Posted on
01.21.09 by Widge @ 4:56 pm 
Written by: Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi Douglas Preston, best known as the co-author of what has come to be known as the Pendergast series of novels (which kicked off with Relic), decided to move to Florence with his family. They had a nice villa so that Preston could work on one of his books and everything was peachy...until he ran into Mario Spezi, an Italian journalist, who told Preston that an olive grove by Preston's villa had been host to a double homicide as part of the "Monster of Florence" case. The case, which I had never heard of and neither has Preston, involved a series of double murders committed by the titular serial killer. An uncaught serial killer, what's more. Preston, intrigued, started collaborating with Spezi on a book about The Monster of Florence, only to wind up inadvertently clashing with the local authorities and fleeing the country with his co-author under arrest for being the Monster. Making matters more strange is that this meta-story which sounds like fiction is in fact true. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
Posted on
11.15.08 by Rox @ 11:00 pm   Written by: Elizabeth Stockton aka Ms. Boo Dreadful It is the holiday season and one's thoughts turn to family gatherings. These gatherings are always centered around food. And in some households there's a focus on sports, but we wont speak of that here. Food is at our core and we all seem to have recipes we like to collect and to give out as a token of our care and love to others. As a cookbook collector of sorts, I have a relatively small library of cookbooks but they are top notch. Recently I received the Vincent Price cookbook for my birthday. I have already taken on his version of Spaghetti Bolognese to a welcome success. In fact I was perusing the internet and my favorite food sites for holiday items and I found a delightful cookbook centered around the Steampunk subculture. It is called Fuel for the Boiler: A Steampunk Cookbook by Elizabeth Stockton. There are 91 pages in the book with images of the steampunk-bedecked crew members of HMS Ophelia, also known as Abney Park, as well as some good folk from Brass Goggles. There are plenty of people in the steampunk community that helped Ms Boo Dreadful (aka Elizabeth Stickton) bring this book to fruition. Such as the handy conversion chart for U.S. to Metric capacity and a very handy cooking measurement equivalents. I am sure she had received some help from our friends from across the pond. The layout and design allow the owner of the cookbook to make notations in the margins--a handy feature as I like to alter recipes on occasion. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
Posted on
11.13.08 by Cosette @ 2:43 pm  History does not have to be boring. The fact the world (or at least the human population) has gotten as far as it has is a source of endless fascination, and a story that needs to be told and told well. We at Needcoffee find it deplorable that there are so many history texts out there that are so dry. Mental Floss' answer to these deadly dull texts is instead, as they describe it, "An Irreverent Romp Thought Civilization's Best Bits." The authors of The Mental Floss History of the World strive (and for the most part, succeed) in presenting the history of the world in a light and interesting manner. Each chapter of the book has different sections. We start off with "In a Nutshell," which lays out the basics of the particular period, followed by a brief timeline of "What Happened When." Following that are sections and tiny inset blurbs with more details about particular topics of interest (the Reformation, the cast of characters you need to know to understand the Enlightenment, etc.) Next is the "Spinning the Globe" section, which tells you what's going on all over the world during the period. Then come the bits that I find the most interesting. "Who's Up, Who's Down" explores which civilizations are doing well or poorly during the period, often with fun titles like "The Huns: Up, Down, Who Cares? As Long As We Can Break Something." Next is a section for noteworthy social trivia, often including key inventions and discoveries during the period, influential people or political and social movements. Some of the most fascinating trivia comes from this section. Finally comes "By the Numbers" with pertinent statistics from the period (apparently, Taft weighed 340 pounds in 1912). And then on to the next chapter… The sections can be a bit confusing at times because of all of the inset material, but there is enough chronological and geographical flow (and wit) within each chapter to make it easy reading. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
Posted on
12.07.03 by Dindrane @ 8:01 pm 
Written by: Edain McCoy Expectations are almost 90% of your enjoyment of a book. As a non-pagan, I went into reading Ostara expecting a book that presents small hints and tips for enhancing the rites of Ostara, but not a single tome that collected all the current scholarship on the history of the holiday, a comparison between, say, Ostara and Easter, or the be-all, end-all of Ostara ritual texts. And I wasn't disappointed--the book presents all kinds of cool ideas for enhancing your appreciation of Ostara in particular and Spring in general. As is so often the case with simple books, there are questions about the academic validity of some of the author's claims. She does not cite her sources, and there are several occasions where she could and should have said a bit more, such as when she was discussing the history of Ostara/Easter or the etymology of the word itself. However, Ostara is not meant to be a textbook or even a theological treatise; it is meant to encourage you to "deepen your understanding of the spiritual aspects of this ancient spring holiday, and discover new ideas for expressing that spirituality." And it delivers on that claim. Faith is, after all, not based upon knowledge or scholarship. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
Posted on
12.07.03 by Dindrane @ 4:55 am 
Written by: Clara M. Miller Echoes of a Haunting is the memoir of a haunted house, as experienced by the author herself and her family. Along the way, we learn a bit about how haunted houses are handled in the modern era, as well as how neighbors reacted to their publicity, and how the disturbances eventually contributed to (but did not cause) the dissolution of the family. Presented in the form of a diary, the story begins in July of 1970, when Miller and her family move into a new house in the country. There are already some whiffs of trouble within the family, but the first sign that there might be something wrong with the house is the infestation of bees, filling the entire house--an odd thing for bees to do, to say the least. Nearly as soon as the family moves in, they start to experience strange noises, bad luck, dying pets, UFO sightings, and so forth. The problems seemed, for the most part, centered around, but not restricted to, one room in the house. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
Posted on
10.17.02 by Widge @ 2:21 pm  Content: Written by: Neil Gaiman Unabridged: Yes. I fear audioplays that are adaptations of literary works. There is precedence for my phobia. Most of it stems from the fact that people don't know how to describe things. Let's face it--it's a helluva lot easier to just write a paragraph than to get across how something looks through nothing but dialogue and foley. Shining example of how this doesn't work can be found in the 3-D audio adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist from many, many moons ago. There was a scene where the characters go into the back of the grocery store in which they are trapped, only to find this rolling metal door standing open and a Nameless Horror ™ trying to snatch them up. The quality of dialogue, I swear, was something along these lines: "Great Scott! Look at those undulating tentacles with suckers the size of china plates, all heaving with glistening eldritch muck from another world! Whatever shall we do?" Yes, well, we shall drive off the side of a cliff if we're listening to such shite in the car, that's what we shall do. Now we know why Lovecraft's beasties all defied description--to save us from such drek. Categorized as: Book Reviews
|
|
|
