I have not been writing much on here lately because I am still swamped in stinking books. In the past week I have read and reviewed 4 books. Even by my standards that is a lot of stinking words to pass through my eyeballs.
But I will say this, you sure learn a lot of not quite useful information by reading that much. I know way more about how the financial world works thanks to Richard Hains' book Chameleon. This guy intrigues me, he is an Aussie, living in London, who writes a book about Wall Street, go figure!
He also has the most unique concept of marketing a book. He has a web page, well lots of authors create a web page, but this guy also has created a Youtube feature. That is the first time I have ever heard of an author doing that.
Here is the really interesting part, he is also running a competition, the winner gets to fly first class to London and spend a couple of days with Richard. Oh, incidentally he is a pretty rich guy! According to a couple of articles that I have read he is also 'one of England's most eligible bachelors. I can't wait to interview him!
Right now I am half way through a really strange little book, The Shakespeare Code. When I saw the title I went "Oh no! another bloody code book, Dan Brown is an asshole!".
This book is worth the effort to read, it has some interesting theories, none are new, they have all been explored before, but never combined.
It goes like this..... Our good buddy Will Shakespeare was actually an illiterate lout who could not have possibly penned such works as Macbeth. The actual author was Francis Bacon, who was Queen Elizabeth I's illegitimate son.
Now we get to the good stuff, Queen Liz loved her son, but kept him under her thumb. Little Francis wrote the first Shakespeare Folio as a way of documenting his life story. Of course this had to be done carefully, so as not to antagonize Queen Liz. He did this by using a code in his writing.
This type of cypher is based on the Trithemius system. By using a device called a code wheel, you can reveal the secrets contained in the plays and sonnets.
I have to admit that the jury is still out on exactly how much I am in agreement with Virginia Fellows on this one.
Oh, and somewhere in the blur that represents last week I read Point and Shoot by the anonymous sounding G.D. Baum. It was a fun little read, one of those rough tough Private Investigator stories. I had the opportunity to interview the author, and I still don't know what his name is!
The week started with Julia Gaylord by Louise Fairchild, another curious little book. What I found interesting was the way the author used the main character Julia, Julia in many ways was not the object of the story, she was just the catalyst through which the story could be told.
Oh, and my adorable wife Jan, has solved a problem that has been bothering me for months, I love books, and refuse to write in them, but I need some way of marking bits that I want to refer to when I write my reviews. She came up with the great idea os cutting up some post it notes! It works great! She is a doll!
By my math I think there are only 5 or 6 books waiting to be read. WooHoo I am winning the battle. Unfortunately I told the agent that, so I am sure that there will be a steady stream of Fed-Ex and UPS deliveries next week!
I need a beer!
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