January 2012 – books and a mini series are the order of after hours entertainment
Just picked up the three season’s of ABC Family’s miniseries called “Kyle XY” about a teen boy with extraordinary abilities. It’s a fun and entertaining bit of work. It reminds me a lot of the X-Files, totally sanitized for a suburban audience.
Books: Right now I’m just loving Susanna Clarke’s work “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”. This book combines a few Welsh (Tolkien) and English (Austen, Dickens, Rowling) writers. The story is set in the dawning of the 1800s when Napoleon was such a problem with the English. Mr Norrell is a magician who laments the absence of decent magic in England, so he goes to London to offer his magical services to bedevil the French. This is a long book at 846 pages, but my Kindle handles it quite nicely.
The www.HoustonBookClub.com selection is now the third book in the series “Russia” and is called “Tent Life in Siberia.” I wonder, is there a mobile home park in Minsk?
Salon Magazine’s Cary Tennis wrote in the October 13, 2011 issue titled “No, I can’t edit your manuscript for free.”
Cary writes about books for a living, so people think he’d love to critique their prose.
This was just what I needed to be prompted to write a blog entry on the subject. I read a lot, and am a member of a book club (reading group) that really doesn’t have a name, but we do have a website the Facebook page” href=”http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=129913398711″>as well as a Google Blog at http://houstonbookclubblog.blogspot.com/ .
Among ourselves, we speak of “the bookclub” in referring to our group. We’ve been meeting since 1989, usually on Thursday nights once a month (loosely followed).
In a typical month I get three requests for critiques, reviews, testimonials, etc. I have a full-time job, and am amazed to think that authors really think a complete stranger is going to spend a few hours to read their book and to write a review or critique as a courtesy (no compensation).
“Angry Books Writer” wrote to Cary (Salon’s ‘Advice Columnist’ and wrote, in part, “But, even if I had the knowledge they seek, why should I use it to benefit them? Reading and editing a manuscript would take a helluva long time. What’s more, it’s work, work that other people get paid for.”
Cary advised the exact same strategy that I came up with. If someone asks you to do something you don’t have time to do, charge money for it so that it can realize a higher place in the hierarchy of your “to do” list. I figured out how much I make on an hourly basis, tacked on 30% (remember, this is overtime!) , estimated the time required, and gave a quote.
Nobody that I’ve sent a quote to has chosen to respond, and that is just fine by me. In my off time, I like to work out at the gym, go to salad bars on the weekend, go shopping, improve my house, and take care of my 110 gallon aquarium when I’m not working on web pages or participating in Facebook and Twitter, and reading multiple topics of interest.
If “they” do not feel the expense is justified, why would I feel the time and effort is justified?
When somebody asks you if you would do this kind of work for them, tell the person that you do occasionally take on such projects, in a selective way, and here is your hourly rate. And see what happens.
Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This book was given to me by a coworker who is from Wales and is very knowledgeable about the US Civil War. Nathaniel Starbuck is the son of a Boston preacher who finds himself about to be tarred and feathered while in Virginia. He is rescued by a man with a grandiose view of himself, and the Confederacy. Nate finds himself enmeshed in a web of relationships that propels him into the midst of the conflict, and he fights reluctantly, but bravely. In the end, he substantially adds to the successful routing of the Yankees by the brave Southern Freedom Fighters at the battle of Manassas (aka Bull Run). This is the first book in the “Nate Starbuck” series that consists of four books: Rebel, Copperhead, Battle Flag, and Bloody Ground.
I am grateful to Norm for giving me this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, being on my father’s side, deeply rooted in the Old South. In fact, I’m a direct descendant of a Confederate officer. More . . . Louis Hemmi – Houston, Texas 10/1/2011
My Twitter efforts are working!
An Englishman Dreams in a Cathedral
Photo taken by Louis Hemmi on the A.R.E. summer 2011 Tour of Scotland & England. Salisbury Cathedral. Salisbury, England http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/soul-searching-cathedral-sculptures .Sean Henry created > 20 human sculptures & put them in & around Salisbury Cathedral.Conflux: Union of Sacred & Anonymous is the exhibition’s title. Thru Oct 2011
I am not often moved to write on my blog, because nobody reads it. Well, I do feel strongly enough now to let people know that the underwhelming experience of magazine and newsletter reading on the Kindle CAN be DONE RIGHT.
Up to now, I considered the tiresome adjustment of point size and orientation while trying to read a single page ( on, for example, Huffington Post, AOL news, CNN, Edcar Cayce (newsletter on PDF), was just the price I paid and nothing could be done about it.
But, the other day, while waiting to see a doctor to get Transcop (TM) for my trip to England/Scotland, I browsed and bought what looked like an interesting magazine. The magazine whose single issue I bought is called NVATE . Their layout and formatting is the best I’ve seen on Kindle, and the attention to detail makes reading this magazine. Most other non-book content I’ve seen is poorly proofed, the layouts are fraught with errors, and forget about seeing nice screen shots in documentation and being able to get any meaningful information. I tried this with Jesse Stays great book “Facebook Application Development” and while the content is truly excellent, the exhibits, the screenshots, etc. are crummy. This work is simply not designed with the Kindle foremost in mind.
To repeat, while I thought that lousy formatting and sloppy editing were just things you had to put up with. NVate proves it ain’t so, Joe. When you see a picture (usually photographs rather than illustrations), they are professionally positioned and sized so they really add to the experience of reading your favorite article(s).
In short, if readers accept slop, they’ll get it. Publishers just seem to treat the Kindle as just another device, and don’t seem to know, care, or appreciate that they can do so much better, and that readers, the folks who pay the bills, will notice good work.
The magazine Nate can be found at http://nvate.com/35/nvate-magazine-soon-to-be-on-amazon-kindle/
Thank goodness for those souls who have taken the time and spent the effort to do a great job, even though they could have save time and money by just following the sorry examples that others have set.
Louis Latimer Hemmi
I left it to charge overnight, and that may not have been wise 
I’ve left devices on their chargers overnight and never had a problem. Now, I think I’ll never leave my Kindle 3 charging unattended, like I wouldn’t leave a candle burning.
I went to bed on Sunday, and I put the Kindle on its charger because the battery had run down after a marathon reading session of Mika Waltari’s “The Egyptian.” When I woke on Monday, this is the screen with which I was welcomed to a blue Monday.
I reported this terrible occurrence to Amazon.com and they had a new one on my doorstep in less than 48 hours!
My new one is great (I’d had the old one for ten months, so it was still under warranty). I thought my notes and highlights were backed up to their server, but I had neglected to “sync” so I had no backup of those. As far as the content (books, magazines, PDFs) I lost not a single virtual page.
This was the most delicious literary treat of 2011 for me. I had read Mr. Smith’s first novel, a brilliant debut, “Child 44,” and instantly put him on my list of authors whose future work will be required reading for me.
While “Child 44″ was about solving murders and Russia in the Stalinist era, so “The Secret Speech” is set against a backdrop of Kruschev’s repudiation of Stalin shortly after his death.
While “Child 44″ involved stories about those denounced by the state, and sent to prison camps in the gulags, “The Secret Speech” finds great human stories about the repatriation of political and other prisoners from the gulags back into Russia. This involves the notorious ‘Vory” who are the Russian gangsters, living outside the law, but not immune to the politics of the day.
In short, for character development, brilliant storytelling, and keeping the reader interested and involved, you can’t find many writers Tom Rob Smith’s equal.
The Lost Years of Jesus by Elizabeth Clare Prophet
I’ve long been curious about whether Jesus visited the East and the Americas. The Bible tells us about Jesus only up to his coming of age (13) and then jumps forward to the age of 30. What happened in those intervening years is a mystery.
While I still have about 100 pages left to read, I’ll update this post when I finish. [I finished - September, 2010]
The premise of the book is that Jesus went to the East when he was 13, and studied Pali, Sanskrit, and preached. I haven’t read of any miracles that he performed. Ms Prophet presents documentary evidence supporting the notion that Jesus went to the East, and gives skeptics’ points of view as well. For my part, I find the book very interesting and love the many photographs of the people of Tibet, their monasteries, and other holy places. The book is worth reading just for the travelogue.
Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and convents are said to contain hundreds of thousands of scrolls, but only a few make mention of Jesus (they call him “Saint Issa”). Nicholas Notovich in 1927 and later expeditions in 1939 attempted to see and translate these, but the monks were wary of their intent — too often foreigners just stole what they want, Europeans especially.
This book makes no mention of Jesus and the Americas. I think the Book of Mormon may be the only real reference for Jesus and whether he visited our hemisphere.
If you enjoy reading travelogues and are interested in what Jesus did that isn’t covered in the Bible, then this one’s for you. (scroll down — lots more left)
I recently watched a documentary with the same title, but it appears to have no connection with the book’s author, Elizabeth Clare Prophet; she’s not credited. Much of the material used in the movie sounds as though it was lifted straight from the book. The movie was mediocre, with very little that’s not covered in this book.
Here’s the link, and a description of the underlying article on the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-davids/jesus-lost-years-may-fina_b_179513.html
This article discusses a movie called “Jesus in India (Sundance Channel / US – Showtime / Australia).”1 “Jesus in India” Yitzchok Adlerstein; DVD; $17.99 Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
Yes, I just bought it 
I’m through with Prophet’s book, and am now on to other topics, including the book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ. I no longer believe in the Hebrew bible (Old Testament).
Coming: Thoughts on Edgar Cayce who I believe was an American Buddha. There is no requirement to be Asian or wear a robe to be enlightened. He was gifted, and I regret so much that he died in 1944, but his work goes on.
