BookLovers Review

BookLovers Review Update

2009-04-05T19:41:00.001-05:00

Hello BLR readers,

We do plan to renew activity in this blog in the near future.

For the past year, we've been blogging about books, and other issues, on:

Epublishers Weekly, at www.EpublishersWeekly.com

On Epublishers Weekly, we will announce the re-opening of the new BookLovers Review.

Until then, enjoy our archives.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

Fahrenheit 451 -- Watch the Film, Free

2007-03-02T17:46:00.000-05:00

Reading the best books makes us human. Here's the film that explains why:

Fahrenheit 451 -- Click here to Watch it Free

Read the Paris Review Interviews, Free

2007-01-10T14:25:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the Paris Review for making this invaluable resource available, free, for everyone.

Paris Review Interviews
http://theparisreview.org/literature.php/prmAlpha/A-E

20 Most Interesting Books of 2006

2006-11-22T11:45:00.000-05:00

See the list, and read the reviews, of the BookLovers Review awards for the 20 Most Interesting Books of 2006.

Albert Schweitzer -- Read the free Ebook

2006-11-17T09:30:00.000-05:00

A free ebook about Albert Schweitzer is now available for reading online:

Animals, Nature, and Albert Schweitzer

Need information about Copyright? ... Try here.

2006-11-06T17:22:00.000-05:00

For copyright information, try this page from the Cornell Copyright Information Center:

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/

And help from the US copyright office, is here:

http://www.copyright.gov/help/

The Ithaca Manual of Style, edited by Michael Pastore

2006-09-13T15:29:00.000-05:00

A new style manual, revolutionary in approach, explains how to write with power, sincerity, clarity, and grace.

The Ithaca Manual of Style
http://www.zorbapress.com/books/ithacastyle.html

Read A Sample Chapter from the Novel: "The Sea Devil"

2006-08-30T05:42:00.000-05:00

Sparks fly when a young Russian woman meets her idol.
Read a sample chapter, here:

http://www.reinventingyourself.com/

Free Presentation about Print-on-Demand Publishing

2006-06-15T10:14:00.000-05:00

Authors Beware:
The Pleasures and Perils of Publishing by Print-on-Demand

Print-on-Demand (P.O.D.) is a revolutionary method for rapidly producing professional-quality hardcover and paperback books. Often praised as a panacea for unpublished authors, this rosy path to publication can be a quicksand of pitfalls, predators, and hidden costs. This lively session explains how P.O.D. compares with traditional commercial publishing; how to understand and evaluate the options; how to distinguish genuine P.O.D. companies from the slippery vanity presses; and how to use the best facets of this new technology to publish your own book.

2:00 to 3:00pm on Saturday June 24th
at the Tompkins County Public Library's Borg-Warner Room
101 East Green Street, Ithaca, NY

A Knowledge-Town Forum by Michael Pastore

Free and open to the public

NY Times Survey of 25 Best American Fiction Books

2006-05-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

A New York Times survey selected the best work of American fiction from the past 25 years.

THE WINNER:

1. Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

The RUNNERS-UP:

2. Underworld by Don DeLillo (1997)
3. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (1985)
4. Rabbit Angstrom: The Four Novels by John Updike (1995)
5. American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997)

OTHER BOOKS RECEIVING MORE THAN ONE VOTE:

6. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
7. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1980)
8. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin (1983)
9. White Noise by Don DeLillo (1985)
10. The Counterlife by Philip Roth (1986)
11. Libra by Don DeLillo (1988)
12. Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver (1988)
13. The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (1990)
14. Mating by Norman Rush (1991)
15. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson (1992)
16. Operation Shylock by Philip Roth (1993)
17. Independence Day by Richard Ford (1995)
18. Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth (1995)
19. Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy (1999)
20. The Human Stain by Philip Roth (2000)
21. The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003)
22. The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)

The Adventures of Mr. Marigold -- by Michael Tobias

2006-03-02T16:28:00.000-05:00

The Adventures of Mr. Marigold
a novel by Michael Tobias
Published by Craig Potton Publishing

"Certainly the book of the year; probably the book of the decade."
--Michael Pastore

Read the full review, here: http://www.bookloversreview.com/fiction/marigold2006.html

Visit the book's web page

Thoreau Reader -- Read Thoreau's Key Works, Free

2005-12-20T18:02:00.000-05:00

Throreau's key works can be read free, at this website. Scroll down near the bottom and you can find a link to a site where you can download then build a cardboard copy of Thoreau's cabin, immortalized in Walden.
Read more ...http://eserver.org/thoreau/default.html

Author Fred Madeo Writes About His Novel

2005-12-03T18:58:00.000-05:00

When I began my novel, "The Shout and the Avalanche," I intended it to be about friendship and loyalty. It was not until I had completed several chapters that I realized that my overarching theme was anti-Semitism. The reason was simple: the events of America in 1939 were being shaped by Nazi Germany.

America and the world were gripped in a deep economic depression. By 1939 it showed signs of easing up, but they were not out of the woods yet. Not only had economic conditions shaken Americans who lost their jobs and had to stand on soup lines for sustenance, but also in the mid-thirties Mother Nature struck a devastating blow at the lives of farmers of the midwest. She gave them no rain. The earth was dried up; top soil had been torn away by the winds, and the bleached earth was barren. No crops, no cash, no way to pay the mortgage, so the banks took their land and the people were driven westward to look for work. John Steinbeck told their story in his great novel, "The Grapes of Wrath." Like a colony of ants the disinherited traveled westward on the highways, in search of sustenance, of relief from the hot and unyielding sun and winds.

Read more ...

How Accurate Are Online Rankings and Reviews ?

2005-11-27T17:35:00.000-05:00

At last, an authoritative source questions the accuracy and methods of online reviews for books and ebooks. Two scholars from Yale and Cornell have just published an article: Six Degrees of Reputation: The use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems.

Visit the article's web page, read the abstract, and then download the article -- or have it emailed to you.

Learn more ...
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=857505

100 Notable Books of the Year from the New York Times

2005-11-24T07:26:00.000-05:00

The New York Times picks its favorite books for 2005.

Read more ...

The Mission of Alice Miller &mdash Essay by Michael Pastore

2005-11-15T09:50:00.000-05:00

How Adults Can Survive A Childhood of Violence and Untruth

"Fear and love cannot live together ... Blows are used to correct brute beasts."
— Seneca (Roman philosopher, author, politician, 4 B.C.E. to C.E. 65)

Two thousand years ago, the people of ancient Rome cheered enthusiastically as they watched gladiators fight each other to the death, and saw innocent persons torn to pieces by wild beasts. In that same era, Roman teachers practiced corporal punishment on a daily basis. The Roman schools were stocked with a variety of instruments used to beat children, including the ferula (a bundle of switches made from birch branches), the scutia (a whip made of leather straps), and the flagellum (a whip made of straps from ox-hide, the hardest available leather).

Although feeding slaves to lions and beating children in schools were acceptable practices to the mass of Roman citizens, occasionally a voice of protest cried out.

Read more ...

Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website &mdash by Rachel Andrew

2005-11-01T17:03:00.000-05:00

Technology
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

Years ago I abandoned my Dreamweaver (version 4) because it lacked the ability to work with XHTML. In Macromedia's latest release, Dreamweaver 8, everything has changed. Dreamweaver's default format is XHTML, and the software's new features for working with Cascading Style sheets are impressive. Admirably, DW 8 has been built to create websites that are "standards compliant", according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) developed by the WAI group of the W3C.

It's always good news when developers — of software and web browsers — improve their products to comply with standards. The only downside is for individuals who make and manage websites: the two online manuals about the latest edition of Dreamweaver weigh in at more than 1,300 PDF pages long. And that's where Rachel Andrew's new book -- one of the first published works about DW 8 -- can come to the rescue.

Read more ...

CSS Cookbook — by Christopher Schmitt

2005-10-19T12:41:00.000-05:00

Technology
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

When I opened up CSS Cookbook I expected to find a collection of recipes to spice up my bland web pages with great-looking styles. The Cookbook met that expectation, and provided another unexpected benefit. In sections called "Discussion," the author explains the mysterious workings of CSS properties and rules. So after reading a chapter you will not become a mindless automaton who blindly follows intructions without understanding 'why'. You will learn some of the important principles of Cascading Style Sheets, and ultimately, how to cook up great styles on your own.
Read more ...

Web Designer's Reference — by Craig Grannell

2005-10-12T04:40:00.000-05:00

Technology
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

The human brain was not designed to clog itself with oceans of factoids such as XHTML attributes, which CSS tags are inherited, and the entity number for the em dash (it's 8212). Here was my problem: seven days ago I noticed huge gaps in the "Web Design" sections on my bookshelves. I have been lending web books to everybody: my wife for her new job; an 84-year-old friend named Harry (who is publishing his novel online); and the 14-year-old kid next door who wants to be a millionaire before he reaches the ripe age of 15. Bereft of books, tired of Googling, and feeling guilty about pestering the local library's reference staff — I needed to grab essential tidbits of information quickly, so as not to slow down my work. My old reference books were out on loan but fortunately (for my overworked cerebral cortex) my new books stayed at home. For the past week I have been opening and closing the four supplementary chapters of Web Designer's Reference more than I opened and closed my refrigerator door. It took me a whole week to realize that this book offers much more than a handy reference: this weekend I read the book from page first to last. And I was thrilled to discover that Grannell's book is among the clearest, completest, and most insightful book about web design that I've studied in the past six years.
Read More ...

Thoreau Bound: A Utopian Romance in the Isles of Greece — by O. Thoreau

2005-10-01T21:17:00.000-05:00

Fiction
Reviewed by Barry Palm

In the ancient island of Crete the main protagonist, O. Thoreau, fleeing the sad materialism of his native USA, finds his natural disposition of character and soul affirmed in Crete. The story has deliberate Homeric resonances with the homeward journey of Odysseus. O. Thoreau finds that to survive this journey he must cultivate his already natural qualities of personality: sincerity, openness, intelligence, imagination, creativity, sense of justice and humor. His most significant learning, comes mainly from extraordinary women who carry resemblances to the goddesses of ancient times.
Read more ...

The Secret Guide to Computers by Russ Walter

2005-09-15T07:40:00.000-05:00

Technology
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

In November 2000, the remarkable Garry Kasparov lost the world chess championship -- which he had held for 15 straight years -- to the 25-year old Vladimir Kramnik. Getting to the top is tough, but it's even more difficult to stay there. For years, I've been reading and reviewing the newest editions of Russ Walter's Secret Guide. And each year, I've called it the best introduction to computers that you can buy, borrow, or steal. How does the 29th edition stand up? Is this Swiss army knife of computer books still on the cutting edge?
Read more ...

Mark Twain — by Larzer Ziff

2005-09-01T15:03:00.000-05:00

Nonfiction
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

In 1908, the 72-year-old Twain met the attractive English author Elinor Glyn. Twain wrote: "... she was a picture! Slender, young, faultlessly formed and incontestably beautiful -- a blonde with blue eyes, the incomparable English complexion and crowned with a glory of red hair of a very peculiar, most rare and quite ravishing tint." The two authors discussed Glyn's notorious 1906 romance novel, Three Weeks. Twain told Glynn that he "quite agreed" with her theme: that in the realm of sexual relations, the laws of Nature should take precedence over the God-given laws of Man. And yet Twain refused to publish, or allow to be published, his true opinion of the book. Publishing his true ideas, he said, would be "unthinkable"; and he explained to Ms. Glyn ...
Read more ...

Human-Built World — by Thomas P. Hughes

2005-08-15T16:40:00.000-05:00

Technology and Culture
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

Human-Built World is a concise history that elucidates technology's essential movements, eras, inventions, thinkers, and ideas. In this balanced treatment of the genie's benefits and perils, Hughes describes the visions of cheerleaders and skeptics as diverse as Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Charles Beard, Henry Adams, Lewis Mumford, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Duchamp, Margaret Mead, Margaret Bourke-White, Leo Marx, and John Cage. Technology is the focus, but always in relationship to something significant: nature, religion, art, or the quality of human life. First trained as an engineer, Hughes values the creativity in the technological effort, and believes that machines can lead us to a better life. But his enthusiasm is neither blind nor naive. Hughes has listened to, and learned from, technology's harshest critics. The result -- his vision for an ecotechnological environment -- is a sane, realistic, and inspiring bridge between the impractical neo-Luddites and the reckless technophiles.
Read more ...

The Shout and the Avalanche — by Fred Madeo

2005-07-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

Fiction
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

The American experience comes alive in Fred Madeo's historical novel, The Shout and the Avalanche. Set in New York City in 1939, the book follows the struggles of a 19-year-old messenger, Billy Wonder. Billy's encounter with his family and friends and co-workers, with the immanent war in Europe, and with his own sincere questions about life and death, all lead to immense self-revelations for this good-hearted young man. Fact and fiction are blended skillfully throughout the work. We see the glorious and notorious events of that year -- the World's Fair that promised a technological utopia, the arrogant military aggression of Hitler, and the panic-causing broadcast by Orson Wells. Even more interesting is ...
Read more ...

Test Driving Linux — by David Brickner

2005-07-02T20:39:00.000-05:00

Nonfiction
Reviewed by Michael Pastore

Years before computers ignited the Information Revolution, Marshall McCluhan warned: "All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."

And yet one wonders if Media should shoulder all the blame. Is it possible that the true fault lies with technology and media in the wrong hands? ... Satish Kumar writes: "I am not against technology. But I am against megatechnology. Technology for profit is a wrong use of technology."

What would technology not for profit look like? ...
Read more ...