For my Kindle Lovers…

Amazon is currently selling 3 styles of these BEAUTIFUL Cole Haan cases for 50% off! (Normally a $100 case)

You would think this was simply a high-cost luxury accessory, yet its solid construction is protective against falls on all sides, and its soft suede-interior protects against the Kindle’s casing getting scratched over time.

It is a supple pebble grain, hand-stained leather with a tan plush suede interior (I feel Ron Burgandy would approve) — and the latest generation Kindle 2 locks in there perfectly and securely. I’m in love!

I’m afraid that now my Kindle is better dressed than me.

You can order any of the 3 styles on the top of this page. I highly recommended.

Kindle Accessories Page
Kindle Pebble Grain Leather Case by Cole Hahn

Kindle App now available for iPhone.

For those of us who own a Kindle, and don’t think it’s enough, tada, the Kindle iPhone App. Now you can sync your content between devices, and never ever lose touch with your reading materials. It doesn’t seem to have a dictionary or search function, so the program would seem like a lite version of the Kindle, but great for users of the iPhone who want to experience Amazon’s fantastic service. The App is free.

The one sentence story.

This goes out to my honorary sister, Crystal. She once told me that when she is choosing her next book to read (in probably one evening, no less), she always reads the very first sentence of a book to pass judgement. One sentence to determine if she will commit her eyes to hundreds of written pages, pages that may contain lovely little important moments to treasure. Why so quick to judge, I always thought. However, I am a reviews reader. I love the one sentence sum-ups that grace the front and back covers, and sometimes the inside pages. So, it seems we are all one-sentence aficionados, our short attention spans needing to be grabbed by the BIG WORDED HANDS of literature. Because who knows how long we will pay attention?

So, when I saw this website, I thought, perfect! One sentence to tell an entire story. I love it. 

So Crystal, for yours, and my short-lived enjoyment, I give you onesentence.org.

Some of my favorites:

“I held my father’s hand as he died in that hospital room and realized I’d never held his hand before that moment.”

“As you were breaking up with me, all I could think about were those mornings when you compared the Pop-Tarts and gave me the one with more frosting.”

“One night on ecstasy, I stopped a fight between two drag queens in the ladies restroom and then I made them give each other a hug.”

“My online dating service matched me with my cousin.”

“My mother called me to do a chore and i responded, “What you need, woman,” to which my father chided, ‘Your mother is NOT a woman!'”

“I married my husband on our first date, but it has taken me more than 5 years to decide what colour to paint our dining room.”

“His efforts were so valiant, I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was front clasp.”

“Recently I realized that I waste my life on the internet … and published this insight in a blog.”

“I’ve never been as proud as I was when I sat down and honestly said, ‘Yes, as a matter of fact, I HAVE been flossing.'”

The coolest book, to read and to smell.

“In his book of essays entitled, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, the physician Lewis Thomas wrote,‘The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking itself.'”

With this is mind, the idea of a book containing a collection of smells rather than written thought would be deemed brilliant. Ever want to experience the smell the sun, communism, extinct flowers, the sickly stench of bubonic plague, and the metallic odor that follows atomic explosions? Yea, me too. I think this is simply fascinating, but earlier this year, a British art gallery asked 11 fragrance designers and organizations such as NASA and International Flavors and Fragrances to re-create smells that have gone the way of the past. Amazing, huh? It is encompassed in a scratch-and-sniff book. A book, by mere curiosity, i will probably buy. Check out the page here.

Preventing Shrinkage with Chuck Palahniuk.

I like him even more now.

Two quotes from my current book.

These quotes struck my fancy as I finished Change of Heart, by Jodi Piccoult. I wanted to share:

“But here’s the amazing thing-light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can’t stick the dark into the light. I guess from my point of view, we can choose to be in the dark, or we can light a candle.”

“There are two ways to live your life; one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.  -Albert Einstein”

A response from Lincoln Child himself.

Wow, this is a big day for me.

Right now, my favorite authors are Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. I have been plowing through all of their novels; they co-write these amazing forensic/crime novels with a touch of the supernatural and include an amazing Renaissance protagonist. Anyhow, I felt compelled to write them a letter complimenting them on their books and embarrassingly proclaiming my love for their work. I never do this, I have probably only written 3 or 4 artists to announce that I am a fan in the past, it is just not my style. And so, swallowing my pride, I wrote them a letter. And guess what? I got a personalized response from the very Lincoln Child himself. This is very exciting.

It went:

“I’m honored you chose us as one of the first authors you contacted. I’m glad you’ve discovered our novels and thank you for taking the time to write us.

We’re currently at work on another Pendergast novel, which picks up shortly after the events in WHEEL OF DARKNESS conclude. It features Pendergast teamed up once again with Lieutenant D’Agosta as they investigate a series of Manhattan murders that take them deep into a strange and shadow-haunted world of Voodou. CEMETERY DANCE will be published in the summer of 2009.

 

Best regards, Lincoln Child”

Now since there is a change in font from the first paragraph to the second, obviously there is some copy/paste happening. But I assure you, the first paragraph is all mine! 30 words written to me, from the very man himself.

“Here is New York”

“On anyone who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy.”

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born there, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter–the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these trembling cities the greatest is the last–the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh yes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company. . . .”

 

Two Insults.

From my favorite Pendergast chronicles:
//Ridder’s eyes glittered like mica. “You’ve disturbed our lunch and agitated our guest. Isn’t there something you ought to say to him before you leave?”
“I don’t believe so.” Pendergast seemed to consider a moment. “Unless, perhaps, it is a quotation from Einstein: ‘The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is arrogance.’ I would suggest to Dr. Chauncy that in combination, the two qualities are even more alarming.”//
//”I can see that an insufficient, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four-letter words add power to language.”//