The New Book Review

This blog, #TheNewBookReview, is "new" because it eschews #bookbigotry. It lets readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers expand the exposure of their favorite reviews, FREE. Info for submissions is in the "Send Me Your Fav Book Review" circle icon in the right column below. Find resources to help your career using the mini search engine below. #TheNewBookReview is a multi-award-winning blog including a MastersInEnglish.org recommendation.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Author of Spirtual Book Offers Free Gifts for Reading Her Book


Author: Days Go By, Not Love ~ A Beautiful Journey of Change (Book I).
By Therese Benedict
Author's Web site: http://www.daysgobynotlove.com

Synopsis:

Best-Selling Author and Clairvoyant Therese Benedict has the ultimate gift of love through communicating with God and his amazing angels. It has given her the enchanting life of love and happiness and now she is giving it to you …

Therese communicates with God and his angels throughout every moment of her life … In fact, it was the guidance she followed from heaven that changed everything for her … And now it can change everything for you! http://goo.gl/TQXw4

From listening to every step of their guidance … Therese went from being a single mother … To marrying the man of her dreams … From quitting her job in law and moving to a new state … To finding her dreams … From surviving and healing from melanoma cancer … To being presented the Congressman’s Medal of Merit for her countless acts … All because she was willing and honored to follow that guidance and do exactly what was being asked of her and who she is as person.

And now … Therese is sharing this heavenly guidance with you in her best-selling book Days Go By, Not Love ~ A Beautiful Journey of Change (Book I). So, you can have that same chance in trusting in God and his angels to bring you to your dreams! http://goo.gl/TQXw4

In her book,  you will find the answers to bettering your life with insight of the steps that are needed in making your life complete. Therese helps you understand why your life is where you are and not where you want it to be. And no matter where you are in life you will feel hope and heal from your pain. This book will not only give you guidance in one direction of life, but it will give you the answers in many directions of your life, so you may find the happiness that you have been dreaming of...

This book was written to help all those who wish to change their life and to help bring this world together instead of apart … Every bit of Therese’s guidance and the action that you take TODAY can truly help change your life …
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Therese offers Thousands of Dollars  in FREE Bonus Gifts plus an Enter-To-Win Prize Drawing during her book tour with Denise Cassing. Just  buy her book from Amazon today or tomorrow. …. Learn more about how to get your free gifts and enter the drawing at http://www.daysgobynotlove.com/bkpromo .

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Young Adult Cross-Genre Review

Book: Uncommon Magic
Category: YA fantasy romance
Author: Michelle Scott
Author's Website: www.mscottfiction.com


Reviewed by Reading Vacation


Rating: four out of five stars

Review: Usually, in books, the magicians are in hiding because they fear the un-magical. Uncommon Magic goes against the norm to a world where magicians control everything and are looked up to as kings. Where inventions are against the law and inventors are put to death. How does an ordinary girl get pulled into the battle of the magical and un-magical? Between magic and inventions? Between love and family?

Fist, Mira. She will do anything for the boy she loves, Jess, who turns out to be a magician. She does not have the strongest girl power, but she does have some redeeming qualities. Sympathy for those suffering is one of those qualities. Even while the magicians were so downright mean to her, when they were in trouble, Mira still tried to help. Also, Mira is loyal to those she cares about, even though they sometimes don’t deserve it. Take Jess for example, he was a jerk to Mira, but she refused to give up on him. I don’t think I would have stuck around.

The magic is uncommon indeed. The magicians can start a fire that does not burn things. They also put on the most magnificent image shows out of thin air. Their magic isn’t all kittens and rainbows though. Magicians do the most horrible things to the un-magical. Magic is sometimes used to put someone to death, or make them suffer for a crime they may not have committed. That is why the un-magical were so upset.

You can see why a revolution was long overdue. The un-magical were prepared to deal with their unfair treatment, for which I applaud them. Magicians couldn’t stay in power forever, and now the people were realizing it. But, their methods were sot of uncalled for. I mean, did they need that many weapons to take down a few magicians. The end result was my favorite part of the revolution. I think both the magicians and the un-magical have a brighter future because of a few people who wanted to be heard.


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Nonfiction for Teens Recommended

Snowflake Obsidian: Memoir of a Cutter
Written by The Hippie
www.SnowflakeObsidianBook.com
ISBN: 978-1-4502-6654-6
Publisher: iUniverse
Rating: 5/5 stars
Genre: Teen nonfiction

 Reviewed by Bensey originally for Amazon

I consider myself an avid reader and was skeptical before reading this book. However, once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. I related to the main character in so many ways and really felt that the author put a true voice to a beautiful soul who was figuring out how to love herself.

I loved the characters in the book, and more specifically the way that The Hippie was able to bring each of them to life and create a way that the reader appreciated each of them whether or not they were an emotionally stunted father or a shallow and back-stabbing best friend, or a drug-using soul mate. The Hippie brought an empathetic voice to each character. I found myself laughing during parts, crying during parts and praising the author's ability to overcome her own insecurities in other parts. I appreciated the way that she wrote about her experience with cutting; not minimizing the pain that she was in, but not over-dramatizing it either. It can be a delicate subject and I felt that The Hippie's vulnerability maintained the balance between self-torture and self-actualization during that time, as well as writing about the experience of overcoming it.

The Hippie's journey during "Snowflake Obsidian" is one that is refreshingly honest. I highly recommend this book.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Lyndsay Digneo Reviews New Chicklit Book

Title – Something Borrowed
Author – Emily Giffin
Author’s Website – http://www.emilygiffin.com
Genre - Chicklit
ISBN-10: 031232118X
ISBN-13: 978-0312321185

Reviewed by Lyndsay Digneo for Simply Lindsay
Reviewer Website (Blog) – http://simplylyndsay.blogspot.com/


Despite a lot of positive reviews, I was slightly hesitant to read Emily Giffin's first novel, Something Borrowed. The whole premise of the book, the main character sleeps with her best friend's fiancé, isn't exactly the storyline I usually go for. However, with the movie being released on May 6th and a lot of great recommendations from friends, I decided to take the plunge and read it. I'm so glad I did. Unlike other novels with an affair at its core, Giffin did a stellar job of turning the tables and made the reader sympathetic to the cheater.

Meet Rachel and Darcy. They've been best friends for years. Rachel is the perpetual good girl, who's worked hard for everything she has in life, and Darcy, well, she's that girl you know and sometimes scratch your head in wonder about how everything in her life has always fallen into place. However, on the eve of her 30th birthday, Rachel finds herself in bed with Darcy's fiancé. While she resigns herself to thinking it was a one-time, drunken mistake, the fling soon becomes a full blown affair. To make matters worse, as if it could get worse, Rachel is not only Darcy's best friend she is her maid of honor.

As the story follows Rachel, Darcy, and Dex, that's Darcy's fiancé, and their friends through the summer, the lines of right and wrong get blurred. As easy as it is to say cheating is wrong, Giffin makes a subtle but strong case that there are "no moral absolutes."

At 29, I'm about the same age as Rachel and Darcy. I found myself relating to them and laughing along side of them throughout the entire book. One of my favorite scenes of the entire book was the night of Darcy's bachelorette party. Darcy spent the night at Rachel's apartment as Darcy wanted to relive the days of childhood sleepovers. If you ever had a best friend that was like a sister to you, you'll relate and feel bond between Rachel and Darcy. They truly have a history filled with good memories, and that's what makes Rachel's situation all the more intriguing and difficult.

The focal point of the novel is a heavy one, but the story itself is another segment of growing up. We grow up learning right from wrong, but the truth of the matter is "the world is not that black-and-white." Sometimes it takes us until we're 29 going on 30 to fully learn the lesson and realize that there are always tough decisions to make. And of course when it comes to matters of the heart, sometimes, we learn that a man should never be something borrowed.


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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Saturday, June 4, 2011

THE Book for Book Lovers

Title: The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life

Author: Nava Atlas
Publisher: Sellers Publishing, Inc. South Portland, ME
Publishing Date: 2011
ISBN 13: 978-1-4162-0632-3


Reviewer: Mindy Phillips Lawrence


Nava Atlas is a well-known cookbook author. The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life is a departure but in it, she offers us the ingredients twelve famous female writers combined to serve up their writing lives. Through family problems, depression and social misconceptions, they wrote. They persevered in order to say what they were compelled to say. Because they did, we now know the works of Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontё, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Madeline L’Engle, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anaïs Nin, George Sand, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf.
Atlas talks about the “universal yearning to set thoughts to paper.” Literary Ladies explains how each writer showcased in the book made space in her life to accomplish that goal. It wasn’t easy.
Harriet Beecher Stowe raised seven children and had to supplement her husband’s meager income by publishing her articles. Yet, she found the time to produce Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that rattled a nation.
Edith Wharton was on the other end of the economic ladder. The phrase “keep up with the Joneses” pertains to her family. It was Wharton’s family with whom the elite struggled to keep up--both socially and economically. Although she had money, time and ability, her family thought the pursuit of writing was an embarrassment to their station in life and not worthwhile for a socialite. She still forged ahead to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The information about the authors comes from their diaries, letters, journals memories and interviews. From these sources, we learn about how they struggled to find and maintain their own voice, master uncertainty about their abilities and balance their family lives with the need to write. It breaks down forever the fallacy that writing is easy work.
Chapters in The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life include Becoming a Writer, Developing a Voice, Tools of the Trade, Conquering Inner Demons, The Writer Mother, Rejection and Acceptance, Money-Matters and Farther Along the Path. At the end is a section on Sources, Notes and Acknowledgements which gives additional information for deeper study. The only thing the book doesn’t have is an index, which would come in handy.

Nava Atlas not only wrote this book but also illustrated it, and did it well. She is an accomplished illustrator with work in several gallery collections. Writer, artist, cook, mother, she herself is an example of the persevering woman. But even as gifted as she is, Atlas said about her early writing life, “I thought I lacked ability when the writing got hard.” It’s so easy not to see the big picture.
Twenty-First Century women still have the same challenges as did the Literary Ladies. They must figure out how to write, get a publisher, make a living as a writer while raising a family and, in most cases, hold down a full-time job. Atlas’s book motivates modern-day female writers to carve out time from the same twenty-four-hour day the Literary Ladies had to pursue their craft. The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life offers them the ingredients and motivation to bake up their OWN literary masterpieces. That’s why this book is so important to read.

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Tweeting Help for Those with Something to Sell

Frugal and Focused Tweeting for Retailers
Subtitle: Tweaking Your Tweets and Other Tips for Integrating Your Social Media
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Author's Blog: http://www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com/
129 pages
ISBN: 9781451546149


Originally reviewed by Aaron Paul Lazar for Amazon

Carolyn Howard-Johnson has written another excellent guide, this time it's suitable for anyone selling a product. I happen to be a writer, and learned a great deal about tweeting to improve book sales. For example, I never knew what "Retweets" were or that one could request them. Written with a straightforward, easy to read style, this is a great reference book. I particularly loved this quote "So let's think freely and with confidence that our good deeds will come back to us. If we act accordingly, we can successfully use all kinds of sites on the Web." Carolyn's positive and optimistic outlook shines through in this book - coupled with astute common sense and experience. Buy it today!
~Aaron Paul Lazar is the author of three lyrical and addictive mystery series. His latest book, FireSong, was just released as an eBook. FireSong: What would you do if your country church was hit by a rogue tornado during services? When the twister unearths the body of a missing churchgoer, Gus LeGarde is led into a bizarre underground labyrinth where he discovers the shock of his life and potential links to the Underground Railroad.

 
 
 
 
 
 
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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :

Friday, May 13, 2011

The Tech Disease: Getting Over Addiction

Title – The Digital Diet:
Subtitle - The 4-Step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance
Author – Daniel Sieberg
Author's website link - http://www.danielsieberg.com/
Genre or category - technology
ISBN – 978-0307887382
Publisher -  Random House

The Digital Diet is a 28-day plan that’s meant to reawaken our awareness of technology in our lives, provide tools and gadgets to improve life, and instill the right motivational/practical formula for managing it in the future. It can be tailored based on age, profession, hobbies, and a person’s particular electronic poison and includes a self-assessment, a detox phase, and a week-by-week guide to building time for technology back into your routine.



The 4 Step Plan

Step 1 – Think - Consider how technology has overwhelmed our society and the effect it’s had on your physical, mental, and emotional health.
Step 2 – Boot - Take stock of your digital intake using Sieberg’s Virtual Weight Index and step back from the device.

Step 3 – Connect - Focus on restoring the relationship that have been harmed by the technology in your life.
Step 4 – Vitalize - Learn how to live with technology – the healthy way, by optimizing your time spent e-mailing, texting, on Facebook and web surfing.

Kirkus Review -

Former CBS and CNN technology correspondent recognizes what is lost in a multitasking, digitally obsessed world and outlines suggestions to help people reclaim their lives.

Spending hours on the computer with minimal productivity? Is social-networking a daily necessity, or has the purchase of the latest games, gadgets and apps become routine? Life does not have to be beholden to technology, writes Sieberg, who encourages technology users to take control. The author, an Emmy-nominated journalist and self-rehabbed gaming and social-network addict, urges the plugged-in public to recognize the impact technology is having on their self-esteem, relationships and health. Technology, writes the author, should allow people to work smarter, not harder. It should provide them with more down time, but not consume it. Rather than berating people for their tech obsession, though, Sieberg shares his own fall into compulsive computering and his subsequent struggle to make time off-screen. He outlines his four-step, 28-day plan that instructs readers to take back control through “positive computing” and constructive time-management. The author is aware that one size does not fit all, and he provides a flexible tech cleanse that readers can employ as they see fit. Packed with helpful tips, examples of exercises one can do while incorporating their gadgets and recommendations for apps and software that help achieve positive technology management, Sieberg sets the reader on a path for success.

Take control over technology with this energetic, engaging and uplifting read.

~ For much more information about Daniel Sieberg and The Digital Diet: The 4-Step Plan to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life visit http://www.danielsieberg.com/.

~ Virtual blog tour coordinated by Nikki Leigh and Promo 101 Promotional Services - http://www.bookpromotionservices.com/



----- The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor. As a courtesy to the author, please tweet and retweet this post using this little green retweet widget :