Tuesday, March 9, 2010

“Book Reviews - News Slashdot” plus 2 more

“Book Reviews - News Slashdot” plus 2 more

Book Reviews - News Slashdot

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 05:11 AM PST

The company has demonstrated the technology in its own test engine, and says it is currently testing it with three automakers. One key question is the impact the high pressures and temperatures will have on how long the engine lasts, Rocke says. The company, which is supported by venture-capital investments from Venrock and Khosla Ventures, plans to manufacture its system itself, rather than licensing the technology. It plans to build its first factory in 2013, and to introduce the technology into production cars by 2014.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Capsule children's book reviews - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: 08 Mar 2010 09:18 PM PST

Capsule reviews of recent children's book releases.

• "Out of My Mind," by Sharon M. Draper, $16.99

This extraordinary novel is a fantastic glimpse of what life is like for a profoundly disabled girl whose body constantly betrays her fine mind.

Melody, 11, has spastic bilateral quadriplegia (cerebral palsy) that silences her voice and puts her in a wheelchair. She communicates with a word board, but it's a conscious effort to summon her arms and hands to do her will.

Melody wishes she could control her body when it spasms, wishes she were normal like the kids who ignore her at school, and wishes she could talk.

One wish comes true in this affecting novel. A type-and-speak computer allows Melody to talk for the first time in her life, and she has a lot to say. Her prowess at knowledge quizzes leaves teachers and classmates stunned.

This powerful story by a two-time Coretta Scott King winner offers a wrenching insight into so many vital lives that the able-bodied overlook. If there's only one book teens and parents (and everyone else) can read this year, "Out of My Mind" should be it. (Ages 9 and up.)

• "The Sky Is Everywhere," by Jandy Nelson, $17.99

Nearly everyone who's staggered through life in the wake of a loved one's death will recognize themselves in this brilliant, piercing story.

Lennie, 17, writes poems and notes to her dead sister as she grapples with living in a world that implacably stays in motion.

For a moment, Lennie finds herself pulled from mourning into a flash of happiness, "but then all of a sudden the breath is kicked out of me, and I'm shoved onto the cold hard concrete floor of my life now, because I remember I can't run home after school and tell [my sister] about a new boy in band. My sister dies over and over again, all day long."

She and her sister's boyfriend mourn their infinite loss together and teeter on the brink of a bad romance obvious to them both. Lennie closes her heart to friends who are eager but clueless about how to help. And then she has an epiphany partly articulated by her grandmother: "There's not just one truth, Lennie. There never is." It's a warm, deeply honest story that resonates with truth. (Ages 14 and up.)

• "This World We Live In," by Susan Beth Pfeffer, $17

Like John Marsden's excellent "Tomorrow" series, Ms. Pfeffer's follow-up to "Life as We Knew It" and "The Dead and the Gone" presents a bleak, brutal world reeling from an apocalyptic event.

An asteroid has knocked the moon a bit closer to Earth, causing cataclysmic events -- tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions -- that leave the fabric of civilization in tatters.

In this cold, dim world, food and shelter are paramount, and life is as fragile as trust. Told through teen protagonist Miranda, this novel describes a frighteningly credible scenario that suggests parallels with present-day Haiti, Chile and the Republic of Congo. (Ages 13 and up.)

• "Rikers High," by Paul Volponi, $16.99

You think life in high school can be bad? Try going to the high school cobbled together for the young inmates living on Rikers Island. Author Mr. Volponi spent six years on Rikers Island, teaching adolescents to read and write. Every sentence carries authenticity.

The story of inmate No. 40, known on the outside as Martin Stokes, describes a social-justice system riddled with holes, a prison-caste system dependent on revenge, bravado and mistrust. (Ages 14 and up.)

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

NYT Book Review to Be Its Own App - The Big Money

Posted: 09 Mar 2010 07:20 AM PST

How rich the irony? The New York Times is planning to offer a NYT Book Review app in the next few months, according to Poynter.org's Mobile Media page. James Dunn casually mentioned this at a conference in Missouri covering the media, held at the Reynolds Journalism Institute:

Dunn said the focus of the paper's "disaggregation" efforts would be to identify which content categories should not be broken out, but rather should remain as part of the core product. Dunn told Mitchell that examples such as The New York Times Crossword and Book Review were "low hanging fruit" for disaggregation, and said the paper is beginning to think about what else might be spun off as separate products on new platforms. 

Now, disaggregation is nothing new for the Book Review. For many years, it was sold in book stores for 50 cents beginning the Monday before it came out on newsstands as part of the paper. 

The section obviously has its own constituency, though the book business as the NYT Book Review knows it ceased to exist some time ago. And the review's influence has gone from waning to irrelevant as critics have lost their ability to influence what readers buy.

Some of this loss of authority is a product of the shift away from critics to peers and media as the primary conduit of sales. Few readers make the decision about whether to buy or pick up a book at the library based upon the reviews in the Times or any other publication, including the New York Review of Books and The New Yorker. 

For more than a decade, the vast and loosely connected network of reading groups has generated more book discoveries than book reviews. And media appearances on the Today Show, Oprah, and a few other select outlets like NPR and the Daily Show have not only supplanted reviewers, but greatly surpassed them in sales influence.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
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