He is one of the most polarizing figures in world literature. No photographs of him have been published since the fifties. He is the textbook example of postmodernism, famous for his large, dense, and (according to some people) unapproachable tomes. He is Thomas Pynchon: one of America’s leading men of letters, one of the most secretive novelists the world over, a perennial Nobel Prize in Literature candidate, and according to leading book critic and editor Ron Charles, his next book will apparently soon be arriving at bookstores. Charles tweeted that two sources at Penguin Press, Pynchon’s publishing house, had confirmed the news. If it is true, no release date has been set yet.

Entitled The Bleeding Edge, details are scarce, which is not too surprising considering Pynchon’s reclusive nature. It could be another labyrinthine, doorstop-sized novel like two of Pynchon’s most acclaimed books, Gravity’s Rainbow (winner of the 1974 National Book Award) and Mason and Dixon or it could be a beach read, like his latest book, Inherent Vice.

The term ‘bleeding edge’ is usually used when talking about new technology whose use could be risky or unreliable and cause companies great expenses. It is unclear if this is what Pynchon means with the title, but his books have a history of being concerned with mathematics and technology, so it is not too unlikely a guess.

Pynchon, following the tradition of J.D. Salinger, is a notoriously reclusive novelist. Details about his life are scarce. He was raised on Long Island, where he attended Oyster Bay High School, graduating at age 16. He attended Cornell University, where he studied Electrical Engineering before taking a few years off to join the navy. Upon his reentry into the school, he switched to English and enrolled in a class taught by Vladimir Nabokov of Lolita fame. After graduation, he took a job as a technical writer at Boeing while writing his first novel, V. He soon quit his job in the early 60’s and immersed himself in the hippie culture of California, whereupon the public’s knowledge of Pynchon ends.

Inherent Vice is also due for a movie adaption, sources say. Director Paul Thomas Anderson, famous for directing movies such as ‘There Will Be Blood’ and most recently ‘The Master’, has expressed interest in directing a film adaption of the novel. Principal shooting will take place this year, and IMDB gives the movie a tentative 2014 release date. The book was met with mixed reviews, but given Anderson’s past experiences with filmmaking, it could become one of the greatest movies of the decade.

Image Courtesy : Intrepidteacher

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At the heart of ‘What Teachers Make’ is an emotionally evocative story that lends a great deal of credibility and pride to the noble profession of teaching. The point of this book is to reinforce the idea that teachers are some of the most important people our societies have and are truly gifted in their ability to inspire students. They often spend countless hours teaching our children and yet have only received a fraction of the respect in comparison to higher paying jobs. Taylor Mali’s perspective is one that has been shared with many people all over the world. His ideas return to the forefront the notion that teachers should be universally held in higher regard and that it is a profession every bit as rewarding as others in its own unconventional way.

The principal of his poem and subsequent book ‘What Teachers Make’ discusses the negative judgment of teachers based upon a preconceived notion that they lack logic. It is thought by many working professionals, some who make double or triple the salary of a teacher, that no sane person should want to be a teacher if they suffer this kind of low paying indignity. The next leap in logic following this idea is that teachers are crazy for becoming teachers and therefore lack the ‘logical’ ability to teach.

The book further promotes the idea that though teachers have no legal right to a student’s time after school hours, there is still work to be done  in order for a teacher to successfully teach a class even as the student returns home. This may seem a harsh statement to anyone who has made this generalization about teachers before. Yet the amount of time a teacher sees a student is sometimes longer than a student may spend with his or her own parents and so Mali stands behind the idea that teachers also end up being parents, an even greater role than many realize.

The ability to improve a student’s awareness and mental flexibility are some of the goals that Mali highlights, with the inclusion of the thought that teachers aren’t making students into Ivy League ‘wanna be’s’. His goal is to shape his students into thinking evolving human beings capable of questioning authority even as they rise to positions of authority.

The student is the other half of the story. Whether in school or at home, a teacher’s job is to influence the student as much as possible. Mali talks about teachers making phone calls to parents, resulting in an often mixed bag of praise and criticism. His writing expresses clearly that teachers sometimes spend more time with students than the parents of that student. He drives home the idea that a teacher is so influential in a student’s life, especially at a young age, that bad teaching early on dramatically affects the intelligence of the student for the foreseeable future. On the less dramatic side of things, Mali believes that a teacher needs to have a flexible teaching style, since not every student can be taught the same way.

The light bulb moment, for which many of us experience over our lifetime, is that moment of clarity that makes us want to shout our success from the rooftops. Mali observes that while this is a happy moment for the student in all of us, the teachers who observe this moment derive equal joy in the knowledge that they have gotten through to a student.

One more disheartening mention that Mali makes is about the correlation between people in jail and their ability to read above the 3rd grade reading level. In this example he remarks that it is more expensive to send and keep an adult in jail than it is then teach a child to read. Thus, it is said that if you can’t read by the third grade, you are more likely to end up in jail. Fiscally speaking, this is a hard truth aimed at politicians and other policy makers. Mali asserts that so much is unfortunately spent on keeping adults behind bars than is spent educating young children to stay out of trouble.

Throughout all of Mali’s writing, there is a depth of understanding from an old hand at teaching young minds. His final lessons from the book, for they are lessons for readers indeed, speak of children as the most valuable resource on earth. He speaks out against there being a ‘lost generation’, where an entire age group is labeled as a lost cause. Rather, every bit of advice he offers here is meant to convey hope to both teachers and students.

His passion for teaching echoes throughout the pages, even into the acknowledgments as he is equal parts inspiring and dedicated as well as righteously idealistic. Mali speaks from the heart in his belief that our children are the future and that they require the most care and consideration to grow into healthy responsible adults. He wants his students to grow up into people who cannot only teach themselves but teach others as well. This idea, more than any other, seems to be the most rewarding concept in “What a Teacher Makes.” The book is in stores now and ready to inspire an entire new generation of teachers. Taylor Mali’s work has paid off, creating more than one thousand new teachers during his 12 year project.  

Score – 4.5/5 Excellent 

Image Courtesy of teejayfaust

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In a world that is much like our own, with governments that have agendas that no one knows about, there are soldiers that train for missions to hone skills of which the normal average Joe would be deathly afraid.

Author Myke Cole has varied expertise in both the military and law enforcement, and his writing reflects, not only the positive experiences, but also the negative ones of the real fighting world. This is an amazing, fun, and engaging novel and is in stores now. There is sure to be more from this new author.

The magic aspect of the book is a perfect foil for which Myke Cole creates the world of Oscar Britton. Conjuring images of movies such as ‘Avatar’, ‘X-Men’, ‘Black Hawk Down’, and ‘The Matrix’, ‘Shadow Ops: Control Point’ pulls fans in, keeping them guessing at times and at other times, cheering on Oscar’s successes. Lamenting Oscar’s failures are short-lived, as the book is always plugging along at a brisk pace, moving events forward through timelines and dimensions.

Latent, probe, selfer. These are some of the first terms with which readers of ‘Shadow Ops: Control Point’ will become intimately familiar throughout the book. ‘Latent’ is the term for people with the ability and control to do their manifested school of magic. Likewise, a ‘selfer’ is a rogue, or out-of-control, magic user that focuses on any of the 11 schools of magic.

Appropriately sandwiched between these two concepts is a subsection of the ‘selfer’ label which is ‘probe’, a magic user that wields one of the four prohibited schools of magic within the eleven total schools.

The Supernatural Operations Corps, (SOC), is a place where training takes place in all 11 schools of magic, despite the legal standing of certain magic schools within the U.S. population. The permissible schools chiefly deal with Fire, Air, Earth, Water, and the physical body, the latter of which deals with healing, called a physiomancer.

The two restricted practiced schools are Animal Whispering and Offensive Physiomancy, that is, not healing, but instead destroying a body. The four prohibited schools are classified as such because they are generally considered dark or rare powers to possess that are even more valuable and disturbing than the first seven schools of magic.

Black magic, death magic, gate magic, and semi-sentient elemental conjuration are the four prohibited schools of magic. Oscar becomes a master of gate magic, called portamancy, to which its combat ability can be referred to hilariously as ‘gate-fu’, the front line fighting potential limited only by the user’s control of the magic itself. As he trains, he joins Umbra Coven, the elite magic group the is behind all of the other magic users.

Status as a selfer usually results in death as the SOC hunts you down, probes even more so, though the SOC does also capture magic users alive and gives them a chance to be indoctrinated into the SOC and serve their country combating selfers and probes. This is an ironic and somewhat venomous twist that combines magical servitude and prison-sentencing as a person manifests magic.

Chock-full of concepts that will thrill any science fiction and fantasy fan, as well as some military jargon, ‘Shadow Ops’ details the life of Oscar Britton as he goes on his journey to first discovering, and then later mastering, control of his latent probe powers. An army man himself, Oscar is the type of character that is very relatable.

He is angry at injustice when he sees it, he is prideful of great accomplishments when he earns them, and he is regretful for more than his fair share of near-death experiences. Rave reviews from readers are justified in their praise of Myke Cole’s first work as this page-turning thriller takes readers on a journey into the mind of a man ridden, not only with guilt and anger, but with a fierce moral code.

Readers will go right along with him on his ethical journey as Oscar comes to grips with the changes in his life, even as he struggles to stay the same person. Find out Oscar’s fear at his first manifestation of magic and struggle just as Oscar does, as he dances all over the fine line between strict military training and smart-alecky heroism.

Oscar knew what life had in store for him after being captured using a prohibited school of magic, chaining him down to be another tool of a government that he has come to despise. He still rebels against that injustice and sticks to his code of ethics. While not beyond reproach, the events that take place in ‘Shadow Ops’ can easily take place in our world, showing us how different, and yet similar, Oscar Britton’s reality is from our own.

One arguable fault in an otherwise excellent book is that while there are a few lessons to take away from Oscar’s journey, chiefly that you should be true to yourself and your own moral code, there is not a life lesson that can be felt throughout the book that is the focal point of the entire story.

Oscar wants his freedom, to live the life that he chooses, but his tale has hopefully not ended yet, with revolution on the rise as a result of his actions. That can be said to be the focal point of the story, but does not feel quite as cohesive as it could have been.

Another arguable fault is that the secondary characters, while vibrant, seem forced. The duty a military officer has to his government is strong, but the bond he has to his squad is even stronger. This concept is diluted in ‘Shadow Ops’, leading to unexpected betrayals that make sense, but do not really create a great deal of emotion. Another secondary character changes so quickly overnight that the level of fear and hate turning into adoration and fanaticism seems improbable.

Still, readers will become fans of Myke Cole’s writing. There is an ease of reading that many will welcome and an approachable style that many will love. There is nothing boring about a book where military meets magic, and while the concept is not new, Myke Cole’s take on it is refreshing and much needed in a genre that is beginning to overlap itself with similar concepts.

There is much work that needs to be done for the next book in the ‘Shadow Ops’ series, entitled ‘Fortress Frontier’. Often times, the books that are published within a given era are a reflection of the real world during that time period.

In a world that is increasingly rebellious against governments that abuse policy and remove rights, ‘Shadow Ops: Control Point’ hits the nail on the head and gives readers a dose of what they want from their fiction. Escape into the world of Oscar Britton for a few days, and watch as his path unfolds before your very eyes.

For all its limited number of faults, the story of Oscar Britton is one that fans eagerly follow, with many readers waiting for the next book to arrive. Hopefully, ‘Fortress Frontier’ will continue to showcase Myke Cole’s evolving talent as a writer of fiction since the few faults that ‘Control Point’ has can be easily fixed in the second book. An excellent debut from a novice writer, this is a series on the rise, so watch out sci-fi/fantasy fans, this one will grab your attention.

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Penguin Group USA announced recently the release of its Holiday eSampler featuring excerpts from over 40 frontlist, backlist, and upcoming titles. Available for free wherever eBooks are sold, this collection provides readers with the opportunity to browse sample chapters of a variety of adult and young adult books across genres: from bestselling thrillers and critically-acclaimed literary fiction to award-winning nonfiction and classic literature. Each title can be purchased or preordered directly from the eSampler via customized “Buy” links for each eReader.

Matthew Boyd, Publishing Manager at Penguin Group said: “The Penguin Holiday eSampler is a great way to discover your next favorite book and find out what your family and friends really want this holiday season. Books always make the best gifts, whether you’re buying for others or for yourself, and with the Penguin Holiday eSampler, you’re just a few clicks away from some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and young adult books we have to offer.”

Inspired by Charles Dickens, the sampler is divided into “books past, present, and future.” The Past section features both classic and recent books that have become reader favorites. The Present section includes bestselling and award-winning novels and nonfiction from 2011, and finally, the Future section showcases upcoming books that will be published just after the New Year in January that readers can preorder. The full list of titles is below.

The 2011 Holiday eSampler collection:

Past:

• City of Thieves by David Benioff
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
• Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan
• Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Magicians by Lev Grossman
• At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
• The Reason for God by Tim Keller
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
• Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
• Drive by Daniel Pink
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Present:

• The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown
• Washington by Ron Chernow
• The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
• Locked On by Tom Clancy
• Shelter by Harlan Coben
• Matched by Ally Condie
• Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell
• Prince of Ravenscar by Catherine Coulter
• Devil’s Gate by Clive Cussler
• The Ideal Man by Julie Garwood
• V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton
• Theodore Boone #1 by John Grisham
• A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
• The New New Rules by Bill Maher
• Bloodlines by Richelle Mead
• The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
• The Next Always by Nora Roberts
• Shock Wave by John Sandford
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
• The Quest by Daniel Yergin

Future:

• Lunatics by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel
• More Room in a Broken Heart by Stephen Davis
• Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag
• Breakdown by Sara Paretsky

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