Joe Posnanski said recently that “there are wonderful books out there. Books that will reach inside you and make your heart soar and change you like only a good book can. You just have to look for them. Go deep into the bookstore. Find a book that strikes you. Read a few pages. Nothing worthwhile is easy. You have to think for yourself. Because in this world, if you don't want to think for yourself, you can be sure that someone will think for you.”
I’ve been drunk on books for most of my life. From the early days when I opted for the library over the playground, to 13 years as a bookseller, to my current job as a book rep, it sometimes seems as if books are all I’ve truly cared about ... When a book makes a best-seller list it is instantly less interesting to me We are awash in great books, more than we could possibly read
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Voices from Chernobyl
Many families in Eastern Europe are haunted by the disaster. Three years after the blast the Velvet Revolution took place. However, no one can help my nephew, Tomas, 18, who will never recover from Chernobyl disaster. He cannot communicate, read, even walk properly ...
n April 26, 1986, at 1:23:58 a. m., a series of explosions destroyed the reactor in the building that housed Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station. The catastrophe at Chernobyl became the largest technical disaster of the twentieth century. . . . For tiny Belarus (population: ten million), it was a national disaster. . . . Today, one out of every five Belarussians lives on contaminated land. This amounts to 2.1 million people, of whom seven hundred thousand are children. In the Gomel and Mogilev regions, which suffered the most from Chernobyl, mortality rates exceed birthrates by twenty percent.
• Svetlana Alexievich's oral history of Chernobyl
• · Louis de Bernieres famously once likened "the pressure of trying to write a second bestseller to standing in Trafalgar Square and being told to get an erection in the rush hour". First Draft, Complete
• · · Didn't think it was possible for the left to be anymore splintered? Welcome to the world of biopolitics, a fledgling political movement that promises to make mortal enemies out of one-time allies -- such as back-to-nature environmentalists and technophile lefties -- and close friends of traditional foes, such as anti-GMO activists and evangelicals. How biopolitics could reshape our understanding of left and right
• · · · Life's a Gift? Quick. Exchange It; The notion of the gentleman has been out of fashion for some time, especially because of its connection to boorish, Victorian-era stoicism The Warrior, the Lover and the Monk;
• · · · · Folks, we’re probably going to see one of these things enacted every couple of years. Senator Feinstein may pretend to be a liberal, but all politics is local, and corporate Hollywood has her in their pocket. Indeed, there wasn’t one single senator who felt big business didn’t deserve these latest new protections. That’s good for those of us making a living in this industry
• · · · · · David Steinberger, a former senior executive at HarperCollins who helped create parts of Publishing Plus, says communicating directly to readers is important because most publishers cannot afford to compete directly with film, television and other media for their attention. Michael Crichton? He's Just the Author ; John Kremer's Book Marketing Blog (Our favorite on this topic); Book Marketing Works - Booklets and consulting for authors who want to sell into "non-traditional" markets; How to Get Happily Published -- Info on Judith Applebaum's book which is widely hailed as best-in-class ; Authors: How to Get Your Business Book Published -- a special report by MarketingSherpa's staff