books, art, music

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Amazon Kindle is a revolutionary portable reader that wirelessly downloads books, newspapers, magazines and blogs to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper, even in bright sunlight.

Kindle customers, no matter where they are in the U.S., can wirelessly shop the Kindle Store and download new content — all without a PC or a WiFi hot spot. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so there are no monthly wireless bills and no service commitments for customers.

The Kindle Store contains over 90,000 books that can be purchased and delivered wirelessly to Kindle, each in less than a minute. Customers can choose from hundreds of top newspapers, magazines and blogs and have their subscriptions auto-delivered wirelessly. All New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases are $9.99, unless marked otherwise.

Sign me up! Order your Kindle today.

About a decade ago, Emotional Intelligence, (EI), was recognized to be a far better indicator of success in the work world than IQ.

However, the key question that remained was, how do you raise you EI?Dr. Reldan S. Nadler’s book, Leaders’ Playbook answers that question. The Leaders’ Playbook is a how-to guide with more than 100 EI techniques and tools to help raise EI.

Nadler, an executive coach and speaker also reveals the secrets of success in fascinating thumbnail EI stories of corporate star performers, political leaders and sports coaches.

Examples include:

• Rudy Giuliani.s perfect pitch of empathy and vision after 911
• G.E.s Jeff Immelt.s managing adversity
• eBays Meg Whitman’s initiative and service orientation
• USC’s Pete Carroll’s optimism and developing star players and championship teams Continue reading »

Whether you had Viking ancestors or are simply fascinated by the culture that almost ruled the world, Lost Worlds, The Vikings is a visually stunning new publication from Sterling–just out in time for the holidays.

Amazing interactive features (push the button to hear Viking-speak) and a library of information will take you back to the days when the Norsemen ruled the seas. For those 200 years, all of the Europe feared attacks from the renowned warriors in the north. This lavishly illustrated and interactive book explains why the Vikings inspired such fear.

Lost Worlds, The Vikings illuminates every aspect of Viking history and culture, including their lore and legends, journeys of exploration, discovery of America centuries before Columbus.

The many features I found intriguing included the sound chips (including someone speaking against a backdrop of thunderstorms!), the cut-through illustration of a longship, the gatefolds featuring a Viking map, and five embossed Runestone “booklets” that actually allow readers to feel the inscriptions on the page.

Every moment I spent with this book was a treat; from the wealth of information (Vikings at war, legend and lore, exploration and assimilation, Viking origins) to the captivating illustrations. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Garth Risk Harvey, with some major help from his many photographer friends and designers Christopher D. Salyers and Eliane Lazzaris, has created a unique book in A Field Guide to the North American Family.

This completely fascinating ‘novel’ is a compendium of brief one-page thoughts titled alphabetically and matched with a photograph that illuminates the words written.

And as if this weren’t clever enough, the entire book is a marvel of design, taking the form of a notebook one would take on a journey, a collection of musings, paraphernalia, variations in paper types and typefaces, and printed in such a way that the reader feels almost guilty about opening the cover of someone’s private diary, so intimate is the structure and the content.

This is an art book - but it is so very much more. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

With very little of the world’s headlines making sense to those millions who read or watch them, this novel or story form, A Secret of the Universe: A Story of Love, Loss, and the Discovery of an Eternal Truth, of addressing the glue that holds people’s perceptions together is a healthy start toward healing.

Author Stephen L. Gibson (’ Truth-Driven Thinking: An Examination of Human Emotion and Its Impact on Everyday Life’) is a young campaigner for epistemology - the science of studying the origins of human belief and knowledge as examined through basing all thought on truth.

Instead of electing to create what could have been a dry discourse on science and religion and how the two intertwine, Gibson has demonstrated his own personal journey through a story involving the friendship of two boys/men, one (Bill) is a devoted literalistic, evangelical Christian while the other (Ian) seeks to explain the holes in the blind faith religion of his upbringing, choosing instead to question every aspect of every form of ‘religions’, looking for the proof or truth of each and how these religions have so profoundly influenced human behavior. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Edmund White, gratefully, is a prolific writer, a gifted man of letters who has become one of America’s more important authors.

While much of Edmund White’s oeuvre is about gay life, he does not confine his talent to the one topic: he is a brilliant biographer, a fine man of research, and a poet with prose. Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel is his latest foray into fictional biography and for this reader the book succeeds on every level.

The short novel is ostensibly a ‘biographical’ account of the sadly brief life of novelist Stephen Crane, a nineteenth century literary giant who is best known for The Red Badge of Courage, but who also wrote a few other short novels and story collections. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is the Amazon #7 Reviewer

Ann Patchett is one of our finer story tellers writing today and certainly her latest novel Run keeps pace (if not exceeds) with her previous works.

Patchett has the uncanny ability to introduce ‘facsimiles’ of characters in very subtle ways, blending her ingredient characters slowly, revealing their full personalities and places in the storyline so gradually that reading about them resembles meeting new acquaintances at a party - some will fade, others will materialize as leads.

In RUN, Patchett addresses mixed race adoption, responses to death, biologic versus adoptive mothers, and family dynamics, all in the course of a twenty-four hour period of time, and in doing so she compresses so much information that reading this fine novel begs for a one sitting time frame to read it from cover to cover. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is Amazon’s #7 Reviewer

Chet Spiewak has created a beautifully illustrated, well written book that fits perfectly into the season before Christmas, that time of year when parents search for stories that address the meaning of Christmas, the anticipation of the season, and the joy that culminates on Christmas morning. His book is An Ornaments’ Tale

Yes, there are other tales such as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ and ‘Why the Chimes Rang’ and some others that fill that need to build on the holiday without focusing on just gifts. Spiewak’s fine little book sets the stage both for the excitement ahead and suggests traditions that children/families can build upon to make the holiday truly a meaningful event. Continue reading »

Hell hath no fury like a succubus scorned

Jesse may no longer be a succubus, but she’s got a Hell of a past. She wants to come clean about her infernal history with Paul Hamilton, her white-knight-in-training lover, except he’d never believe her. Just like some people are worth being (shudder) monogamous for, some secrets are worth keeping.

So Jesse keeps mum—until three of her former associates strong-arm her into returning to the Pit. Now, unless Jesse faces off against the King of Hell, she’ll lose Paul’s immortal soul. If she’d known love was this tough, she never would have turned her back on Lust…

Don’t miss Jackie’s appearances:

Saturday, November 10
3 pm.
Flights of Fantasy
488 Albany-Shaker Road
Loudonville, NY 12211
(518) 435-9337 or 1-800-300-READ

Friday, November 16 – Sunday, November 18
Fantasy Matters
University of Minnesota

Here’s what critics are saying about Jackie Kessler’s newest novel, The Road to Hell.

“Fun, sexy and utterly original! Kessler will seduce you.”
— Gena Showalter, author of The Nymph King

“This is writing of blistering splendor: Kessler’s acid wit and wry style make for damn fine reading. Trust me, the seven deadly sins have never had it so good!”
— Cornelia Read, author of A Field of Darkness

“A demonic thrill ride with heart and soul. Kessler is one of a kind!”
— Jaci Burton, author of Surviving Demon Island

“THE ROAD TO HELL is a wicked, deliciously inventive treat. This book thoroughly seduced me. It’d be a sin to miss it!”
— Rachel Caine, author of THIN AIR