September 02, 2006
Books For Dummies
I recently heard or read (can’t remember exactly) that making the title of the self-help series books for dummies was insulting and silly, considering of the primary goals of the books for dummies writers and publishers is to sell books—and considering that most people would not be interested in paying to be insulted. But from personal tastes and requirements and from what the charts indicate about books for dummies, I see only a series of some of the best books in that genre or category…ever!
But I also began a profound appreciation of books for dummies, starting with the books for dummies series edition of Hinduism for Dummies. I was seriously dating a Hindu who was teaching me the rituals, the philosophies, the ancestral requisites of a complex and ancient religion. The books for dummies series came to my added aid by providing insets, charts, and special items for consideration sections that made the experience of learning about Hinduism moat manageable.
As well, I have used books for dummies for studying and considering starting a non-profit business, for understanding the basics of pc use, and even checked out one title on writing and publishing…for dummies, which is surely a misnomer, oxymoron, or false title, wouldn’t you say? And as you might not want to rely on, trust in, or believe the appeal and usefulness of the books for dummies according to the lowest common denominator—this writer, consider the numbers of copies sold for such titles as Golf for Dummies, selling 150,000+ copies, and Internet for Dummies, selling 374,000+ copies.
Right, we are not dummies, per se, but we may be dumb or better, numb, about a topic, a skill, a craft, a culture, or a lifestyle…whereby books for dummies is not only an appropriate general series title but are books that truly do help us smarten up about the same. And there’s no shame in using books for dummies. Hell, the practice of consulting such a series cannot be any more humiliating (if that’s the premise of the nay-sayers) than studying Einstein’s theory of relativity by way of comic books or any more embarrassing than learning to fire an army tank by following the hub directions by way of the tank cover’s directions…done in cartoons.
Posted by KeyWestPublishing at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)
June 04, 2006
Book Club Recomendations
You’re away from your literate friends who have similar reading tastes, you’ve been out of school for quite some time, and you don’t have access to a hip librarian or brick-and-mortar bookstore or informative publications like the New York Times Book Review. But you are hungry for some good literature. Where or to whom do you turn?
MAIL ORDER BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
When I was a kid, Mom—a voracious reader—belonged to a mail-order book club. Later, when I was old enough to have my own account, I joined with her. I can’t recall which exact club that first one was, but here are the most popular:
Book-of-the-Month-Club
Quality Paperback Books
The Literary Guild
Each mail-order system is different, but does have one obnoxious trend: they send you a notification of the recommended title (based on the profile you registered with, based on your reading habits) and/or the hottest book of the season. If you get the card first and do not refuse the offer, you get the book…and have to pay for it. If you get the book automatically mailed to you, you have to send it back within a short period of time of receipt…or you pay. This is the only true complaint of such clubs, though a close second gripe is the title listings aren’t all that engaging: for these are not necessarily the current bestsellers but instead may be remaindered or lesser selling titles or books with older publication dates.
TV BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
There are two televised book discussion shows that come immediately to mind for me: Charlie Rose’s author interviews and Oprah’s Book Club. (Both are, in my case, American airings, the former showing only on PBS-affiliated stations, but 214 of them nationwide!)
Charlie Rose interviews in all fields, if you will, so only a select number of the shows focus on books, but the authors he interviews are contemporary fiction and nonfiction writers who offer fascinating, intelligent, and personal impetus for reading their books. A few of the authors who have appeared on his show include Maureen Dowd, Tom Clancy, James Risen, Toni Morrison, and Seamus Heany.
Oprah interviews authors, too, but her book club extends further: she reads a lot; she ferrets out the authors of books she loves; and she introduces the book and has a book discussion session on the book. If you find, as I did, that What Oprah recommends is what you have just finished devouring and loving or what you once read and agree is a must-read, then you would do well to follow her recommendations in the future. She has been dead-on about such titles as Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone; Kaye Gibson’s Ellen Foster; and, of course, all (or most) of Toni Morrison’s works—books that you must read, as Morrison is one of the best authors of our century.
INTERNET BOOK CLUB RECOMMENDATIONS
There are also a number of quality niche book groups and clubs online. That is, if you are a teen seeking highly recommended books, you will find TeenInk.com to be a super place for finding the best books in your age group. If you are Christian who loves fiction, you will find such communities as FocusonFiction.net to be most helpful in listing and detailing the best books for Christian readers of fiction.
And individual genre sites and top 100 book list sites serve a similar purpose. These include the following:
Nextbook.org – a gateway to Jewish literature (comprehensive archive)
Storycode.com – book recommendations made by way of a unique search tool
Random House’s List of 100 Best novels [of all time] – at http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
These should be enough to keep you reading happily for years to come!
Posted by KeyWestPublishing at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)
Books Online
I repeat myself when it comes to the experience of having to shop in a brick-and-mortar store where we serious book shoppers are trying to access a book or magazine or tape on shelves that are blocked by men, women, and kids, laying on the floor, doing their nails, talking on cell phones, or reading then returning the items to the wrong place without paying for anything they have laid their grubby hands on.
But as well as buying books online, we can also find books online that are not for sale but are in the free domain, as they have been in existence, were written, or were approved for re-reading before or beyond intellectual property/copyright laws. In other words, there are thousands of books online that you do not have to struggle to find, buy, or access.
Now when you do a general search for online books, be forewarned: you will get such online books as I describe here. You will also get too many online books results with your search engine from those selling books online…such is the versatility or virtue of the vendors cashing in, etc.. So I will start you off with a list of books online that are not bestsellers, contemporary text books for science class, or any kind of books for sale. All of the following, that is, are FREE books online…literally:
Bibliomania.com – A spunky, user friendly site that aficionados and students of literature alike will find useful. Data base of 2,000 books online is sectored by genre/category—fiction, drama, nonfiction, biographies, religious texts, articles, and more.
LiteratureOnline.com (http://www.online-literature.com/) – easy access, books online include classics, The Bible, numerous (almost all) Shakespearean works, quote database, and hundreds of chapter by chapter summaries.
Project Gutenberg (http://www.promo.net/pg/) – As the site managers describe it, Project Gutenberg’s books online include “203 New eBooks released during October 2002, 1975 New eBooks produced in 2002 (they were 1240 in 2001),” totaling 6,267 Project Gutenberg eBooks.
Wired for Books (http://wiredforbooks.org/) - Not only features books online, but poetry, oratories, and audio versions of literature read by the living writers (reading aloud their own works) and read by writers and literati (reading aloud the works of those long gone but not forgotten).
So maybe when you search and want to find not ALL books online but books that are actually, chapter for chapter and page by page on…line, you might start with those sites I list here…or type in a new search phrase that includes the word “free”?
Posted by KeyWestPublishing at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)
Book Agents
Finding book agents that will actually work hard for you to help you reach your goals can be a tough thing to pursue. Because of the many different types of literary agents out there, it is important to be careful when choosing one for yourself.
Finding book agents who are on the up and up is not an easy task. In reality, there are not many really good agents in the business. Now, if you are looking for people who claim to be book agents but are instead scammers, bad at their job, unhelpful, or in it only for themselves, there are many to find and choose from. But to find someone you trust who has the experience to sell your work, can become a full-time job.
Good book agents work hard, and got a solid grasp of how to do their job by working for a reputable agent. After learning to talk to publishers and authors on their own and understanding the true ins and outs of the business, they eventually start a business on their own and are then considered legitimate.
They will work for you and never ask anything of you that has to do with money. They will edit books as needed without a charge, as that is part of their job.
Scamming book agents will more than likely ask for payment from you before a book is even sold. Real book agents will not do this; they wait and make the real money as a percentage of the amount you are paid on a book that is sold so this is the first true way to tell scamming agents from real ones.
Scammers will also try and hide their client lists as confidential, but it is usually because these scammer book agents really have no client list at all. Unlike legitimate book agents, scammers will not offer book revisions for free and will usually try to get you to go to an outside source to have your book edited. As book agents, they should definitely have the skills to edit the book for you.
It all comes down to researching book agents and making sure you are comfortable with their business practices from beginning to end. If something doesn’t seem right to you, it probably isn’t so don’t hesitate to move down the list of possible book agents until you find one that meets your needs perfectly.
Posted by KeyWestPublishing at 11:46 PM | Comments (0)
Best Books
Ever have a craving to read a classic or just a really good book, but don’t know where to go for a list of the best of the best books? Ever have someone—a teacher, friend, parent—suggest a novel from their best of lists that they tell you you must read before you die and wonder what the deal is about that particular title, anyway?
Best of the Best Books by Title
1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four), by George Orwell
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, by John Fowles
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
Native Son, by Richard Wright
On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Best of the Best Books by Author
James Joyce-- Don’t be intimidated. Dig right in to Ulysses or Finnegan’s Wake. Or, if your prefer to start “simpler”, start with The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Toni Morrison – Read everything, especially being sure to cover The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, and Song of Solomon.
Ayn Rand – Also a more intellectual writer, Rand still offers unparalleled philosophical fiction (unparalleled in her century, that is…save by Camus and Sartre, of course).
Ernest (Papa) Hemingway—If you like the minimalist, realist style, read everything, especially The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast, as well as the early stories collected in in our time. If you prefer Hemingway’s more popular themes of war, for example, read A Farewell to Arms, for starters.
James Baldwin—Read everything. Twice.
Phillip K. Dick – Read everything. Three times.
Virginia Woolf – Woolf’s writing is primarily stream-of-consciousness, and speaks to a time and a mindset (writerly, at that), so definitely check out Mrs. Dalloway or To the Lighthouse.
John Irving—A most accessible and engaging writer, Irving brings us such poignant works as Hotel New Hampshire and the World According to Garp and such provocative novels as A Prayer for Owen Meany.
John Updike – for a contemporary but full writing style, Updike will delight you with his brilliance and accessibility to his brilliance. Read about the ex-basketball star, following him through the decades of his life in the Rabbit quatrology, or get steamy with Couples, or touch upon mysticism in The Centaur.
So, hopefully, this is enough to keep you reading into your graying years or further. And hopefully, too, you will find at least a few titles for your own best of the best list to pass on to your students, friends, or loved ones. Happy reading!
Posted by KeyWestPublishing at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)
