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Other links owned by this user |
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The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez
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Lost and lonely when she moves in with her stepfather's family in Philadelphia, Raisin Rodriguez, 13, talks on her blog to her two best friends back in Berkeley, California. Her daily, sometimes hourly, narrative is frank, needy, hilarious, intimate, and crude. On one level it's the usual diary about the new kid trying to fit in with the cool group. But Raisin, who admits she's way beyond Judy Blume, also writes about examining her intimate body parts, comparing what she sees with the wrinkled "face of Mervis the librarian." There's also the teacher who looks as if he has "pubic hair coming out of his ears." When she forgets to log out at school, someone prints her blog for all to read. Blogs tend to be ephemeral, but what will last here is the close-up of peer cruelty, personal intimacy, and public embarrassment. Raisin can't help wondering if the word embarrassment comes from the root words bare and ass.
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Totally Boned: A Joe and Monkey Collection
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Why has Zach remained unscathed while so many other cartoonists are smacked about by critics and connoisseurs alike? Maybe because while some strips are content with simple gags, Zach realizes that real laughs and empathy come from character-based humor. Maybe because while some strips stretch their premises so thin you can practically hear them snap mid-panel, Zach offers readers a richly detailed world with believable individuals, original premises and a larcenous robot. Maybe because while some strips can only make us long for comics' better days, Zach reminds us of just how freaking cool it would be to have a monkey. In short, Zach gives the comic strip reader exactly what he or she has been looking for, but in an imaginative manner they never expected to see. No wonder "Joe and Monkey" is so often mentioned and praised on websites, even those not strictly about comics
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| 3. |
My War : Killing Time in Iraq
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My War is a book that will challenge many of the most common assumptions about the Iraq War and the people fighting in it. Colby Buzzell, the book's author and a U.S. Army machine-gunner who did a year-long tour in Iraq, is not the stereotypical small-town soldier from a Red State. He grew up in San Francisco eating pot brownies at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, skateboarding, and listening to punk and heavy metal. He supported Ralph Nader for president, reads George Orwell, and his dad worked in Silicon Valley. But he was sick of his "life in oblivion," bouncing around from one dead-end job to another. As Buzzell writes in his typically gritty prose, "I didn’t want to get all old and have my bratty grandkids ask me, 'Grandpa, where were you during the Iraq war?' and me going, 'Oh, I was busy doing temp work and data entry for 12 bucks an hour.'"
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| 5. |
Baghdad Burning : Girl Blog from Iraq
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Riverbend is the pseudonym of a young Iraqi blogger; this book archives the first year of her blog, Baghdad Burning. Once a computer programmer who enjoyed considerable personal freedom, after Baghdad's fall, Riverbend finds herself unemployed and largely restricted to the safety of her family's home. In English that would put many Americans to shame, she chronicles daily life under the occupation, writing about water and electricity shortages with humor and exasperation, writing about violence with deep feeling.
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| 6. |
Katrina and the Lost City of New Orleans
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New Orleans is the Lost City of America.
New Orleans has disappeared as surely as the lost city of Atlantis or the lost city of Pompeii, which former mayor Marc Morial and Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA.) have compared us to in their statements.
That New Orleans, the New Orleans I mean to tell you about, that will never, ever, exist again--that city of love, lust, death and sex--will never exist again.
A portion of the proceeds of this book will go to the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Fund. The cooks, servers and restaurant workers of New Orleans have provided fabulous times and memories for millions. Now we must remember them in their time of need.
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Confessions of a Boyfriend Stealer
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Grade 7 Up–In this story written as a blog, fictitious readers comment on the trials and tribulations of the book's protagonist, Genesis Bell. She and her two best friends are known as the Terribles. Her friends are shallow, promiscuous, and nasty. Gen's narcissistic mother and sister are over-the-top–as shallow and promiscuous as the Terribles, and perhaps more unbelievable, as they both fall for the same man, who is–a Bible thumper. As the story unfolds, Gen's friends' boyfriends come on to her. She is at first happy for the male attention, and then guilty about betraying her friends–even though they are busy betraying their boyfriends.
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| 8. |
janus: the series
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Janus is a blook set in an alternate world. Two countries on an island continent are at perpetual war, and various hidden schools on both sides are set up to support the war initiative. Janus is about the Dokan academy and the seal it protects.
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| 9. |
Birding Babylon : A Soldier's Journal from Iraq
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Early in 2004, a National Guardsman from Connecticut arrived in Iraq for a year's posting. Sergeant First Class Jon Trouern-Trend had been a birder since age 12. So naturally he looked for birds--and found them in surprising number and variety around Anaconda Base in the Sunni Triangle, where he was stationed: old-world warblers near the laundry pond, kestrels at the dump, wood pigeons by the airstrip, owls on the cement bunkers. And whenever he got "outside the wire"--collecting water samples from the Tigris, delivering supplies to schoolchildren, at a forward operating base in Mosul, or on a trek to the ruins of ancient Babylon--his lifelist grew longer.
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The Sweet Venom of the Scorpion: The Diary of a Call Girl
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The Sweet Venom of the Scorpion: The Diary of a Call Girl, is a vivid account of the three years that the 21-year-old spent selling her body for money. Written in the slang of a middle-class teenager from Sao Paulo, it is part diary, part blog and even offers how-to tips for readers looking to spice up their sex lives.
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GUS Openshaw's Whale Killing Journal
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blogger-slash-whaler goes hunting for his prey in the Caribbean-where the waters are shark-infested, the crew is always on the verge of mutiny and absurd plot twists arrive with every other paragraph. Thomson's raucous comedy of errors is the tale of Gus Openshaw, a worker at a cat-food cannery who spends his summer hot on the trail of the "blubbery bastard" who swallowed his wife, child and right arm. Openshaw obsessively details his pursuit on his blog, and he's a little surprised to learn that his readership knows of other obsessive, one-limbed whalers.
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Biodiesel Power : The Passion, the People, and the Politics of the Next Renewable Fuel
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Whether we are nearing the end of oil or merely nearing the end of inexpensive oil, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to find alternative ways to meet our energy needs. Biodiesel is one such alternative-and is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the US economy.
Biodiesel in North America is in its infancy. As air quality deteriorates in major centers, governments are scrambling for ways to reduce emissions and are embracing biodiesel in their fleets. Conferences on biodiesel are often "inaugural" as society begins discussing this fuel in earnest.
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| 15. |
Tourist In Hell
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In 2003, I set out to discover the post-911 world. I posted my discoveries on my Blog. Looking back, I can't imagine three more amazing years, filled with events and experiences that almost defy imagination. Are we on the brink of a great ascension, or a world war that will lead to a new Dark Age? This Blook is my personal record for future survivors -- and anybody interested in making sense of this precarious moment in history.
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Political/social cartoons
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Political/social cartoons and written commentary by Bill Sanders, retired political cartoonist for the Milwaukee Journal and King Features Syndicate.
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| 19. |
Four and Twenty Blackbirds
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"Although she was orphaned at birth, Eden Moore is never alone. Three dead women watch from the shadows, bound to protect her from harm. But outside her aunt's house, a gunman waits, convinced that Eden is destined to follow her wicked great-grandfather, an African magician with the power to curse the living and raise the dead.
Now, Eden must decipher the ghostly trio's secret before a new enemy more dangerous than the fanatical assassin destroys what is left of her family. She will sift through lies in a Georgian antebellum mansion and climb through the haunted ruins of an abandoned hospital, desperately seeking the truth that will save her beloved aunt from the curse that threatens her life."
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Other links at Science Fiction |
| 1. |
janus: the series
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Janus is a blook set in an alternate world. Two countries on an island continent are at perpetual war, and various hidden schools on both sides are set up to support the war initiative. Janus is about the Dokan academy and the seal it protects.
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| 2. |
The Secret Mathematic
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THE SECRET MATHEMATIC is a serialized science-fiction novel concerning the development of a revolutionary new form of numeracy whose algorithms execute in real time and space. Brought to you by Cheeseburger Brown, author of THE DARTH SIDE and SIMON OF SPACE.
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Rebirth
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"Fangtastic... a real page-turner that leaves you hungry for more. 5/5" spinetinglers.co.uk
An attack on a pharmaceutical laboratory leads Detective Tom Ryder into an investigation that challenges everything he ever believed about the world around him. With the help of World Health Organisation operative Jane Simpson, he discovers a secret society that has defended humanity against the creatures of the night for centuries.
A horrifying turn of events forces Tom to reconsider his place in the world and he finds himself fighting against the evil outside as well as the evil growing inside him. With death around every corner, Tom becomes the number one target of both the people he thought were allies and the creatures he thought were enemies...
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| 4. |
The Honour of the Knights
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A civil war, a stolen battleship and a top secret starfighter project were just some of the disturbing pieces of information presented to Simon Dodds upon his return to the CSN following a six month suspension.
But what was far more disturbing was the amount of information he wasn't being given. In just a few months Dodds' world, along with his old wing mates, Estelle, Enrique, Kelly and the new and silent Chaz, was about to the flipped on its head.
With conspiracy stories abound and rumours of a huge coverup on behalf on the Confederation government Dodds may well be wishing he had stayed away from the Navy all together. Not that he could hide from what was to come. Or run. No one could...
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