Hello

Welcome to Lucid INK or LINK.


LINK will be dedicated to bringing book information to the masses. Reviews and rating of recently read books, reader's advisory, general book information, personal reading and publishing thoughts, reviews of book websites, and links to book websites are just some of the things I will try to cover from this site. I invite anyone and everyone who would like to participate in this bookish discussion. However, I will have 3 ground rules to begin and may add others as needed.

GROUND RULES:

1. No Attacks. Users may argue as heatedly as they like about topics, but hostile or mean spirited comments aimed at other users and not at their comments will be stricken.

2. No SPAM of any kind. Sell your junk elsewhere. SPAM will be stricken.

3. No nonsense posts. Nonsense posts or post which clearly have no connection to the conversation will be stricken.

That's it. I hope there's no need for additional rules and I hope that many people will enjoy this site.
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Saturday, November 22, 2008

Bad Poetry

Read laugh, scowl, choke, hate, enjoy... whatever... but here's my poem.

Just After

“spiteful koans”
He said
Buttoning trousers
Stumbling towards an open door
“What did you say?”
she asked
Finger knuckle deep in nostril
“Nothing”
He replied
Thinking – Nothing that
a cigarette
and
a train ride through a tunnel
wouldn’t cure.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Thinking About a Nonfiction Book to Read

Until recently I've always thought of myself as mostly a fiction reader. However, in the last year and a half I have read some nonfiction titles which really have me thirsting for more nonfiction titles. One of these books which I really enjoyed was How to Think About Weird Things.

This book was fantastic! Before I read How to Think About Weird Things I had never really read a book about critical thinking. I had always thought of myself as a sharp person and able to see the fallacies in poor arguments, but this book really helped to sharpen my dissection of ideas and arguments. While the book is meant to push the reader to think and to understand the world with a keener eye for mistakes we all make in our day to day lives, it was also an extremely entertaining read. The author uses many many quotes which are both humorous and very poignant. In addition to this countless real life asides are used to illustrate thought fallacies which the book describes.

I picked it up in a used bookstore where it had been miss-shelved… So, I don’t know much about it, but it appears to be a text book for a college or high school course. Having said that, I have to say that I don’t believe I’ve ever read a text book which was so enjoyable. If all of my college texts had been this well conceived, I would have definitely been a more studious reader of texts. (Not that I was a bad student, but well... You know what I mean.)

Friday, February 22, 2008

Books/Internet: Origami

One of my hobbies (other than reading of course) is origami. I’ve been fascinated by it for years. One day, while in college, I came home from classes and sat down on my couch (which my roommate and I had saved from the trash in front of someone’s home). I had a bowl of cereal and I started to watch Levar Burton on Reading Rainbow. The show was about Japan and they did some origami. That was 20 years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Anyway, I often find myself in a book store looking over their origami book selection and I over hear a parent and a child trying to select an origami book. Other times an adult will ask me straight out what a good book might be… Here’s the rub. My answer or comment (to the parent) is always: “Go to the Web.” It’s not that I don’t want them to buy the book and help authors of origami books. Actually I do want them to do just that, but I want them to do it with some experience under their belts.

The Internet is packed with great sites which offer the beginner lots of chance to try out origami and learn a little before they start buying books. I’d rather these fresh minds get a feel for what they like and what they don’t before plunking down the green. Then the person can buy a book that they will really enjoy and not just a book that I might recommend to someone who hasn’t done it before.

In this spirit, I thought I would point out some really good origami sites for anyone who reads this and would like to start doing one of the most fascinating art forms in the world.

http://dev.origami.com/diagram.cfm - This is a site which has loads of diagrams which range from very simple to extremely complex.

http://www.origami-resource-center.com/free-origami-diagrams.html - The Origami Resource center also offers hundreds of instructional diagrams ranging in difficulty from easy to hard.

http://www.origami-club.com/en/- Origami Club is an excellent site for beginners. It offers models which range fro easy to moderate and has a delightful selection of nice looking traditional and new designs.

http://www.oriland.com/index.asp - Oriland is probably my all time favorite site for beginners. It’s extremely well done and has many new models which are very easy to learn.

http://www.origamivideo.net/ - Origami Video is a great site which has tried to collect video lessons of origami from sources throughout the web.

These are some great sites to get anyone started… from there I hope you all go out and support the publishers of origami books by buying some of them. I’ll suggest some of my favorites another day.

Book Review: Aylmer Vance: Ghost-seer

Aylmer Vance: Ghost-seer (Mystery & Supernatural): Ghost-seer (Mystery & Supernatural)… by Alice Askew; Claude Askew
I’ve been picking up all the books in the series as they show up in the used bookstore near my home. So, I bought this one as well. I started reading it shortly after purchasing it, because it sounded like it would be a bit like Sherlock Holmes investigates supernatural cases. At the time that concept sounded appealing. However, it just didn’t pan out. The stories in this collection were mildly interesting at best. They did little to capture the imagination and for short stories they sure did seem to drag on.

That said, I did find the final story (The Fear) well worth the rest of the book. “The Fear” was a great little ghost story which made my hair stand on end a couple of times while reading it. It was good at building suspense and keeping it going for the entire story until near the end. Sadly even this story had a large fault. The ending didn’t live up to the rest of the story. But even with that problem this one story was really good. I can’t say I’d recommend this book to anyone, but I would recommend the story “The Fear”.