May 18th, 2012
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The School of Life is an organization that aims to help people learn how to feel fulfilled and lead a better life through a diverse range of classes, sermons, and events on topics that range from relationships to money:
The School of Life is a place to step back and think intelligently about these and other concerns. You will not be cornered by any dogma, but directed towards a variety of ideas – from philosophy to literature, psychology to the visual arts – that tickle, exercise and expand your mind. You’ll meet other curious, sociable and open-minded people in an atmosphere of exploration and enjoyment.
The organization has recently published a series of six books that recast the traditional ‘self-help’ book from the ‘do this and get that’ advice method to a more philosophical lens. The result is self-help book series that looks beyond fixing immediate problems, and instead, aspires to be a guide for a everyday living.
Learn more about the six books- How To Find Fulfilling Work, How To Stay Sane, How To Worry Less About Money, How To Change The World, How To Thrive In the Digital Age, and How To Think More about Sex (the latter by the always interesting Alain de Botton) here.
The School Of Life
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May 18th, 2012
The kitchen is not just for cooking anymore. For most people, it’s where the majority of their time is spent, sharing meals, doing family projects, and entertaining. And, as it turns out, it’s the place where some are storing their book collections.
There are various routes to take in terms of placement, style, and type of book to display. For some, the kitchen shelves are reserved exclusively for cookbooks, a pragmatic choice. Others decide to display a plethora of books and magazines on various subjects.
In terms of where the books are kept in the kitchen, often times a few shelves in an island do the trick. Or a single row of cookbooks placed on a shelf above the sink, a scenario that turns the books into part of the decor, especially if arranged artfully. Others choose to put in floor-to-ceiling shelves to store the family collection of books in its entirety, a dramatic look and one that ensures the kitchen will be the focal point of activity in the space.
Putting your kitchen table next to a massive bookshelf seems to be a popular choice; there’s something cozy about sharing a meal surrounded by books. All this said, I’m sure that there are some people that think that food and books do not mix.
So where do you stand? Would you store your books in the kitchen? Or should your reading place and cooking/eating place be separate entities?
FIRST ROW
1. Fabulicious Food by Ren Behan
2. Decor Pad
3. Designiz
4. Daily Home Design
5. Digs Digs.
SECOND ROW
1. Austin Modern Living
2. Apartment Therapy
3. The Kitchn
4. Peonies and Poloroids
5. Southern Living
(Images: As credited above)
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May 18th, 2012
We got so many great emails of book recommendations, I haven’t been able to get through all of them yet. Please keep them coming and I’ll report back on the great finds soon.
 Josh Marshall
Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.
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May 13th, 2012
 The Brooklyn Lit Crawl beer-and-book festival, which stumbles through 13 Cobble Hill, Carroll Garden and Brooklyn Heights venues on Saturday May 19, 6-8 p.m., will comprise cocktails, trivia contests, book readings and special events along the way.
Venues include Zombie Hut (273 Smith Street), Knit Lit (253 Smith), People’s Republic of Brooklyn (247 Smith), BookCourt (163 Court Street), Last Exit (136 Atlantic Avenue) and the After Party at 8 p.m. at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street).
Special events include: * Armchair/Shotgun enacts a live old-timey radio show. * The Liars’ League NYC acts out the latest story by Mark Haddon, author of “The Curious Incident of a Dog in the Nighttime.” * The Cambridge Writers Workshop presents Literary Cabaret.
The inaugural NYC Lit Crawl took place in September 2008. Last year’s event in Manhattan drew more than 1,200 crawlers, enjoying 70+ authors at some 20 events. This is its first extension into Brooklyn. The full schedule is here, with all info here.
“Brooklyn is so literary, it seemed like a no-brainer,” founder Suzanne Russo tells the Brooklyn Paper. “There’s so many friendly venues and so much going on in the literary sphere there, we thought it’s really the place we should be. The venues are smaller, there’s an energy in Brooklyn, a creative spirit that’s more of a go with the flow, we’ll-do-whatever kind of thing.”
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May 13th, 2012
Our Books of the Month features two books that we selected as our favorites: one debut and one non-debut. Throughout the month, we will try to have special features on those books, reviews, giveaways, and more while helping to promote them.
I know it’s a little bit late to be posting this but I wanted to go ahead and write up a post about our two books of the month for May. For our Book of the Month, I chose what may be an obvious one. And for my Debut of the Month, I chose one possibly lesser known but still a great contemporary I think you’ll love.
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May 13th, 2012
Laura T. Ryan, Contributing writer
Central New York fans of young adult literature: Brace yourselves. Some of the genre’s rock stars will soon be within your orbit, as they descend on Oswego to help the River’s End Bookstore celebrate its 14th anniversary.
The informal panel discussion, at 2:30 p.m. May 20, will be moderated by Laurie Halse Anderson — the National Book Award-nominated author of “Speak” and “Forge,” who lives in nearby Mexico — and will include appearances by Barry Lyga (“The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl” and “Mangaman”), Melissa Walker (“Violet on the Runway” and “Unbreak My Heart”) and Terry Trueman (“Stuck in Neutral” and “No Right Turn”).
Don’t know the names? For those new to the teen lit scene, here’s a cheat sheet:
• In a review of Walker’s newest title, “Unbreak My Heart,” Publishers Weekly says the author “brings honest, heartfelt storytelling to the tale of 16-year-old Clementine, who’s embarking on a summer boat trip with her parents while leaving a ravaged social life behind.”
• Trueman’s first novel, “Stuck in Neutral,” was a finalist for a prestigious Michael L. Printz Award by the American Library Association. He’s written four YA novels since, including the upcoming “Life Happens Next,” due out in August.
• After 10 years in the comic book industry, Lyga kick-started his book career with the best-selling 2006 YA novel, “The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl,” which he followed up with “Boy Toy,” “Goth Girl Rising,” the “Archvillain” series for middle-grade readers and the graphic novel, “Mangaman.”
• Anderson, of course, is the award-winning author of contemporary YA novels (“Speak,” “Prom,” “Twisted”), historical YA fiction (“Fever: 1793,” “Chains”) and children’s picture books (“Independent Dames,” “Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving”).
The River’s End event is free and open to the public — and sure to be standing-room-only. Organizers suggest calling ahead (342-0077) to reserve a seat. The bookstore’s located at 19 W. Bridge St.
SU English professor wins national poetry award
Bruce Smith, English professor at Syracuse University and prolific poet, has won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America for his latest book, “Devotions,” which also was nominated for a National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Publishers Weekly called it one of the best books of 2011.
Smith is the author of five other volumes of poetry, including “The Other Lover,” which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.
In the award citation, renowned poet and author Elizabeth Macklin writes: “Bruce Smith has seemingly inhaled the entire English language to date, and in ‘Devotions,’ he uses those words and half-words with a wild tact that draws a reader onward, quick-wittedness overcoming dread. Each poem here is a stand-alone object, in which short rhythms nest inside longer rhythms, which in turn persist within the still longer rhythm of the whole. Nothing is purposeless.”
Central New York author pens second novel
Karen Winters Schwartz, an optometrist living in Marietta, has ventured again into the world of fiction that seeks to demystify mental illness. Her second novel, “Reis’s Pieces: Loss, Love and Schizophrenia,” hit bookstores May 1.
In an email, Schwartz describes it as a story that “uncompromisingly explores one man’s struggle for his place in an altered world and two women’s search for their place in his.”
In her first book, “Where are the Cocoa Puffs: A Family’s Journey through Bipolar Disorder,” Schwartz wrote about one family’s struggle to come to grips with a teen daughter’s erratic behavior, which veers from euphoric highs to dips into suicidal despair.
Schwartz is a board member for the Syracuse chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness. Her new book is available in print, as well as e-book editions.
Laura T. Ryan lives in Syracuse and can be reached by email at lauratryan@gmail.com.
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May 8th, 2012
Ah, quotes. Who doesn’t love/memorize them? I will list ones I know by heart.
1. “The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La” Jellicoe Road, of course.
2. “Happy Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
3. “If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.” Winnie-the-Pooh.
4. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” The Alchemist.
5. “Don’t think or judge, just listen.” Can you guess which Sarah Dessen book?
6. “Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you’re the underdog.” The Summer I Turned Pretty.
7. “Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.” If I Stay.
8. “What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?” The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas.
9. ALL Dr. Seuss quotes. Like, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened”or “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
10. “From this distance everything is so bloody perfect.” Jellicoe again.
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May 8th, 2012
 For many in the publishing industry, the Apple “App” seemed like a salve to the woes of free online content and the disintegration of old business models.
For some, the dream may be over. Jason Pontin, editor-in-chief of the MIT Technology Review outlines why he decided to kill the magazine’s App.
At first, tablets and smart phones were perceived by publishers to be so similar to the closed format of newspapers and magazines, that it was thought some semblance of the old publishing model might be maintained. By creating a unique and proprietary product on a locked device, the iPad, the traditional way might continue — single sales and subscriptions. Some publishers may have been additionally comforted by emotional in-house statements from Apple, as published in the New York Times, such as
“Steve believes in old media companies and wants them to do well. He believes democracy is hinged on a free press and that depends on there being a professional press.”
Pontin thinks they were taken in.
“For traditional publishers, the scheme was alluring. They lost their heads. One symptom of the industry’s euphoria was a brief-lived literary genre, the announcement of the iPad edition. A touching example of the form is this 2010 letter by the editors of the New Yorker, published by Condé Nast, dashed off in a style that was uncharacteristically breathless: “This latest technology … provides the most material at the most advanced stage of digital speed and capacity. It has everything that is in the print edition and more: extra cartoons, extra photographs, videos, audio of writers and poets reading their work. This week’s inaugural tablet issue features an animated version of David Hockney’s cover, which he drew on an iPad.”
Pontin details his initial excitement about the App project, commisioning a “beautifully designed digital replica of Technology Review.” He was to be disappointed.
“Apple demanded a 30 percent vigorish on all single-copy sales through its iTunes store. Profit margins in single-copy sales are thinner than 30 percent; publishers were thus paying Apple to move issues. Many responded by not selling single copies of their magazines. Then, for a year after the launch of the iPad, Apple could not figure out how to sell subscriptions through iTunes in a way that satisfied ABC, which requires publishers to record “fulfillment” information about subscribers. When Apple finally solved the problem of iPad subscriptions in iTunes, it again claimed its 30 percent share. From June of last year, Apple did permit publishers to fulfill subscriptions through their own Web pages (a handful of publishers, including Technology Review, enjoyed the privilege earlier); but the mechanism couldn’t match iTunes for ease of use, and most readers couldn’t be bothered to understand it. And while Google was more reasonable in its terms, Android never emerged as an alternative to the iPad: today, most tablet computers are Apple machines.”
These issues are all symptoms of what Matthew Ingram at Gigaom calls Apple’s “content economy”, an economy one is forced to enter into by creating an App.
The other problem Pontin and Ingram identify is that Apps don’t deliver information in the way consumers want it. They don’t allow the reader to follow links in the same way they can online. Pontin goes on to detail other options, like using HTML5, which can replicate an App’s look and feel but inside a normal web browser.
“At the same time, there seems to be increasing interest in the model adopted by the Financial Times, which uses HTML5 to duplicate the look and feel of an app. It’s an approach that is not only cheaper in many cases, but also allows the publisher to do an end-run around Apple’s 30-percent commission — and in the long run, that could make it a much more realistic dream for content producers than the one that Apple has been selling.”
There are benefits to using the Apple App system. The iPad is the most popular tablet device, and Apps can generate revenue. But then, Apple gets to have a say in what kind of content you can publish.
Not to heap Amazon and Apple together, but although these corporations have been highly innovate, and may be so again, the type of monopoly they are able to exert cannot be conducive to creativity and malleability. Two qualities vital to an industry trying to find its feet. Tying content to one platform, the iPad and Apple Appstore, is a mistake. A mistake that some publishers are quickly learning.
In the words of Pontin,
“I hated every moment of our experiment with apps, because it tried to impose something closed, old, and printlike on something open, new, and digital.”
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May 8th, 2012
by Maggie Sefton
Hi, Everyone! Today I promised to tell you about my latest E-book which has just been published by Barnes & Noble’s NookFirst program. Some of you may have discovered my first pubbed amateur sleuth mystery, DYING TO SELL, which was E-pubbed in late January. DYING TO SELL is available on Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Apple’s iPad and other formats.
This new E-book, however, is not a mystery. ABILENE GAMBLER is a Historical Western Romance. But—-there are mysteries layered throughout the story. It seems I can’t help but put a mystery in everything I write. All of my historicals, in fact, had mysteries woven throughout them—whether they were medievals or 1800′s American settings.
 ABILENE GAMBLER is an old-fashioned Western. It’s got villains to hiss and heroes to cheer. The heroine, Samantha Winchester, is a Confederate widow who’s literally selling the roof over their heads to protect what’s left of her family in Savannah, GA. She’s gambling everything on a new life in the rough and ready cowtown of Abilene, Kansas. The hero, Jack Barnett, is a former Union officer who is trying to restore his name after being unjustly accused and imprisoned during the War. Believe me, both these characters have a LOT of baggage—which makes it great fun for the author. 
There’s also two bossy maiden aunts, Samantha’s cute little son Davy, her sweet younger sister Becky, a cowardly deputy sheriff named Clyde who served with Jack during the War, and a handsome young Texan named Cody Barnes (who takes a shine to Becky). There are also evil villains to make life difficult for everyone. An embezzler is robbing the Army blind in Abilene, and Jack Barnett has agreed to find him and bring him to justice. Little does Jack know, by doing so he’ll risk both his life as well as Samantha’s.
Sparks fly between these two, of course. Did I mention it was a romance? That means there are, oh my goodness. . .real love scenes. We cozy mystery authors can’t give readers “real” love scenes. But, romance writers do. But. . .don’t worry. If love scenes aren’t your cup of tea, simply skip over them. There are only two real love scenes in the entire novel (lots of story going on). So, it shouldn’t be a problem.
If you’re interested and want a “change of pace” from the cozy mysteries, go over to http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ and check under Maggie Sefton. You’ll see it listed there. It will be available only on Barnes and Noble’s Nook until the end of May. Then, ABILENE GAMBLER will also be available on Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iPad, and other formats. Enjoy!
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May 3rd, 2012
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