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Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Bernhard Schlink stunned the reading public with his brilliant 1999 novel THE READER and once again with Homecoming: A novel he proves he is one of our most important authors today.

Written in German and translated by Michael Henry Heim, HOMECOMING addresses, as did THE READER, the prolonged impact of the WW II fall of Germany on the lives of those who survived it.

Not only is this a gripping story of a deserted son’s search for his mysterious father, it is also a treatise reflecting on the horrors of evil and challenges the responsibility of those who perpetrated it and those who ‘allowed’, or were victims of, its perpetration.

There is much profound philosophy in these pages, enough to make the reader stop, think, turn to other resources for references, and become transported by the mind of a truly gifted writer. Continue reading »

I’ve always wanted a bookstore that stayed open 24/7 . . . what a perfect place for the night owl who doesn’t get moving til 10 pm, or the earlybird who is up at dawn.

Fortunately, that bookstore DOES exist, and it’s called BooksFree.com. BooksFree is like the movie paradise Netflix, except it’s for book lovers. Starting at $9.99 a month, with 100,000 titles to choose from . . . what are you waiting for ?

This online store carries both paperbacks and audiobooks, and is the first place I’d suggest checking out, particularly if you’re having trouble finding a specific title at your local bookstore.

How BooksFree Works
Cruise over to BooksFree.com and sign up for the option of your choice, depending on how many books you want to rent a month. Next, browse the many genres, adding books to your reading list. Your reading list goes into a queue and viola! you’ll receive your books within 5-10 days.

Once you’re ready for the next batch, simply drop the books in the mail and the next books on your reading list are dispatched.

Under the monthly minimum $9.99 plan, you’re allowed two books out at any time; or, if an avid reader, you can splurge with the $37.99 plan which allows 12 books! And this isn’t simply limited to paperback books. In this digitalized era, audiobooks are all the rage and Booksfree gives you the CD or MP3 delivery option.

Additional Features
Unlike other sites, BooksFree ensures that the audiobooks are shipped in their entirety, despite the number of discs required. In addition to being able to rent books in both paperback and audio book format and purchasing books that you like for discounted rates, gift subscriptions are also available.

BooksFree.com. Do we love it? You bet!

Grady Harp is one of Amazon’s Top 10 reviewers–and a wonderful friend to BloggingAuthors.

Designing Design is quite possibly the most beautiful book on design ever published. Not only is the content illuminating and intelligent, allowing the world to gain an appreciation for one of the truly unique voices in the design field – that voice being the Japanese master Kenya Hara – but also in keeping with the subject, the book itself is a paramount of elegance, simplicity and superb creative force.

This is a white book, a volume of information and illustration that embraces the purity of white as the matrix upon which everything blossoms and emerges.

In an introductory essay by John Maeda the author states ‘Kenya Hara is a complex man. He views the world through his many lenses of seeing, tasting, smelling, erasing, evaporating, and all the forms of construction and deconstruction.’ And after those appropriate words this pristine book opens into the genius Continue reading »

Austin Carr, Big Numbers main character, has launched a blog called: The Crimes of Austin Carr Crime Fiction, Hot Tips, Redheads, and more…

My name’s Carr. I’m a fictional stockbroker. The slick expensive business cards in my wallet say I’m a Senior Financial Consultant for Shore Securities, Inc., Members of the American Association of Securities Dealers, but I’m really just a salesman and I work for myself. Straight commission. If I don’t sell, I don’t eat.

Here’s what Jack Getze, author of Big Numbers, has to say about it:

What the heck IS this?

Agents blog, editors blog, authors blog. Why not a character? I’m sick of reading everybody else’s opinion on stuff. I want to have my say on cheap stocks, pricey redheads, and staying alive in the crowded world of crime fiction.

Check out Austin Carr’s blog

Jack’s second Austin Carr Mystery, BIG MONEY, is set for publication March 1, 2008, again by Hilliard & Harris. A third book in the series, tentatively titled BIG MOJO, should be ready for submission in the spring.

Visit Jack’s site for the latest updates.

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Harry Leonnoff is the Fixer of the title of this interesting first novel by motivational author Ed Brodow: he is patterned on the author’s grandfather and provides a character around whom we are invited to revisit the turn of the century New York landscape and sociopolitical shenanigans.

Brodow covers the era from 1883 to 1961, weaving fascinating stories about WW I, the plight of the Jews during WW II and in the USA, the rise of the Irish political giants of Tammany Hall, the colorful Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, the Depression, the plight of the poor and disenfranchised, and the plague of polio that blighted the life of the hero - and even possibly provided the first of the hurdles such as overcoming evil with good that ruled Harry Leonnoff’s life.

By separating his book into time framed chapters, Brodow gives us an excellent history course, told in the manner of a novel with extraordinarily interesting characters that are well drawn. Little known facts about the period are shared Continue reading »

Skipping Emotions, an excerpt from Do Pantyhose Lie?

“On the outside we still see the beauty
But inside we are so ugly
How could my own self lie to me?
And pretend we don’t see what we see
What starts as disappointment turns to hurt
What starts as a smudge becomes full blown dirt
The buzzer goes off: a red alert
As from the pain we try to skirt”

There are so many areas that this applies to and not all the lies are told by us. Many are told to us by the world, culture, Hollywood and other outside influences. In Hollywood, a man can continue working well into his fifties, sixties or seventies possibly. However, the same is not true for women with a few exceptions (i.e. Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon).

There is a confidence one must have in themselves that is not defined or detoured by Hollywood, magazines or anyone else but that person. This confidence must come from more than physical appearance, fame and financial status. Mature women are Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon top 10 Reviewer

‘The children now live in luxury and love chatter instead of exercise.’ Sound familiar? Describes youth today? The quote is from Socrates! It serves as an excellent springboard for this lively discussion by Leonard Sax’ Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men, a book that may be directed to health care workers, but one that deserves attention from the general public.

The five factors Sax entertains are 1) feminization of education; 2) video games; 3) increased prescription of psychotropic drugs that affect the motivational systems of the brain; 4) exposure to endocrine disrupters; and 5) lack of heroic role models. Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

One of the major pleasures in reading ‘first works’ by unknown writers is the discovery of great writing in the nascent stage.

With White Lies: A Tale of Babies, Vaccines, and Deception Sarah Collins Honenberger steps onto the stage with a securely written, well researched ‘mystery’, a novel based on fact that is played by actors so well defined that by the end of the book we feel as though we know each of them - the ‘heroes’ and the ‘villains’ - so well that from every angle of each the character motivation is fully detailed.

No mean feat this, especially when dealing with a subject matter that is by nature controversial. That Honenberger succeeds in making this fast paced intrigue a truly memorable novel places her in Continue reading »

Grady Harp is an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer

Jeff Alt has a mission: reacquaint the world with the beauties and the challenges of Nature and find inner peace and the source of human kindness. And if that sounds like a hopelessly impossible task for these times in which we live, then his A Walk For Sunshine: a 2,160 mile expedition for charity on the Appalachian Trail, 2nd just may change that.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to read this entertaining and meaningful book and not rearrange mindsets as to priorities and the significance of living in the moment.

Jeff Alt may not be an academically trained writer, or a student of philosophy, or a prophet sent among us to alert our attention to environmental issues and the importance of family, but in Alt’s case, those ‘restrictions’ allow him to relate in more simple honest terms a life altering experience and stimulate each of us to find our own dream journey - and follow it!

The story is well summarized in all the reviews of this revised version of A WALK FOR SUNSHINE (and Epilogue has been added to make the events of the book more accessible to the novice hiker/reader).

In 1998 Alt make the trek from Georgia to Maine, the Appalachian Trail of 2160 miles, on foot, surviving in the ‘wilderness’ to prove that he 1) could accomplish his dream of thru-hiking the treacherous trail and 2) to raise money for the Sunshine Home for the Disabled, a home that cares for his brother Aaron, a young lad with Cerebral Palsy.

Like any fine journal the author writes of the agonies, the physical challenges, the struggles with sustenance among the wildlife and the extremes of Nature’s seasonal changes while at the same time offering anecdotes both hilarious and heartwarming, moments when he bonded with trail partners and moments when Nature seemed determined to squelch his drive to complete his journey.

But complete it he did and now ten years later he gives us all of those moments day by day during his four-month long trek. His writing style is conversational: this is not the sophisticated poetic collection of entries of a Thoreau but rather the humanistic need to communicate the splendor of nature. As one would expect, along the way he does communicate with the Higher Being but in a way that is never preachy but rather wholly credible, given the near death challenges he faced. And in the end this journey, upon completion, gained much needed fundraising for Sunshine Home as well as fostering a changed man who sees the universe more clearly and shares his drive to protect our little globe.

A WALK FOR SUNSHINE makes a great bedside inspiration book, a thoughtful gift for friends and family who are struggling with apparent insurmountable odds, and an excellent reference for ‘youths’ of all ages.

In a time when novels about love are so often shrouded in the tragedies and pain that accompany the emotional bonding of two people that they push the joy into the background, along comes new novelist Kevin E. Taylor with a love story so genuine, so beautifully developed, so free of angst, and so uncharacteristically about two men finding a powerful relationship that reading this novel is a pleasure - and a discovery of a fine new talent!

Writing from the African American stance on same sex love is a challenge for Taylor, but his ability to incorporate the beauties as well as the idiosyncrasies too often reported as the down low form of male bonding allows him to create a fresh and genuine approach to storytelling. Continue reading »