My favourite book review search site

It's Tango.
That is of course if you know how to use it right.
The search engine covers everything, absolutely everything, from review-like opinions signed ancient Greek philosophers of their contemporary letter masters to the latest reviews of Precious and even anticipatory reviews of books that has not been officially published yet.

Typical example:

"No books. No writing. No drills. And nothing to
memorize—ever!

With his unique program, Michelle Jones has taught tango in French, Italian,
Spanish, and German to celebrities, corporate leaders, and school childrenwith
immediate and amazing results. Now, the Dance Teacher to the Stars invites you
to join his class!

So effortless, natural, and stimulating is Michelle's system for learning, once you get started you won't want to stop. You will learn in realtime—fully understanding as you go along, turning words into short sentences, steps into moves, and then building them into longer, more complex swirls, until you are tangoing in a foreign language. Immediately, you will feel the excitement of understanding and expressing yourself in tango in Germany or south France. Michelle will have you
formulating your own thoughts and moves from the very beginning, even if you
have never succeeded in learning a single dance before."

Alfahanne... or is it alfahane??

Writing in Swedish is still difficult for me, that's what I remember every time I write a post which would look better if it were in Swedish...

Anyway, I was not sure what to think when I saw that Katarina Wennstam's new book is titled Alfahanne.
I thought the correct spelling was alfahane. Male animal is hane in Swedish.
Is Katarina Wennstam bad-speller or dyslectic?

Then I saw this in SAOB, the popular Swedish thesaurus, sort of:

I sydligaste Sverige förekommer det enkla ordet uteslutande i formen
hanne, medan däremot hane synes ha ett bestämt företräde i mellersta och norra Sverige. Under de senaste åren torde emellertid hanne ha spridt sig över större områden av landet. I ssgr är däremot formen hane- över hela landet den ojämförligt vanligaste, vilket äv. bestyrkes av såväl äldre som nyare skrivningar.

Wow.
So what is it: is Katarina Wennstam unable to spell in Swedish, or what?

The Sunny Story by Ginger Jones

For once, the review is not mine. But these lovely attitudes would give you an excellent opinion of this lovely book:

Sunny's Story begins as any child's storybook. Tragically, its ending reflects real life as it is experienced by far too many families. It's unique approach in helping children consider the consequences of their actions and impacts upon their families is very powerful. Sunny's Story would be a valuable read for all youngsters and their parents!

Ian's story, told through the eyes of his dog, Sunny, will help children understand how even 'good kids' can fall prey to the lure of drugs. The commitment of Ian's family helps young people and their parents understand the danger never stops. Having the courage to face hard issues is he only way to keep our children safe.

Through the voice of the family dog and in a tender and thoughtful way, Sunny's Story brings to light one of the most challenging issues facing children, parents and educators today. We as educators and parents need to be as strong in voice as Sunny is in the story. This story has to be told. Thank you for the opportunity to be part of a program that will save lives.

Good Initiative

During this time of Christmas and charities of all kind, when we give money to the poor and deprived, there is always room for nice initiatives and humanely projects. For some reason, the book business seems to be greedier and pettier than others, our Swedish and Norwegian publishers never participate in charity.

Therefore, it is nice to hear that Spionförlaget is trying to break this bad trend by announcing that it intends to give to charitable cause in Stockholm 40 crowns of every book item sold in December and January. Well to go!

So far, the publishing house offers just one book: Memoirs of a Business Spy by Stan Emiroff. I have written about this book before. Amazing adventure.

Hopefully there will be more books on the shelf.
And hopefully other publishers start to remember about the poor, too.

Bokfest i december

The most important international exhibition in the adventure book sector, a landmark for all publishers and bookstore operators, will be held in Verona December 14th - 17th, 2009.

Just one of the participants (I want to give you an idea of the true magnitude of the event):

Marmory Books writes in pressrelease earlier last week:
International readers up by 12% with 40% international out of 65 thousand overall operators - Marmory further improved the fair's international status to confirm its role as the landmark event in the adventure story industry. The 41st edition of the International Book of Adventure and Tale Exhibition - that will be held soon during four days of meetings, contacts and trade - will thrive on the success of the last year: international visitors were up by 12% compared to last year, totalling almost 25 thousand from 112 countries - setting an historic record for the show.

The X-mas gift of the year 2009

I ofetn get the question, which book, of those I described throughout 2009, I would choose to be the X-mas gift of the year. (that is if I were to choose a book at all)

I think this year that would have to be Memoirs of a Business Spy by Stan Emiroff. It's close between this book and The Damnation but in the end... The memoirs is more suitable, given the rules of the contest.

November is going to be a busy month for us at the club, with several travels across Europe and fairs. Maybe we will find a better candidate, but for now...

Good book about psychology

This book has not been published as yet.
But when it is published it will be a good book about one of the key issues in modern psychology: cognitive mass behavior.

...Even as this argument begins to explain group behavior at an individual and
social level, Whitaker argues that we are only part way to understanding the
various factors at work in mass conflict. He suggests that "we need some
way of beginning to understand the more primitive emotional aspects of conflict
and how they tie in to the individual identity." This goal can be accomplished,
he argues, by giving primacy to the concept of identity. Indeed, "a lack of
attention to identity issues can significantly impede attempts at understanding
and resolving such conflicts." Furthermore, he suggests that these identities
attain further salience by the social situations in which we live. He writes
that "no social identity is inherently any more important than any other, but
the social circumstances in which we live serve to reinforce certain
identities..."

The author, John Whitaker, is a researcher with the Cornwell University. He wrote his paper on the subject as early as three years ago. Then it was a strictly professional paper, not even published in special journals of psychology, something he used as a guidance when teaching students at the university.
But today, more evidence comes out that what he wrote then really works, therefore he considers writing a book based on his paper.

We wait and see.