07.23.09
Schuler of Lansing to host ICAS animal adoption this Sunday!
Sadly, the Ingham County Animal Shelter is full to capacity, so Schuler Books of Lansing, located in the Eastwood Towne Center, will host an offsite animal adoption this Sunday, July 26, from noon to 4 p.m.
The last time ICAS came, the adoption was a huge success, so we hope this weekend will be the same. Come on down and rescue a needy dog or cat, and add some more love to your family!
07.22.09
Lansing RIF Celebration Cinema Fundraiser Invite!
Head out to Celebration Cinema in Lansing from July 24 to August 2 to help support Lansing’s Reading Is Fundamental nonprofit!
Coinciding with the IMAX opening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, people who buy tickets to ANY show during the 10 days from July 24 to Aug 2 will be asked if they want to donate $1 to RIF when they purchase their ticket. What a great idea, and a fantastic way to help them get books into the hands of children.
RIF is a wonderful organization that provides free books and literacy resources to those children and families who need them most.
Learn more about Reading Is Fundamental at www.rif.org.
07.17.09
Review: Personal Effects: The Dark Arts by J. C. Hutchins
I’ve noticed a number of titles popping up in the young adult section that are taking an interactive, multi-media approach, tapping into the tech-savvy younger generations through titles that have online components: websites with videos, games and clues that allow a greater immersion in the textual story.
Personal Effects is the first such book I’ve noticed targeted toward adults. While it is written by J. C. Hutchins, the concept (which may become a series) was created by legendary game designer Jordan Weisman as an ARG, or Alternate Reality Game. Not only does the book come with a packet of documents, letters and photographs that you can thumb through, but the intriguing mystery is accented with phone numbers you can actually call, and a web trail to follow.
Zack Taylor, the young art therapist who is assigned to determine whether Martin Grace is mentally fit to stand trial for a slew of brutal murders, leads you through the twisting tale. Grace’s medically unexplainable blindness, and his airtight alibis for all the murders prompt Zack into an exploration of Grace’s past that leads him to the CIA, and even back into his own family history.
A great find for readers who’ve always wanted to be Sherlock.
Check out the author’s website and begin your investigations!
–Whitney, Lansing
07.16.09
Book News: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies follow-up announced; Final George Carlin Memoir
Publishers Weekly has great news for humor fans today!
Quirk Announces Follow-Up to ‘P&P&Z’
By Rachel Deahl — Publishers Weekly, 7/15/2009 7:44:00 AM
After the overwhelming success of its campy Jane Austen mashup, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it was clear that Quirk Books needed to give readers more of what they wanted. With that in mind, the Philadelphia-based house has announced Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters as the next entry in its Quirk Classics series, to be published on September 15. The idea to blend aquatic baddies with Austen’s romance seemed, according to editor Jason Rekulak, an ideal way to refresh the mashup craze Quirk started. (In the Quirk update, the Dashwood sisters, evicted from their childhood home by their conniving stepmother, land on a mysterious island full of man-eating sea creatures, instead of a nearby, downgraded, English cottage.)
07.14.09
Jacqueline Carey returns to Schuler of Lansing this Thursday!
Girls’ Night Out presents NYT-Bestselling Michigan author Jacqueline Carey at our Lansing store, located in the Eastwood Towne Center, at 7 p.m. this Thursday, July 16.
Join us as we celebrate the release of two new novels by bestselling fantasy author Jacqueline Carey! Naamah’s Kiss is the first book in a new alternate historical fantasy trilogy. With vividly imagined characters, sharp political observations, and compelling plotlines set against a strong Renaissance backdrop, the new series, in part an extension of the Kushiel’s Legacy series, epitomizes the classic epic fantasy. Santa Olivia is a sci-fi fantasy take on the classic werewolf myth, exploring the fascinating mind of a fearless superheroine, who quickly becomes a catalyst for hope and change. Join us for a night of free wine, women’s fiction and, of course, the grab bag book drawing!
After the jump check out a review of Santa Olivia, written by best-selling young adult author Tamora Pierce!
07.10.09
Review: F My Life by Maxime Valette et. al
The existence of this book is further proof of how the internet has made it possible to make a living off of anything, even mass schadenfreude. This book is a compendium of the greatest postings from what has been my favorite go-to website for entertaining friends.
It started as a simple chat room forum in France where a couple of friends would post succinct, brutally funny listings of the random things that happen to them to make their daily lives suck. It grew into fmylife.com, where people from all over the world offer themselves up in brief pieces of self-deprecating bitching that regularly find me reading them aloud to anyone who will listen.
To guide your perusal, the book is conveniently divided into sections like “Moments of Shame,” “It’s Just Not Fair,” and “Sh@# Out of Luck.” While it’s definitely not humor created for everyone, the rest of us can laugh and cringe and be reminded that our lives are really not that bad after all.
Click here to buy a copy!
–Whitney
07.08.09
National Book Foundation celebrates 60th anniversary; Awards vote open to public
To celebrate the 60th year of the National Book Awards, the National Book Foundation will present a book-a-day blog on the Fiction winners from 1950 to 2008.
The blog will run from July 7th to September 21st, starting with Nelson Algren’s The Man With the Golden Arm, ending with Peter Matthiessen’s Shadow Country, and including works by Ralph Ellison, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Alice McDermott. Discover lesser known but equally talented National Book Award Fiction Winners such as Conrad Richter, Wright Morris, and Robb Forman Dew. Then, on September 21st, you will have a chance to select The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction and win two tickets to the 2009 National Book Awards by visiting the Foundation’s web site at www.nationalbook.org, the first time in its history the Awards will open to a public vote.
Our daily blog includes information on each day’s winning book and author and original posts by contemporary authors, bloggers, and editors, as well as that year’s judges and the winners of other literary awards. Visit the blog at www.NBAFictionBlog.org today and every day for the next 77 days, and get your copies of these American classics from your local bookstore, online bookseller, or library and feel free to post comments.
Reposted from National Book Foundation email.
The Lost Symbol cover released!
Random House has released the cover image for The Lost Symbol, the long-awaited follow-up to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. The film adaptation of Brown’s book Angels and Demons is in theaters now.
07.06.09
Review: The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan
I have followed filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro since discovering his Spanish ghost film ‘The Devil’s Backbone,’ up through the massive success of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and the ‘Hellboy’ films, so when I received a copy of his first book I was excited. When I realized it was a vampire novel, I was ecstatic.
True to his horror roots, Del Toro and his co-author — bestselling thriller writer Chuck Hogan – keep the vampires dark and nasty, reinventing both the classic Dracula-era vampire and the contemporary “Ooh, bite me on the neck, baby” variety. In this first book of a promised trilogy, a plane lands in NYC and goes completely dark and nonresponsive on the tarmac. The subsequent investigations of Dr. Ephraim Goodweather of the CDC Canary Unit – sent in to explore possible biological threats – lend the horror tale a thriller slant along the lines of writer Robin Cook, but the pace is high-octane Hollywood all the way. The speed at which the drama ratchets up is intense, as are the vampires, so the bits of heavy-handed summer blockbuster action are easily forgiven.
–Whitney
Click here to read an interview with Chuck Hogan about writing The Strain with G. Del Toro from the “Confessions of an Idiosyncratic” Mind blog.
07.04.09
Breathing Water, by Timothy Hallinan
Bangkok-based writer Poke Rafferty is in deep again. A botched bit of research for his latest book lands him a golden opportunity – the chance to write the exclusive biography of Thailand’s most outrageous, yet beloved gangster. But no sooner does he get that opportunity than two competing groups of thugs start threatening him and his family. One will kill them if he writes the book, but the other will kill them if he doesn’t.
What’s a travel writer to do? Fortunately, Poke is not without friends, or the ability to concoct a cunning – if questionable – plan, given time. But those who want the book written are demanding progress updates, and both sides are keeping him under heavy surveillance. Meanwhile, his allies in the Bangkok police have serious problems of their own…
Outmaneuvered and outgunned, Poke will have to find the third way, yet again. Calling on old friends and new opportunities, he navigates a steaming river of inconvenient secrets and competing agendas by the seat of his pants — not always one stride ahead of his enemies, but definitely at least one step to their left as our favorite travel writer strives to get home safely once more.
Fans of Hallinan’s Poke Rafferty books (A Nail Through the Heart and The Fourth Watcher) will find Breathing Water to be as exotic and suffocatingly suspenseful as its predecessors, deftly balancing the ugly side of Thailand with humor and hope. As always, the basic decency of Poke and his friends shines through, turning what could be just another stacked-odds thriller into a compelling tale of a quiet hero just trying to get by in the best worst city in the world.
Timothy Hallinan has delivered another searing beauty of a book. If you like exotic thrillers that are as full of heart as they are twists and reverses, you should check it out.
Breathing Water drops August 18th.
- Reviewed by Jim Tremlett, Eastwood
