Mover Mike

The Amazon Kindle weighs 10.3 ounces and can hold up to 200 books.

What's in the library, aka Kindle Book Store? There are already plenty of books, 90,000 in all, including 101 of the current NYT bestsellers. Don't believe us? See for yourself at the Amazon Kindle Store.

I would think it would fit in well with the environment. Think of it as eco-friendly. Yes, I love my books and they accumulate in various parts of our home. I can sell them, sure, to Powell's or even sell them on eBay. But how many trees have to be cut for all the print material in our lives? And how much energy does it use to make all that paper?

For discussions on the Amazon Kindle here are some links:

Amazon.com

GIZMODO

Wall Street Journal

Yahoo Finance

Popular Mechanics

Amazon Kindle Kindle Mover Mike

Update:

On my sidebar Amazon advertises books that fit with my blogging topics and I have a small spot for Mover Mike's Recommendations with links back to Amazon. I participate in the Amazon Associates program, which pays me a small percentage of the sale price on every book sold through this blog. In fact, that's true for any purchase made at Amazon resulting from a Mover Mike referral, so I have included a search widget on the page that will allow readers to find and purchase whatever they want through this site. It doesn't add cost to the products, and it gives me a small revenue stream with which I can support the site.

If you're going to shop at Amazon for anything, I'd appreciate it if you start your search here and help support the site.

Update:

Are you a baseball fan? Are you glued to the TV from spring to late fall watching as many baseball games as possible? Do you collect baseball cards and wallow in the statistics of baseball like a dog in a mud puddle?

No me either! But, I did watch two seasons of Oregon State winning the national championship and I did watch Boston defeat the "Babe curse." I rooted for the Cubbies and watched in disbelief as a fan interfered with a fly ball that ended their dream for one more year. Mick, my driving buddy who's "Hey, Blue!" for high school baseball can entertain me for hours with stories of baseball high jinx and crazy calls. What I'm leading up to is a great book I just finished written by Frank Deford.

They say that Deford is "the most influential sports voice among members of the print media" or "the world's greatest sports writer." I'm no expert on his past writing, but I just finished The Entitled, A Tale of Modern Baseball and I couldn't put it down. From that opening paragraph I was hooked:

So, for Howie, it was, at last: neither resignation on the one hand, nor anger on the other. No, it was simply awful, horrible disappointment that tore at him. That it all must end this way. No, not this way. Anyway it ended would be a calamity, because despair would follow, and Howie understood himself well enough to know that he didn't possess the creative resources to really ever overcome that despair.

Deford through Howie and the star Jay Alcazar let us in on the behind the scenes of baseball as it's played today. We learn about he entitlement of the new players. We meet an obsessive owner, all knowing about stats, but no wisdom about players. We learn from a man who has seen most everything about the fans, the groupies and baseball.

I wasn't disappointed in the ending as some have been. I thought it worked well for everyone involved.

Baseball The Entitled Frank Deford Mover Mike

The main character is Alekei "Volk" Volkovoy. Volk fought and was severely wounded in Russia's war against Chechnya. On the surface Volk is a powerful gangster with a hand in virtually all underworld rackets. Really, Volk is a powerful killing machine, still working as a covert military Colonel.

Volk is hired or maneuvered to hijack a recently discovered and priceless Leonardo Da Vinci painting, Leda and the Swan, from the Heritage, a St. Petersburg museum.

Brent Ghelfi has served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals, been a partner in a Phoenix-headquartered law firm, and now owns and operates several businesses. He has traveled extensively throughout Russia. You know with certainty that Ghelfi has been to Russia. So much history in this tough, dark, and poor country. We look at the new Russia since the fall of the wall and the Chechnya war, through Ghelfi's eyes or Volk's and see a wild west where the threat of violence is everywhere.

I was struck by the bleakness of Moscow when Ghelfi, writes about the powerful Maxim pointing out his window at Red Square:

...where thousands of executions have been carried out before cheering throngs. Then it aims at the Konstantin and Yelena Tower, also known as torture tower, for the suffering it housed. Then it sweeps to take in Annunciation Tower, which Ivan the Terrible used as a political prison for the doomed. Finally it angles down to the subterranean bowels, where buckets of Russian blood have been spilled for sadistic sport, running in red rivulets of sorrow and pain into the Moscow River.

"Tourists," he says almost spitting. "They snap their pictures. Drink and eat until they are so fat they can hardly move. And they admire those walls. How Russian, they say. How historic. How beautiful."

He drops his arm and snorts disgust. "What fools. This place is fucking death, inside those walls and out. Invaders, patriots-they all die suffering. Nothing changes. But for now, in a nothing time, the blood is washed clean, and the herds of cattle see art."

This is a funny book. The book opens with Wallace Boyer, car salesman, realizing he is an airplane passenger sitting next to Rant Casey's father Chester.

Rant Casey? "Werewolf Casey"-the worst Patient Zero in the history of disease? The "superspreader" who's infected half the country? America's "Kissing Killer"? Rant "Mad Dog" Casey?

"Fifty dollars." "Round-trip." "Called a 'bereavement fare'." He tosses back the scotch. "Any way you look at it," he says, and elbows me in the ribs, "it's still a damn sweet deal on an airplane ticket."

Palahniuk is full of ideas. For example, you know the myths of the god who mates with a mortal in order for his offspring to experience mortality. Suppose you could go back in time and kill your father or mother. Then you would experience being immortal. Forget about the "grandfather paradox."

Party crashing is a major part of the story. It is a way to exert control over life that is totally random. Consider his description of Green Taylor Simms who lives a fat free, healthy lifestyle being hit by a fat f--k, who has a heart attack from all the Mickey Dees. Sideswiped, they both plunge over the guard rail.

His low-chloresterol blood rushes to abandon me in hot, leaping spurts.

Despite all my care, the heart-attack victim and I will both be just as dead.

Accidents do happen.

When you read Palahniuk, you step into a younger world a grundge world, of geeky people of "boosted peaks", a world of the near future.

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey Chuck Palahniuk Mover Mike

Corey Grace is a contemporary Republican, a cross between John McCain who was shot down and tortured and Bill Cohen, Republican Sec. of Defense under Clinton, married to the beautiful and black Janet Langhart. Grace is an honest man running for president caught between the party man, Rob Marotta, with few core beliefs, and the Evangelical man, Bob Christy, minister advocating a Christian world-view dominated by his opposition to rights for homosexuals.

The reader gets to try on the idea of an honest man, as in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and how he would deal with religious fundamentalism, gay rights, stem cell biology and the Iraq war. "Can an honest man become president?" That's the question the book poses and with today's one issue voters, it makes it very hard to stick to ones core beliefs. if you want to win, that is.

As the pressure of the campaign intensifies, Grace encounters betrayal, excruciating moral choices, and secrets that can destroy lives. Ultimately, the race leads to a deadlocked party convention where Grace must resolve the conflict between his romance with Lexie (Hart, the black Oscar winning actress), and his presidential ambitions—and decide just who and what he is willing to sacrifice.

Corey Grace on Democrats:

The Democrats are so bent on holding one interest group or another that they stand for absolutely nothing. They caved on Iraq, afraid of being called wimps. Now the war's gone south, and instead of a coherent policy all they can offer is 'We're not them,' and deadlines for withdrawal.

Our military is degraded from fighting the wrong war. Our political dialogue is bankrupt, Our party vamps on global warming while our kids wonder if their kids will still be able to breathe. And assuming they can breathe, we'll have helped to put them as deep in debt as they are dependent on foreign oil.

The Race gives the reader an inside seat at the spectacle of the presidential race, the media and the backroom politics. It may even have given us a look into the current race between Rudy Giuliani, McCain, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul and the possibility of a deadlocked convention.

The Race Richard North Patterson

Rudy Giuliani John McCain Fred Thompson Mitt Romney Ron Paul Mover Mike

John Marks in his novel Fangland reinvents Bram Stoker's Dracula. Set in post 9/11 times, the monster Ion Torgu carries all that historical carnage with him and that knowledge is a virus that corrupts The Hour. Modeled after 60 Minutes where Marks worked as a producer, The Hour is infected by a monster drawn to the recent slaughter over which The Hour's offices tower. Fangland is the nickname of the workplace at The Hour.

"People are not nice in Fangland, to say the least," .... "They are crazy. They are ambitious. They shout. They criticize and rebuke. They rise, at best, to a kind of low decency. But as far as I know, none of them are real bloodsuckers."

Marks is a skilled writer and the book was hard to put down.

In similar vein, see The TV Set a film that shows how the "blood" of a TV series can be sucked dry by studio execs.

Full disclosure: I requested the book from the publisher and received the book for free and was not obligated to a "pro" or "con" review.

John Marks Fangland60 MinutesDracula Bram Stoker The TV Set Mover Mike

Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich

Ethan Gage, assistant to Ben Franklin and expatriate American in post-revolutionary France, wins an ancient-and possibly cursed-medallion, covered in seemingly indecipherable symbols, may be linked to a Masonic mystery.

The book reads like an "Indiana Jones" adventure and exposes the reader to French history in 1798, Napoleon and the invasion of egypt and tactics.

Almost everything we know about ancient Egypt has been learned since Napoleon's invasion.

The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry
The Alexandria library was reputed to hold all of the knowledge-historical, philosophical, literary, scientific, and religious-of the world and then it was destroyed by fire. Was all the information lost to history or was it rescued and does some piece exist that could shake the foundations of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian world?

The story is based on the book The Bible Came from Arabia, that claims the Jewish homeland is not carved out of Palestine, but existed further south in the land occupied by Mecca. Berry offers up a whirl wind of a tale that in the end asks, "What if it's true?"

Simple Genius by David Baldacci
Here's a tale about an ex-CIA agent, Sean King, his partner, Michelle, fighting for her life over some tragedy when she was six, and an autistic girl genius pitted against two puzzle factories searching for a mathematical concept that could change the world of encryption. Baldacci is always a writer that's good for a weekend in the sun or one in which you shutter yourself away from the cold and rain.

The material acquaints you with quantum computers and the Beale Cipher

The Beale Cipher is one of those oxymoronic phenomena-a famous sectret. It concerns an enormously complicated code, three pages worth of numbers, and an alleged treasure worth tens of millions of dollars that was supposedly hidden by Mr. Thomas Jefferson Beale in the early 1800s.

Napoleon's Pyramids William Dietrich The Alexandria Link Steve Berry Simple Genius David Baldacci The Bible Came from Arabia Beale Cipher Mover Mike

Have you ever climbed a tall tree? I grew up with a big cherry tree in my back yard and I climbed that tree when I was six. Later, I free climbed deciduous trees as high as I could go and felt the wind move the tree and saw views that few in a two story neighborhood would ever see. This book feeds into that wonder, only with climbers that learned how to climb giant trees upwards of 360 feet tall. Preston writes so you care about the climbers, demonstrates how dangerous climbing can be, and fills you with wonder about these big trees and the biodiversity that exists in the canopy. I couldn't put the book down.

Jim Spickler, who climbed with Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine, describes what it's like to climb the world's tallest tree:

This second movie shows how to climb to the top of "Methuselah", the well-known coast redwood tree in San Mateo County, CA. (Part 1 and 2)

Redwoods The Wild Trees Richard Preston Steve Sillett Mover Mike

The first chapter Militarism and the Breakdown of Constitutional Government gave me the impression he was anti American military and anti-Bush. Johnson on p14 suggests the American democratic system is no longer working and checks and balances to prevent tyranny are "increasingly less operational." His support for this view is Gen. Tommy Franks, who is speaking with Cigar Aficionado. Johnson says Franks

...went so far as to predict that another serious terrorist attack on the United States would "begin to unravel the fabric of our Constitution," and under such circumstances, he was open to the idea (emphasis added) that "the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government."

I am an old-fashioned guy. I'm a corny guy. I actually believe in the Constitution of the country. I actually hold all of the values that I think Americans hold, even though we may not talk about them a lot. Well, I'm a guy who talks about them. That is my character. That's who I am. And I believe that we have had a couple of hundred years of this grand experiment called democracy.

cause our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.

Update:

Pressure Ridges

I don't usually read historical novels, however I was intrigued by the burb

As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are strab=nded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.

Arctic Pack Ice

The characters are well drawn and you not only care about the crews survival, but the author makes you feel what it is like to live in -60 to -100 degrees.

Seracs

One of the best books I've read in years, I marveled at the ways of the eskimo and how they survive in the hostile environment.

The Terror Dan Simmons HMS Terror HMS Erebus Northwest Passage
Mover Mike

Update:

ANONYMOUS LAWYER is a fantastic black comedy (and perhaps uniquely a fictional blog which morphed into a novel?) that exposes the madness which lies at the heart of so many corporate institutions in a Bonfire of the Vanities kind of way. Its references are completely up to the minute – ANONYMOUS LAWYER can truly be described as a novel of the moment.

Please do let me know if you would like to see a copy.

The reference to Bonfire of the Vanities is totally apt. Here's a man who is at the top of the heap, billing at $675 per hour, and is mainly concerned with power and appearences. He has the power to f--k with peoples lives and thinks of almost every possible way to do it, yet he is powerless to make himself chairman of his firm.

I cringed at the story of the partner that offered a weekend at his vacation home in a silent auction. When a lowly maintenance man was high bidder, the partner was mortified that someone like a janitor would be sleeoing in his bed on his sheets. He thought he would have to have the house fumigated afterwards.

The style of the writing in a blog format leads me to believe that there is a book in all my postings on Mover Mike. Now I have to go call some publishers.

You can read more at the web site: http://www.anonymouslawyer.blogspot.com/

Jeremy Blachman Anonymous Lawyer Mover Mike

The book is a tale of her journey as an artist fascinated by light and her quest to capture on film the feelings she had about the light. She quit college and took a train back to Scotland and she writes

...the light enveloped and caressed me as it throbbed across the dusky expanses of maroon hills and midnight valleys...Once again my pulse, like a thousand bouncing marbles, filled my ears, my veins, my heart, until I thought I would burst.

Just as each photograph I stopped to take was the key that opened my eyes to the next image, I am convinced that what we see along our path is a reflection, a manifestation, of everything we have seen up until that moment.

The couple started out planning to drive to Klamath Falls, on through Weed, Nevada and then to Redding, California. They were making great time so they passed an staying the night in any of those cities and instead aimed for Red Bluff, 30 minutes from Redding. Connie wanted a cup of coffee. When in Red Bluff in the past, they always stopped at a little independent coffee shop. When they arrived in Red Bluff, they noticed a sign that advertised the fact that Starbucks was now open. They searched all over and couldn't find the store so changed their mind and started back for their familiar coffee kiosk. Connie's husband, Bill, said he'd get her coffee and be right back.

While he was standing in line a man in a pickup drove up and Bill noticed in the bed of the truck were two black and white Aussie Shepherds. He asked the man if those were working dogs. They got into quite a discussion about the breed and the high quality of these particular dogs. Bill mentioned that he was interested in buying another dog, but these dogs were too old. He was interested in a dog much younger. The pickup driver said you might want to take a look at his third dog. Bill could see only three two.

The third dog, the man said, was hiding under a tool box. Bill went with the man to take a look and there in the bed of the truck was a very friendly brown and white female about four months old. "How much you asking for the pup," said Bill and was told $100. That is a very good price for a Aussie with good blood lines, so Bill called Connie over and for Connie it was love at first sight. Bill paid the man and asked him if he could hold onto the dog until they passed back through on their way home. "Sure, no problem!" Connie asked if he had named the pup. Most pups don't get named by breeders.

"Well", the guy says, I named her Nel!"

Update:

Australian Shepherds Mover Mike

Update:

From the dust jacket:

In this sequel to Eye of the Pyramid, the story opens with a physicist finding artifacts hidden in a secret room below the Coral Castle in Homestead, Florida. Paul (Malone) quickly discovers that these artifacts are ancient devices with great power – remote-viewing capability and much more.

Responsible for the death of Christ, sponsors of despots such as Adolph Hitler, and existing in secrecy for over two-thousand years, the rulers of the Society are aware of Dr. Malone’s discovery and they will stop at nothing to get the artifacts for themselves – and they have an ally. A mutant, a beast, and a soulless genetic creation, he does the Society’s bidding. His reward? The pain he inflicts on anyone who gets in his way.

Terry Krohn/a> The Power of the Scepter Eye of the Pyramid Mover Mike

Peter Bergen, one of the few Western journalists ever to meet Osama bin Laden, and Warren Bass, a former 9/11 Commission staffer who is now Book World's nonfiction editor, to pick the best of the recent flood of books on terrorism.

* The most authoritative account of Saddam Hussein's support for Islamic terrorist organizations -- including extensive new reporting on his active cooperation with al-Qaeda in Iraq long after the fall of Baghdad

* Extensive new information on Iraq's major chemical and biological weapons programs -- including North Korea's role in building still-undetected secret storage facilities and Iraq's transfer of banned materials to Syria, Iran, and Libya

* The first account of Saddam's plan for Iraq, Syria, and Iran to join Yasser Arafat's Palestinian forces to attack Israel, throw the region into turmoil, and upend the American campaign

* The untold story of Russia's attempt to launch a coup against Saddam before the war -- and how the CIA thwarted it by ensuring that Iraq was forewarned

* Dramatic details about Saddam's final days on the run, including the untold story of a near miss with U.S. troops and the stunning revelation that Saddam was already in custody at the time of his capture -- and was probably betrayed by members of his own Tikriti clan

* The definitive account of the anti-U.S. resistance and uprising in Iraq, as the American invasion ignited an Islamic jihad and Iran-inspired intifada, threatening to plunge the region into irreversible chaos fueled by hatred and revenge

* Revelations about the direct involvement of Osama bin Laden in the terrorism campaigns in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the rest of the Middle East -- including the major role played by Iran and HizbAllah in al-Qaeda's operations

Secret History of the Iraq War Yossef Bodansky Iraq Middle East Mover Mike

I received this book free from Active Christian Media on Thursday and finished the book Friday. I could not put it down. If you like thrillers, by Grisham, James Patterson, Michael Connelly and Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, you will love this book. To quote the back cover:

Pursuing a good real-estate investment, the professor (Kevin Hastings) stumbles onto a prime chunk of property in downtown Chicago. It just has an old church building to be cleared away. But the dream deal turns into an ordeal when Kevin discovers he's signed a contract with the mob - one he can't deliver on.

He meets people, "Christ-ers", Born Agains, who invoke the Lord's name and that feels uncomfortable to him. It is like hearing too much information.

As a History professor, Kevin lectures on some interesting ways Medieval men could prove their innocence. You would grasp a red hot poker, walk 9 yards, your blistered hand would be bandaged, and three days later you would be examined. If, your hand was healed, you were innocent. Trial By Ordeal is Kevin's story of his ordeal to prove his innocence.

Regarding "Born Agains", in the book a Rabbi questions Jesus about this need to be born again to see The Kingdom of God.

How can a man be born when he is old? ...Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb?

But Jesus was talking about something else, something that whispers to us, blows past us like a winsome breeze, from beyond the observable, ..."Flesh gives birth to flesh," Jesus said, "but the Spirit gives birth to spirit."

Another passage spoke of the Mission where Kevin sought help, as peopled by

Men who wandered the streets of Chicago wearing clothes indelibly discolored with grime - men with faces that showed almost completely on the outside all the broken stuff on the inside.

Parshall wrote the mobster particularly well. I could see Tony Soprano in every scene, even the way Tony moves his head, all without using profanity. Trial By Ordeal ranks up there with The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille. Both books explore what it's like to have a mobster take an interest in you?

Five out of Five stare for me!

Trial By Ordeal Craig Parshall Book Review Mover Mike

Update:

"Eye of the Pyramid" has been called the "Da Vinci Code" of high finance, a story blending finance with intrigue and mysticism. Check it out here:

I just finished rereading "Eye of the Pyramid" and it was as interesting and thrilling as the first time. However, I keyed in on differemt things on a second reading. For example, did you know the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) or Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) ("whose main interest is to control the value of the US Dollar") was a classified arm of the Treasury Department and only reports to the Sec. of the Treasury, nominee Henry Paulsen of Goldman Sachs, and the President.

Or,

...once a sufficient number of related events had happened, the next event, the future event was all but certain.

Terry Krohn Eye of the Pyramid Gold Fiat Money Ed Leedskalnin Power of the Scepter Mover Mike

Update:

I think we've seen the best from Chris and Taylor, maybe the best tonight from Elliott, still not the best from Katharine. Bye Taylor.

American Idol Katharine McPhee Entertainment

The book was a pleasure to pick up and I lost myself in the idea that when we die, we go to an interim place, a city, that looks like the place we left. We stay there until all who knew us have died. It is not exactly like the world we left for there is a knowledge of our death and an appreciation for life itself and the interconectedness of us all.

In this book the city grows rapidly due to wars and a pandemic, a virus called "The Blinks", an itchiness that begins behind the eyes. Then people start disappearing from the city and as more and more die. All that is left of the city are those remembered by Laura Byrd who is marooned in Antartica fighting for her life. Laura has to move from her interior station to a research station on the coast and her trip across the ice is positively harrowing; a testament to the tenacity with which we fight to stay alive.

One scene was particularly poignent, especially after seeing the movie The March of the Penguins.

Most of them were carrying eggs on the flaps of their feet, gripping them beneath the soft rounded bald patches on the undersides of their guts, which insulated the eggs from the cold. The ones that didn't have eggs were balancing egg-sized lumps of ice there, dead little worlds that they protected as avidly as though they were real.

Her skin threw off the dry chill of a metal serving tray left outside on a winter night.

dogs that stood over sprinkler heads...lapping at the fans of water like puddles suspended in midair.

The living carry us inside them like pearls.

The book is a warning that we have the power to eliminate all life on this planet and that the one who made us could be deeply saddened if our free will took us down that road.

Brockmeier also posits the theory that alive we are composed of three parts: our physical body, our soul and the spirit that is the cord that connects the two. When the spirit is cut our body dies, and our soul lives on as long as we are remembered.

The Brief History of the Dead is a wonderful book that will fill your hours reading it with introspection.

Kevin Brockmeier Antartica Body spirit soul

Update: Hat tip to Steve Duin