sacred bird » books

probably no wolves in this one =(

630 — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 02:02:01 +0000

for you vampire fans, don’t fret. there’s another twilight book coming, sort of. stephenie meyer announced on her website today that she will be publishing the short life of bree tanner, what she’s calling a novella. says meyer “I began this story a long time ago—before Twilight was even released. Back then I was just editing Eclipse, and in the thick of my vampire world. I was thinking a lot about the newborns, imagining their side of the story, and one thing led to another. I started writing from Bree’s perspective about those final days, and what it was like to be a newborn.” for twilight fans, you might remember bree tanner as a newly born vampire who wanted to follow the cullen’s vegeterian lifestyle but gets killed by the volturi. meyer’s is offering her book for free via download starting june 7th at http://www.breetanner.com/

where do you do your shopping?

630 — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:59:33 +0000

if i had my way, i would buy everything online. call it convenience (no need to drag it on the train to get it home), call it laziness, it just seems a lot easier than having to go to the store and waiting in line to pay for something. apparently, not everyone agrees with me. according to data collected by the census bureau, people still prefer to buy things in-store. even for things like electronics which i always buy online since it’s usually cheaper. check out this visual from permuto discoveries which breaks down sales into item category and how much is spent online vs in-store.

image courtsey of permuto discoveries

souped-up ipod touch*

630 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:23:03 +0000

most of you have probably already made up your minds on whether to buy the highly anticipated apple ipad or not so i’ll keep this brief and let you get to video of steve jobs introducing the product today. the wifi version will be available in 60 days (mid march) and the 3g version will be available in 90 days (mid april). you’ll have an option on hard drive size 16bb ($499), 32gb ($599) and 64gb ($699). if you’re going 3g, tack on another $150. apple is not yet taking pre-orders but you can sign up to be notified when they do at the apple website.

*doesn’t mean i’m not going to buy it though

hilarious! (in spanish)

180 — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:01:46 +0000

with 100K hits a day, i’m probably the last to know, but the check out this blog called cake wrecks, a site cataloging the hideous mistakes cake decorators have made when finishing their masterpieces. it was so popular, the blog’s author, jen yates got a book deal and for $12.99 you can revel in “the folly of professional confections gone horribly, horribly wrong. think of them as epic fails, with frosting.” the website features a few of the fugly cakes and some of the best translation mistakes around each day (she gets about 60 per). you can follow @cakewrecks on twiter here or buy the book Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Hilariously Wrong">here.

lucky for you, she only blogs about mistakes made by professionals.

photo via cakewrecks

i’ll be right here

180 — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:24:13 +0000

i wonder if that’s what japan’s new first lady in waiting, miyuki hatoyama, said to peeps before she made her trip on a ufo to the planet venus (it’s also what e.t. said to elliot before heading home). hatayoma, the wife of the premier elect yukio hatoyamashe, wrote about the extraordinary journey she took to planet venus in a book she penned called “very strange things i’ve encountered.” describing the experience she said “while my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped ufo and went to venus…it was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”

all of this is kind of ironic because her husband was once nicknamed “the alien” because he has prominent eyes.

finally where it belongs, in the fiction aisle

630 — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:09:10 +0000

lauren conrad might have left mtv’s the hills but she might not have left the tv world behind. when asked what’s next, she’s said that she might be interested in producing and that she was interested in adapting her series of books to television. with her first book on the ny times bestseller’s list two weeks in a row (so far), that might not seem so farfetched after all. L.A. Candy sets the stage for the life of jane roberts, a 19 year old who moves to hollywood and ends up the star of a reality show. not such a stretch of imagination for conrad. my guess is that in the third book, a boyfriend will come between jane roberts and the roommate with things getting so ugly the boyfriend starts a rumor of a sex tape.

mommy issues…

180 — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:59:09 +0000

a new book. that’s right folks, anderson cooper’s mom, 85 year old gloria vanderbilt wrote a new novel called obsession: an erotic tale. the book tells “the story of priscilla bingham, the widow of a frank lloyd wright-like architect who, after his death, discovers a cache of letters, wrapped in magenta grosgrain ribbon, revealing in considerable detail his secret, kinky sex life. the author of these letters is bee, a mysterious woman who may be a figment of priscilla’s imagination, or possibly priscilla is a figment of bee’s.” as part of the story-telling, the book highlights the use of many sex toys and erotic games.

the silver fox read the book during manuscript said “the six most surprising words a mother can say to her son are: ‘honey, i’m writing an erotic novel.’ but actually she’s pretty unique, and there’s not much she does that’s surprising anymore. at 85, whatever she wants to write is fine with me.”

are you going to get the book for your kindle?

a real renaissance man.

180 — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:48:17 +0000

first it was his art, now it’s his book, mein kampf. business students in india consider hitler’s manifesto a ”success story where one man can have a vision, work out a plan on how to implement it and then successfully complete it.”* the book has come into favor because of “the mutual influence of india and hitler’s nazis on one another. mahatma gandhi corresponded with the fuhrer, pro-independence leader subhas chandra bose’s indian national army allied with hitler’s germany and japan during the second world war, and the nazis drew on hindu symbolism for their swastika motif and ideas of aryan supremacy.”

india isn’t the only place where the book is selling like hot cakes. it sells in croatia, russia, and turkey too. in germany, the book is banned until 2015–until he’s been dead 70 years.

* i guess they skip over the part where dude killed himself when his plan went to hell in a hand-basket.

j.r.r. tolkien does it again

630 — Wed, 06 May 2009 07:28:10 +0000

known best for the lord of the rings series, j.r.r. tolkien has probably published just about as many books posthumously as while he was alive. his last one, published in 2007 36 years after his death, the children of hurin, is listed as one of the best books of 2007 on amazon.com

the new book just released today, consist of two narrative poems written in a traditional norse meter which makes use of alliterations and kennings (referencing one item but suggesting another).

here’s an excerpt from the the legend of sigurd and gudrun

There wrought Regin
by the red embers
rune-written iron,
rare, enchanted;
of gold things gleaming,
of grey silver,
there Fáfnir lay
by the fire dreaming.

not my cup of tea but if you love it, you can pick it up at amazon.

economic stimulus

180 — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:00:57 +0000

here we go again, making oil-rich countries and their leaders central to the health of our economy. the would-be 4th member of the axis of evil and anti-american hugo chavez gave retail sales a boost over the weekend when he gave president obama a little reading materials for the ride back home–a book called “open veins of latin america: five centuries of the pillage of a continent.“ the book was penned by uruguayan author eduardo galeano and examines the “impact of foreign intervention in latin america in the past five centuries.” before the weekend, the book was ranked 54,295 on amazon.com and it is now at number two (2).

i’m betting this might be the only kind of endorsement from a communist ann coulter or rush limbaugh wouldn’t mind.