooms are the wrong sizes. How can a house be bigger inside than out?

I know it all sounds like a modern day episode of Ghost Hunters or Most Haunted, but those shows are kid’s stuff by comparison. Stephen King, at his best, could never come close to matching Shirley Jackson’s ability inspire skin crawling terror with a simple cold draft of air. Perhaps most chilling to the reader is the story’s frightening finish. You find yourself wondering… could it happen to me?

Re-released by Penguin Classics on November 28, 2006, The Haunting of Hill House can be purchased at most any bookstore, including online at the links below.

Purchase from Amazon

Purchase from Barnes and Noble

You can also get a brand new copy from numerous sellers on eBay just by typing the title into their search engine. But right now, eBay also offers up a rare first edition. The book isn’t in mint condition, and the cost is high, but it’s worth a look.

First Edition on eBay

The Haunting of Hill House has inspired many movies over the years. The one which most closely resembles the story of the book was the 1963 film, The Haunting.

This movie, starring Julie Harris as Eleanor actually manages to capture some of the tingling terror of the book and is definitely worth watching, though I would read the book first, naturally.

The 1999 remake of The Haunting starred such big names as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Liam Neeson with the role of Eleanor played by Lili Taylor.

While this movie is entertaining in a modern, special effects laden way, it bears almost no resemblance to Shirley Jackson’s novel. Now, don’t get me wrong, it a fun movie or I wouldn’t own it. But the psychological unease, the gut churning disturbance of The Haunting of Hill House just isn’t there. If you like convoluted story lines and angst, watch it. Otherwise, pass it by. Your choice.

But never pass by the book. The Haunting of Hill House is a true horror classic, but it is so much more. Genres limit us. Even if you aren’t a fan of horror and ghost stories, don’t overlook this tale of longing, of a desperate need to belong. Though I suppose I should warn you, The Haunting of Hill House will resonate in your bones for years. It will come back to you at the oddest moments, and it will never be an easy memory to bear. And you’ll just keep wondering. Could it happen to me?

My Blogs:

SCA Life for all things medieval!

Housework Hater

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting

(I’m off on vacation this week, so Allison was kind enough to put together some suggested reading for you all. Enjoy!)

My Top Five Beach Reads by Allison

There is a sandy spot along the Delaware shoreline that is calling my name. In a few short days, I’m heading off to beach for a relaxing vacation with my boyfriend and my best friends. Without a doubt, there will be lots of wine, lots of grilled burgers, lots of sunscreen, and (thank goodness) lots of reading. I’ve found myself so busy lately, that I haven’t had time to sit down with a good book, so catching up on my reading is something I’m really looking forward to doing on this vacation.

There are hundreds of thousands of novels that make great reads for beach vacations, but today, I’d like to share with you my top five. If you’re heading to a sandy shore this summer, consider one of these great choices:

5. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This book reminds me of summer simply because it is set on the French Riviera, where the characters open the book by relaxing on the beach. If you loved Gatsby, this is a must-read. Fitzgerald gets very autobiographical in this book, and in my opinion, it’s his best book.

4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Ok, ok…I know this is a book most of us read in junior high–but it is still a perfect summer read. It meets all of the requirements: short and fun to read, but still with substance, because it covers topics like racism.

3. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom

Most people say that Tuesdays with Morrie is Albom’s best novel, and I’m not saying that they’re wrong, but Five People makes a nice beach book, seeing as the main character works at the traditional beach amusement park. The story is sweet, and really great for everyone.

2. Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult

This is one of my favorite books of all time. You can actually check out other Jodi Picoult books if you’ve already read this one, but I simply picked Plain Truth because it was the first book I read by her. Her stories are easy to read, but touch on really difficult subjects that make you ask “what would I do?”. You may want to save this one for a longer beach vacation instead of just a long weekend, since it is a bit lengthy when compared to the rest on this list.

1. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

I’m making Angels and Demons the top book on this list because many people who enjoyed Da Vinci Code never actually gave this one a chance. It starts off slowly, but don’t give up–make it your vacation project. Even if you hate it and hated Da Vinci Code, this book makes you talk about interesting subjects and historical possibilities.

On my vacation I’m *probably* bringing Bridget Jones’ Diary, but I’m still deciding! What are your favorite beach reads?

My blogs: www.RealityonBravo.com and www.FindReligion.net
My company website: www.ABContentonline.com

Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom, Plain Truth, Jodi Picoult, Angels and Demons, Dan Brown