What We Are Reading

National Poetry Month is almost over, BUT BEFORE WE GO, I wanted to share this AWESOME book.

Immersed in Verse was recommended by the School Library Journal as one of the Best Books of 2006. I can see why. The book's full title is "An Informative, Slightly Irreversent, & Totally Tremendous Guide to Living the Poet's Life."

And it truly is. Immersed in Verse gives great advice to poets (and writers of all kinds), on how to get ideas for writing, how to revise, the importance of always carrying a notebook with you, and is chock full of great example poems, written by everyone from Langston Hughes to Byron to Sylvia Plath to Shakespeare.

This book really has it all. I looked through this book and thought "If only I'd had this books YEARS ago!" This book has in it everything I learned (often on my own) over the past 20 years on writing. (And I majored in Creative Writing!) Technically, this book is a teen book, but I would recommend it for anyone (but especially teens), who are interested in writing. It has all the best lessons and advice all in one place.

If you are a writer (and remember: anyone who writes is a writer) or you are someone who encourages young writers, you MUST take a look at this book.

I stumbled across Asaro while looking for something new in the SciFi realm of our library system. My first book was this one, Alpha, where I thoroughly enjoyed her captivationg style of writing which is very rich in characterization and liberal use of high tech SciFi ideas. She also integrates all of this with romance. Alpha is an AI (artificial intellingence) android with evolving intellince who is six feet tall and beautiful, undistinguishable from a human female, who flies jets and wields a machine gun, among other things. I went back and read the prequel to this called Sunrise Alley. Both of these books delve heavily into Asaro's extrapolation of current artificial intelligence theories and the ethics thereof. Can artificial intelligence or evolving intelligences become human?
An easy reading thriller that makes the reader ask themselves many questions, in a writing style as attractive and persuasive as Elizabeth Moon.

This is a pretty disturbing book to me as it basically documents (with a huge amount of footnotes) the history and future of master planners' strategies to spy on Americans without their knowledge or consent using radio frequecy identification chips, which can be made so small as to not even be detected by the human eye. There are different types of chips, in all sizes, that can perform different functions, including broadcasting your location and all types of information that can be stored on them. Examples of RFID chips now currently being used are like the ones some pet owners have had embedded under their pet's skin that contain information about the pet, including it's owner's name and contact information that can readily read with a special scanner similar to ones used at the grocery store and libraries, and most new cars that have GPS in them also have a RFID chip. The book goes into the possible ramifications of the unrestricted use of RFID chips. The two women who wrote the book are just concerned suburban housewives, who have so far managed to foil some of the master planners' strategies. If you are concerned about "Big Brother" and keeping your personal freedoms this is a must read.