• Author(s): 50 Cent and Robert Greene
• Release Date: September 2009
• ISBN: 9780061774607

Fifty Cent is one of the biggest celebrities in the world; sold millions of records over his decade long career and decided to team up with Robert Greene to show you how to succeed like him. The book can get repetitive at times, but it’s basically saying that fear keeps us from reaching are full power of success. The book constantly mentions that the rules worked for Fifty Cent and he came from nothing, but he is now a hundred million dollar man. If you want a book that will motivate you to take chances and not worry about the consequences in the pursuit of success than pick up this book.

• Author: Jake Rossen
• ISBN: 9781556527319

How Fiendish Producers, Devious Directors, and Warring Writers Grounded an American Icon

Superman has faced many adventures since he was created by two Cleveland teenagers Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster in 1938, as author Jake Rossen illustrates, the character’s greatest challenge has not been fighting super-villains like Lex Luthor, but overcoming the machinations of his corporate overseers and a variety of Hollywood producers. Rossen offers a breezy survey of the astonishing range of adaptations and attempted adaptations across 70 plus years of the character’s existence with Superman’s popularity and flexibility as a character affording versions transposed to radio, classic cartoons, movie serials, a Broadway musical, films and multiple television series. Among the interesting facts offered is that Superman’s achilles heel kryptonite was invented by the writers of the radio show as a way to give the voice actor playing Superman a two week vacation, a necessity at a time when radio was always performed live. Sadly the Superman character has been a kind of kryptonite for some of those associated with him. Superman’s creators Siegle & Shuster were essentially strong armed by onerous contracts that robbed them of rights and money associated with the character they invented. This even included the ignominy of having their created by credit stripped from the comic for years at a time and to this day their heirs are locked in lawsuits trying to reclaim copyright to the Superman  character. The actor Kirk Allyn, the first to portray Superman on the screen in a movie serial in the 40s, felt his career was ruined by typecasting and identification with the character. The actor George Reeve felt much the same especially after his role & major scene in the blockbuster movie “From Here to Eternity” was cut due to preview audiences giggling. His tragic death is examined in the film “Hollywoodland” which posits that his apparent suicide may have been murder. Actor Christoper Reeve, who starred in the blockbuster movies, struggled with many of the same typecasting issues and tragically became a quadriplegic due to a horse riding accident which caused complications that eventually led to his death. It is hard to believe today when a new superhero movie seems to debut each week, but in the early 70s Superman was deemed such a dead property that the rights were sold to the Salkinds, a family of movie producers, for 25 years for a mere $4 million. Their stewardship of the character resulted in some spectacular highs “Superman: The Movie” & “Superman II” and lows “Superman III”(starring Richard Pryor & “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”, as well as, the Superboy TV series while behind the scenes it all plays like a tragic-comic farce. Even more bizarre was the decade of the 90s when producer Jon Peters was given control of the movie rights and  spent a decade developing adaptations that would not allow Superman to fly or wear his classic costume with Hollywood talents like Kevin Smith and Tim Burton. The Jon Peter’s era of development hell for Superman finally ended when director Bryan Singer took over. The result was “Superman Returns” which financially & creatively did not soar or flop, still it failed to resonate with audiences and instead put the character back in development limbo. As a reader one wishes for more detail about the very human and sad story of Siegel & Shuster, but as it stands Rossen has created a very engaging survey of the many facets of Superman’s multimedia career.

• Author: Isabel Allende
• ISBN: 9780061988240
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Release Date: April 2010

Allende in her last masterpiece will show us an internal, emotional and personal vision of slavery in the Caribbean during the colonial period. At the same time, we’ll share with Zarite her dreams, her pain, and her love in a journey thru exotic places, which ones are very influential to the way people act and think.

In an original way, with an excellent descriptive language, the history will make us fight like Zarite, for our internal freedom which is more important than any other fictional or partial freedom available out there.

In a sentence “Dance, dance, Zarite, because a slave that dances will always be free…while it dances”

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• Author: Isabel Allende
• ISBN: 9780307476043
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Release Date: August 2009

Allende en su ultima obra nos muestra una vision interna, emotiva y totalmente personal de la esclavitud en el caribe durante el periodo colonial. A su vez, compartimos junto a Zarite sus sueños, su dolor, su pasion y su amor en un viaje por lugares exoticos, muy arraigados con la forma de ser, actuar y pensar de sus habitantes.
 
De una manera original con un lenguaje altamente descriptivo e imaginativo, la historia nos hara luchar como Zarite, por nuestra libertad interior que es mas importante que cualquier otro tipo de libertad ficticia o parcial. En resumen “Baila, baila, Zarite, porque esclavo que baila es libre… mientras baila”

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• Author: Stephenie Meyer
• ISBN: 978-0316067935
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Release Date: 8/3/2010

I have to admit that I did not read the first three books in Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling Twilight Series. I saw the movies and then I decided that I could not wait to find out how this saga ends. I began reading Breaking Dawn with a bewildered feeling about why Bella chose Edward over Jacob. (I was not always on Team Jacob; I vacillated from first being on Team Edward and then jumping over to the wolf team.) Why would anyone choose an ice-cold, blood-drinking being over a warm-blooded teddy bear like Jacob? I felt that maybe if I read the last book in this series I would have a better understanding for Bella and the path she chose with Edward.

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Tessa and Nick have the perfect life. Or so everyone around them thinks. Nick is a pediatric plastic surgeon and Tessa has recently become a stay at home mom. They live in nice house in the Boston suburbs and have two beautiful young children. Until the night of their anniversary, when Nick’s pager goes off and brings their night to an abrupt close. A six year old boy has suffered burns during an accident at a party and Nick is immediately taken with his young patient…and his (single) mother, Valerie. Before long, Nick finds himself fighting his attraction to Valerie and his frustrations with Tessa.  But where will the chips fall? Will Nick turn to his wife and work things out, or give in to attraction and risk the life he and Tessa have built together?

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• Author: Gregory William Mank
• ISBN: 9780786434800

The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration

Karloff and Lugosi or if you prefer Lugosi and Karloff, either way for much of the movie loving public these are the two major stars of the classic Hollywood horror film. Their names and definitive roles, Dracula and Frankenstein, are paramount and seemingly equal in stature from the time of their star making appearances in 1931. Yet, this equal standing is demonstrated to be only in the minds of the public and not in the reality of their lives in the incredibly detailed and exhaustive book Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together by Gregory William Mank a magnum opus examination of the films in which the horror icons appeared together as well as a dual biography of their very unequal Hollywood careers. Despite some profound differences the two men shared some remarkable similarities in the years prior to their star-making roles as the Count and the monster. Each left Europe to make their homes and careers in America; they loved the stage and performed for years in a variety of roles large and small; they appeared in silent films; they were married multiple times and both were in their 40s when they became stars in 1931 at Universal Pictures in the smash hit films Dracula and Frankenstein. Dracula came first and despite the fact that he had starred in the play to rave reviews and big business in both London and New York, Bela Lugosi was not the original choice to star in the film version. Universal had secured the rights to a film version of Dracula with the intention of featuring their big star Lon Chaney, the man of a thousand faces, a performer renowned for his ability to transform himself for any role, most famously in the silent classics Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When Chaney died suddenly in 1930 the role was eventually given to Lugosi, who of course became an immortal, yet a sad pattern was already established, Bela would be under-valued and under-paid. For a few fleeting months, when Dracula came out in early 1931 to rave reviews and record breaking box office, Bela Lugosi was the king of Hollywood horror. Yet, he almost immediately fumbled this unique opportunity by failing to secure a Universal Pictures studio contract and most significantly, passing up the opportunity to play the mute role of the monster in Frankenstein. This opened the way for Boris Karloff to be discovered eating lunch in the Universal commissary by director James Whale who cast him in the role of his lifetime as the monster. By the end of 1931 Bela Lugosi was already finding himself supplanted by the new king of horror Boris Karloff, who received rave notices as the mute central figure in Frankenstein which again shattered box office records. Unlike Lugosi, Karloff signed a multi-picture contract with Universal who paid and promoted him as a star, even billing him as Karloff the Uncanny for his next major picture The Mummy. Although each star continued to work inside and outside Universal, eventually it was determined that it would be good business to team them up

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• Author: Professor Raphael Shargel

One of the wonderful things about being a movie fan or a serious student of cinema today is the confluence of technologies that give us unprecedented access to all those films produced across the hundred plus years motion pictures have existed. If you are looking to go beyond the latest blockbuster where to start can be overwhelming, but The Modern Scholar audio course series of lectures “Understanding Movies: The Art and History of Films” by Professor Raphael Shargel is a great way to learn more, fill in gaps in your knowledge or to just have an authoritative recommendation for what to watch on a Saturday night. Across 14 lectures Prof. Shargel covers the history of cinema in chronological order with a pleasant conversational style that is informative, but never talks down to his audience. The first two lectures cover the origins of film and some of the technical & theoretical developments through the silent period. After that each lecture covers representative films or a genre of the period starting with John Ford’s

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• Author: Elizabeth Strout
• ISBN: 978-0812971835
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Release Date: September 3, 2008

This book contains 13 stories that all involve Olive Kitteridge. The technique is an interesting one since we get to meet Olive through various characters’ eyes. Each chapter sheds a different light on the facets that make up Olive Kitteridge. However, it was difficult for me to finish this book because I just did not like her. I liked her husband, Henry, but not Olive. There are themes of suicide, depression, lost love, and families who suffer because of bad communication habits. The book is ambitious in its attempt to cover many years of Olive’s life and, consequently, the lives of the townspeople.

I have friends who have read this book and were very touched by it, to the point where they have reread it because they enjoyed it so much. So, what can I say except this: You may like this book more than I did, you may not. One of my very favorite books is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd; next time maybe I will review that book, so stay tuned….

• Author: Ree Drummond
• Release Date: November 2009
• ISBN: 9780061658198
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher

I absolutely enjoy reading this cookbook. It covers an interesting mix of  food and family life. She starts out as a single, vegetarian food snob in Los Angeles. Decides to move to Chicago. But before leaving she meets the man of her dreams. Then ends up married and living on a
cattle ranch. Her husband is a meat eating cowboy she calls, the Marboro Man. She eventually gives up being a vegetarian. Her mission becomes to create delicious food that they both can enjoy.

Many of the recipes are hearty foods that I think of as comfort food.
From breakfast to supper you’ll find something to enjoy. Some of the

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