This week is your chance to win an autographed copy of Robert Liparulo's latest novel, Deadfall!  All you have to do is convince the Books Team why you deserve to win it!  You have ONE chance to tell us why you should be the proud owner of an autographed copy of the book.  Be creative -- make us want to give this book to you!

 

Three contest entrants will have their winning e-mails posted next Saturday on InfuzeMag.com.

 

Just e-mail Liz Boltz Ranfeld at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with your entry.  Be sure to include your name, e-mail, and mailing address.

 

Good luck!

Comments (0) 

Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt loves technology and efficiency. Regular readers of his popular blog From Where I Sit have been treated to his evaluation of countless devices, from spiffy sports headphones (he's a runner) to his first 30 days with his new iPhone. Now he's launched a series of posts on the new Amazon Kindle .

 

His verdict? Mixed, but optimistic: “The Amazon Kindle is not the ultimate eBook reader, but it is a giant step in the right direction.” 

 

Hyatt's acceptance of nontraditional book publishing goes way back. While he's a booklover (and author), he is also a forward-looking executive determined to lead the industry, not chase its trends, So it's no surprise that he has embraced this latest challenge to the traditional book. His bottom line (apart from the bottom line) is this: “The content is primary; the technology is secondary.” 

 

It’s that wonderful time of year when national Best Of lists come out!  Two noteworthy ones are the Best of 2007 for both Publishers Weekly and the New York Times.

 

What do you think?  Are they right on when they place The Savage Detectives in the Best Fiction category?  What about And how do you suppose Stephen Colbert feels about his I am America! And So Can You! being left off of both lists?  

 

If you were making the Best Of Lists for 2007, what would you add or change?   

Comments (0) 

Will Scarlet is in a bad way. He’s languishing in prison, more of a dungeon really, for a crime he didn’t commit—raising rebellion against King “Red” William. Even though Will readily admits to the reader he’s guilty of many crimes, one of which is poaching the royal venison, he’s never uttered a word or committed an act against the throne. But that minor detail is of little matter to his captors, the foreign Normans. He’ll swing from the end of a hangman’s noose as soon as his usefulness to Count de Braose and Cardinal Ranulf de Bayeux is done. Ranulf has assigned a young priest, “a young laggard of a scribe” to “catch my wild tales and pin them to the pages of a book to doom us all.” Will’s job is to make his “wild tales” interesting enough to prolong his life, but not give anything away regarding King Raven and his band of outlaws.

That is where Will’s real value to his captors resides. King Raven and his band of renegades are the scourge of the Welsh countryside—if you’re a hated Norman. A starving Welshman discovering food or money on his doorstep takes a very different view of the elusive King. The Normans can’t capture the outlaw, but they have one of his own and intend to use Will to their full advantage.

According to a spokesman for Borders Group Inc., holiday book sales may experience substantial growth over the next few weeks. This prediction is based on numerous problems in the toy industry (over 61 recalls this year), leading customers to seek other gift options. "We are really confident that we are going to have a better holiday season with sales and profitability increase versus last year during the holiday season," said Borders CEO George Jones.

To take advantage of the toy concerns, some bookstores are making an extra effort to tout books as a better gift option than toys. "If you mention the toy business, they have had a lot of issues there because of safety issues, recalls, etc.," said Jones. "We are going to have signing in our stores ... talking about what a nice, safe alternative books can be and what a great gift they are for kids."

Comments (0) 

The National Book Critics Circle is launching a monthly list of recommended titles in three categories: fiction, nonfiction and poetry. It will be published in Critical Mass, the organization's blog.

The inaugural list (December 2007) includes five recommendations in each of the three categories. Of those fifteen, four turned out to be either winners of or nominees for the National Book Award (Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) for fiction; Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner (Doubleday) for nonfiction, plus nominee Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat (Alfred A. Knopf); and Time and Materials by Robert Hass,  (Ecco/HarperCollins) for poetry.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, the works do not include any by evangelical authors.

Comments (0) 

It's pretty common to have books lying around the house that you don't really need, but that you just can't get rid of.  Why not recycle some of them by turning them into cute, clever book purses?

 

There are lots of ways to make these purses, but HGTV offers some pretty detailed guidelines .  All you need is a cool looking hardcover book, some matching fabric, embellishments for the handles, and whatever you're going to use to put the book together -- either a sewing machine or plenty of fabric glue.  Follow the directions (or create your own!), and ta-daa: something fashionable, practical, and resourceful.

 

What could be better than that?

Comments (0) 

 

 

Seth Conner's journal of his time in Iraq evokes a multitude of feelings, many of them rooted in frustration.  I found myself frustrated by Seth's immaturity, his attitude towards the women in his life, and his enthusiasm for a war that we now know a lot more about than we did in 2004, when he was keeping his journal.  However, at the same time that I was bothered by his gung-ho attitude about killing the enemy, I felt great sympathy for him, too.  I was glad that by the end of the book, he'd grown up a bit, but I wish it hadn't had to come about through great personal tragedy.

 

Seth's deployment as a Marine took place during the battle for Fallujah, a battle most of us only heard about on TV.  His account of the war is honest and straightforward, and it's timely.  I don't have many close friends in Iraq, so Seth's book is as honest of an account as I'm going to get.  It helps that he didn't write the book to convince anyone of anything, as it's just his diary.  If anything, it's more likely that he was trying to convince himself that what they were doing was worth the sacrifices were making.

Someone is putting the concept of internet ad revenue to good use: they're feeding the hungry with it.

 

Whenever you spend time at FreeRice.com , you are basically donating money to the site's creators, who then use that money to donate rice to the people who need it.  Why would you want to spend time on their site?  Because the only thing there, aside from a FAQ sheet  and some general information, is a multiple-choice vocabular game!

 

The game is somewhat challenging and certainly addictive.  Now your procrastination can actually pay off!   

Comments (0) 

 

 

Sometimes in life you find yourself in situations where you absolutely, positively, not-a-doubt-in-the-whole-world know there are certain choices you should not be making. Common sense dictates to us that certain decisions will lead to ruin, or at the very least take us in the exact opposite direction of personal benefit. You don’t even have to think about it, really. Other times, however, all you can do is look back at a choice you made and wonder what on Earth you were thinking.

Hudson Ambrose is having one of those days.

A reporter for one of the local Las Vegas newspapers, Hudson has a thing for letting his instincts and emotions completely overrun any sense he has or ought to have. How else can you explain why he would wander over to a homeless man’s dead body on the side of a busy Las Vegas street, search his body, find a checkbook with a balance of well over $500,000 in it, and decide to pocket both the checkbook and a key to a safety deposit box somewhere in the city? I mean come on, I’m not a reporter and I know this setup alone is grounds for a nifty little piece, but why would anyone do this?