Sacramento Book Review

Free locally printed book review newspaper, for Sacramento, California 95814

9.2.10: Scribd Pros & Cons for Scribes and Buyers Alike

Scribd.com has recently risen in my esteem. After discovering one of my eBooks on their website some weeks ago–copied and placed thereon by a book pirate–the folks at Scribd had the offending PDF taken down before 10 hours had elapsed. Soon after that, my husband and I began posting “sample” chapter PDFs of our various [...]
9.1.10: Finding Your Niche Market: How authors can effectively market their work

Almost everyone considers themselves to be a writer of some sort. Those who most appreciate the art will define it as a means of connecting to oneself, to others, to reality and to fantasy. This definition excludes no one. The book business, unfortunately, does. Industry experience teaches that every writer is not an author, and [...]
8.31.10: The Blissful Burrito

When I was in elementary school, I remember getting assigned a project once regarding favorite foods. We had to select a favorite food, write a paragraph or two on why that food was our favorite, and then create a three-dimensional model of our food, art class-style, out of construction paper. I declared that my favorite [...]
8.31.10: Clark Russell, Making the world beautiful one client at a time

By Kaye Cloutman, Photography by Martin Delfino Reviewing books, meeting deadlines, doing author interviews and preparing the layout for a monthly publication are probably some of the furthest things from glamour. For two and a half years I have known Heidi (my boss and publisher for the San Francisco | Sacramento Book Review) as the [...]
8.27.10: The Waning Summer

In Northern California, the weather proved unusually mild this summer. Normally, we experience over 100-degree heat wave upon heat wave, inducing in me an almost hermit-like existence indoors. Instead, the cooler temperatures allowed for several trips outside, staying longer typing away on the trusty laptop. As the kids scampered about the landscaping with vacation-borne glee, [...]
8.27.10: Kepler’s celebrates the release of Mockingjay, The Final Book of the Hunger Games

By Kaye Cloutman Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education, and media company, announced a month ago that it has increased the first printing of Mockingjay, the final book in the nationally bestselling The Hunger Games trilogy, to 1.2 million, from a previously announced 750,000 copies. First published in September 2008, The Hunger Games was an [...]

Featured Fiction Books

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Love Haiku
By Patricia Donegan Shambhala, $16.00, 209 pages the irises- I break off a stem and go to my love -Kiyoko Uda Haiku, an old form of Japanese poetry, captures a single moment in a few short words. While the main

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
Stalker Girl
By Rosemary Graham Viking Juvenile, $16.99, 296 pages When does intrigue cross the line into obsession? When does obsession become stalking? Rosemary Graham looks at first love in Stalker Girl. When Carly’s mom moves upstate to direct a summer camp,

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
Wings of Fire
By Holly Black, Orson Scott Card, George R. R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, Todd Lockwood Night Shade Books, $15.95, 499 pages This enchanting collection is a sampling of all things dragon; philosophy, magic, mechanism, environment, menu, subterfuge, climate, culture, and dragons

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Featured Non-Fiction Books

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Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature
By Kathleen Dean Moore Trumpeter, $15.95, 195 pages In the introduction to this book, Kathleen Dean Moore states that she originally intended to write a book about what makes people happy. Then, life intervened, and Moore faced a rapid series

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
Tropical Homes of the Eastern Caribbean
By Margaret Gajek, Derek Galon Ozone Zone Books, $44.95, 301 pages Houses are not just places of security, or places with beds and kitchens and living rooms, they are expressions of the life around us, what we want out if

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
The Great Big Cheese Cookbook
By Running Press, Editor Running Press, $22.95, 480 pages In collaborating with chefs or foodies, the unanimous answer to my question of “what ingredient can’t you live without?” is cheese. This dairy product is a staple component of many award-winning

Aug 29, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Viewpoints Weekly Columns

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9.2.10: Scribd Pros & Cons for Scribes and Buyers Alike
Scribd.com has recently risen in my esteem. After discovering one of my eBooks on their website some weeks ago–copied and placed thereon by a book pirate–the folks at Scribd had the offending PDF taken down before 10 hours had elapsed.

Sep 02, 2010 | 1 comment | View Post
9.1.10: Finding Your Niche Market: How authors can effectively market their work
Almost everyone considers themselves to be a writer of some sort. Those who most appreciate the art will define it as a means of connecting to oneself, to others, to reality and to fantasy. This definition excludes no one. The

Sep 01, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
8.31.10: The Blissful Burrito
When I was in elementary school, I remember getting assigned a project once regarding favorite foods. We had to select a favorite food, write a paragraph or two on why that food was our favorite, and then create a three-dimensional

Aug 31, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post