Author Eric Peterson is colaborating with North County Health Services to raise money and awareness for their Reach Out and Read program. A portion of the sales raised at his book signing this April 30 5 pm at Barnes and Noble in Oceanside will be donated to the program.
Come out and support an author helping children to learn to read by supporting a program that puts books in parents hands! The NCHS web site is http://www.nchs-health.org
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
New Strategies in Publishing
As we hear daily, the publishing industry is changing. From production to marketing the old way of doing things no longer works.
Large print runs are becoming relics while technology is moving us in directions further than many imagined. Imagine a book store with vending machines rather than shelves:
- Romance - go to the green machine
- Thriller -- try the red machine
Put in your credit card, make your selection and out pops a book. Cover and all.
As production changes so does marketing. Press releases and press kits are expensive to send and create piles of wasted paper (green book publishing?). Enter the book video and trailer. Think of the movie trailer. A snipet from the author introducing you to the book. Author of "Life as a Sandwich" Eric Peterson is taking it a step further. He has created YouTube videos showing the scenes of his book -- bringing an added dimension to the reader. The places he had in mind when he wrote the story. The links are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep4jR-P05-8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9kvM-vFX4U
Take a look and see where book marketing is going!
Large print runs are becoming relics while technology is moving us in directions further than many imagined. Imagine a book store with vending machines rather than shelves:
- Romance - go to the green machine
- Thriller -- try the red machine
Put in your credit card, make your selection and out pops a book. Cover and all.
As production changes so does marketing. Press releases and press kits are expensive to send and create piles of wasted paper (green book publishing?). Enter the book video and trailer. Think of the movie trailer. A snipet from the author introducing you to the book. Author of "Life as a Sandwich" Eric Peterson is taking it a step further. He has created YouTube videos showing the scenes of his book -- bringing an added dimension to the reader. The places he had in mind when he wrote the story. The links are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep4jR-P05-8 and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9kvM-vFX4U
Take a look and see where book marketing is going!
Monday, March 15, 2010
Christopher Peterson Reviews “Rao’s Cookbook” by Frank Pellegrino
How are you supposed to get excited about reading a cookbook from a restaurant where you will probably never get into? Frank Pellegrino’s “Rao’s Cookbook” does just that---
he bottles up some incredible magic to make it one of the best cookbook reads I’ve ever had. When’s the last time you heard of a cookbook described as a “page turner?” Pellegrino uses a whole cast of true New York characters, most of them incredibly famous in their own right, to weave the story of this 100 year-old East Harlem eatery.
Charles Rao, an immigrant from Pollo, Italy, bought a tavern in 1896 at Pleasant Avenue and East 114th Street in upper Manhattan. They began serving good, simple Italian food, and the Rao family is still doing just that, over a century later. Some things have changed. The old neighborhood is no longer predominantly Italian, and it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation.
The place is small; there are only eight tables, and there is just one seating a night. The bar and the jukebox are legendary in New York, but the thing that makes this establishment so unique is the system of table “ownership.” Regular customers are expected to come to their table on given nights of the week. If they can’t make it, they can give it to friends or family for the night, or heaven forbid, turn it back to the restaurant. That is the only chance non-regulars might have to snatch a lucky reservation. Those occurrences are rare, because the regulars trade table nights like baseball cards. “I’ll give you my Monday if you give me your Thursday.” You get the picture.
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the restaurant is the regular clientele. Most of the old-timers are neighborhood goombahs who have grown up with the Rao’s over the decades. They have names similar to “Johnny Roastbeef” and the like. Over on the other side of the spectrum, you have New York’s power elite: politicians, actors, publishers and athletes. It has not been uncommon to have the governor at one table and New York’s mob boss at the next.
The food in the book is just what you would expect to eat in your Italian grandmother’s kitchen. Simple, straight-forward, and utterly delicious. The real magic in the book are the scores of Rao’s stories from people like Regis Philbin to Dick Schaap. You’re going to eat them up!
Christopher Peterson lives in Incline Village, Nevada with his family. He dreams that one day someone might actually ask him to go to Rao’s.
he bottles up some incredible magic to make it one of the best cookbook reads I’ve ever had. When’s the last time you heard of a cookbook described as a “page turner?” Pellegrino uses a whole cast of true New York characters, most of them incredibly famous in their own right, to weave the story of this 100 year-old East Harlem eatery.
Charles Rao, an immigrant from Pollo, Italy, bought a tavern in 1896 at Pleasant Avenue and East 114th Street in upper Manhattan. They began serving good, simple Italian food, and the Rao family is still doing just that, over a century later. Some things have changed. The old neighborhood is no longer predominantly Italian, and it’s nearly impossible to get a reservation.
The place is small; there are only eight tables, and there is just one seating a night. The bar and the jukebox are legendary in New York, but the thing that makes this establishment so unique is the system of table “ownership.” Regular customers are expected to come to their table on given nights of the week. If they can’t make it, they can give it to friends or family for the night, or heaven forbid, turn it back to the restaurant. That is the only chance non-regulars might have to snatch a lucky reservation. Those occurrences are rare, because the regulars trade table nights like baseball cards. “I’ll give you my Monday if you give me your Thursday.” You get the picture.
Perhaps the most unusual aspect of the restaurant is the regular clientele. Most of the old-timers are neighborhood goombahs who have grown up with the Rao’s over the decades. They have names similar to “Johnny Roastbeef” and the like. Over on the other side of the spectrum, you have New York’s power elite: politicians, actors, publishers and athletes. It has not been uncommon to have the governor at one table and New York’s mob boss at the next.
The food in the book is just what you would expect to eat in your Italian grandmother’s kitchen. Simple, straight-forward, and utterly delicious. The real magic in the book are the scores of Rao’s stories from people like Regis Philbin to Dick Schaap. You’re going to eat them up!
Christopher Peterson lives in Incline Village, Nevada with his family. He dreams that one day someone might actually ask him to go to Rao’s.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Bruce Gevirtzman Reviews "Meetings at the Metaphor Café" by Robert Pacilio
If you are an English teacher--particularly American literature--you would want to read this novel right along with your students. And they will need to to explain many of the profundities about life and love hope that come in this book. The four kids at the Metaphor cafe explore and interpret life's complexities through assignments given to them by their own English teacher, Mr. B. To truly understand what the music of Bruce Springsteen, the novels of John Steinbeck, or the works of Mark Twain have to do with a Hollywood film called "Pleasantville or Don McClean's "American Pie," your students would have to carefully read this work and take some time to ponder. In an age when it is extraordinarily difficult for teachers to find timely, important literature to assign to their students, "Meetings At the Metaphor Cafe" fills in some of those gaps nicely. Don't worry about the simple writing style; the topics are complex enough to challenge the minds and hearts of teenagers everywhere.
Bruce Gevirtzman is the author of An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers and is the chief playwright for Phantom Projects, a acclaimed youth theater group. His work has been featured on PBS, NBC and the Los Angeles Times.
Bruce Gevirtzman is the author of An Intimate Understanding of America's Teenagers and is the chief playwright for Phantom Projects, a acclaimed youth theater group. His work has been featured on PBS, NBC and the Los Angeles Times.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Christopher Peterson Reviews “Roadfood” by Jane and Michael Stern
Christopher Peterson Reviews “Roadfood” by Jane and Michael Stern
Published by Broadway Books, New York, 2008
As Americans, we like to think that our palates are developing at light speed and are catching up rapidly to the sophisticated tastes of our French and Northern Italian neighbors. We can’t invade the dining rooms fast enough at those haute establishments serving Asian Fusion, Nouvelle Cuisine, small plates, or neo-molecular fare. If you are one of those millions of Americans who can’t wait to see what fantastic new cuisine will be the new “in” thing, do yourself a favor, stay away from Jane and Michael Stern’s “Roadfood.”
Long before Guy Fieri hit the airwaves in Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” the Sterns were out pounding America’s two-lane highways in obscure towns finding the best our country has to offer in terms of REAL American food. As their book boasts on the cover, it’s a coast-to-coast guide to 700 of the best barbeque joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners, and much, much more. The Stern’s and their food-crazed network of followers make it their mission in life to ferret out the places that fed our collective souls before the dreaded chain restaurants overran our towns and our psyche.
If you are like me, travel is fun primarily because it gives you an opportunity to eat stuff that you don’t ordinarily get a chance to eat, or even better yet, to eat food that you have not even heard of before. When you have an opportunity to travel to the far-reaches of our vast country, taking a quiet seat in the back-corner of one of these mom-and-pop diners is a great way to learn more about the people and what they think than you ever would walking the sidewalks and visiting state parks with a camera strapped around your neck. If that’s how your mind works, do what I do. Carry a copy of “Roadfood” in your glove box or in your suitcase. I consult “Roadfood” long before I plan a trip or even look at a map.
Christopher Peterson lives in Incline Village, Nevada with his family. He is an amateur collector of cookbooks and maps.
Published by Broadway Books, New York, 2008
As Americans, we like to think that our palates are developing at light speed and are catching up rapidly to the sophisticated tastes of our French and Northern Italian neighbors. We can’t invade the dining rooms fast enough at those haute establishments serving Asian Fusion, Nouvelle Cuisine, small plates, or neo-molecular fare. If you are one of those millions of Americans who can’t wait to see what fantastic new cuisine will be the new “in” thing, do yourself a favor, stay away from Jane and Michael Stern’s “Roadfood.”
Long before Guy Fieri hit the airwaves in Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” the Sterns were out pounding America’s two-lane highways in obscure towns finding the best our country has to offer in terms of REAL American food. As their book boasts on the cover, it’s a coast-to-coast guide to 700 of the best barbeque joints, lobster shacks, ice cream parlors, highway diners, and much, much more. The Stern’s and their food-crazed network of followers make it their mission in life to ferret out the places that fed our collective souls before the dreaded chain restaurants overran our towns and our psyche.
If you are like me, travel is fun primarily because it gives you an opportunity to eat stuff that you don’t ordinarily get a chance to eat, or even better yet, to eat food that you have not even heard of before. When you have an opportunity to travel to the far-reaches of our vast country, taking a quiet seat in the back-corner of one of these mom-and-pop diners is a great way to learn more about the people and what they think than you ever would walking the sidewalks and visiting state parks with a camera strapped around your neck. If that’s how your mind works, do what I do. Carry a copy of “Roadfood” in your glove box or in your suitcase. I consult “Roadfood” long before I plan a trip or even look at a map.
Christopher Peterson lives in Incline Village, Nevada with his family. He is an amateur collector of cookbooks and maps.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Guest Review by Peterson “A Dead Hand” by Paul Theroux
Eric Peterson Reviews “A Dead Hand” by Paul Theroux
Or Theroux Meets Stieg Larsson
Ask me who’s the most talented living writer today, and I’d react without hesitation: Paul Theroux. His Hotel Honolulu is one of a handful of books I relish rereading every year, and his travel journal Riding the Iron Rooster has been a personal recommendation since the day I picked it up.
Whether fiction or non-fiction, Theroux’s passages describing third world countries are masterly, and he paints characters with a proficiency that, at its best, is unequaled in modern literature. For example, in his latest novel, A Dead Hand, his characters are captivating, and his vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of a crumbling Calcutta are powerful.
So what goes wrong here?
As a Paul Theroux fan, I like to think he was talked into doing this book—a formula murder thriller in the (gulp) detective-novel genre. I tell myself it must have been a greedy agent or publisher—one eye on the bestseller list, the other on a ranch in Montana. Imagine the possibilities here! We’re talking Paul Theroux meets Stieg Larsson! For me, it’s like watching Ernest Hemingway doing an episode of “Dancing with the Stars”—I’d look at it, but I’d also wish to hell someone had talked him out of it.
Exotic location, a dead body, a beautiful woman who asks travel writer Jerry Delfont to take her case (huh?), Howard, Jerry’s cheerful friend from the U.S. consulate general’s office who helps him solve the crime—down the malodorous, torturous murder-mystery road we go. There’s something creepy going on when Jerry takes tea with celebrity travel writer Paul Theroux—they’re instant enemies—and Theroux’s immoderation handling the bedroom scenes made me wince for him as an author. (But here’s the takeaway: Merrill Unger is a beguiling woman with secrets, and under her power the worldly-wise Jerry becomes more or less Hermie from “Summer of ’42.”)
You can almost feel Theroux straining to pull the reader through the story, as if he were peddling us all uphill on a cycle-rickshaw. And it shouldn’t feel that way because the writing is so good—that’s what kills me about this book.
Eric Peterson is the author of the novel “Life as a Sandwich.”
Or Theroux Meets Stieg Larsson
Ask me who’s the most talented living writer today, and I’d react without hesitation: Paul Theroux. His Hotel Honolulu is one of a handful of books I relish rereading every year, and his travel journal Riding the Iron Rooster has been a personal recommendation since the day I picked it up.
Whether fiction or non-fiction, Theroux’s passages describing third world countries are masterly, and he paints characters with a proficiency that, at its best, is unequaled in modern literature. For example, in his latest novel, A Dead Hand, his characters are captivating, and his vivid descriptions of the sights, sounds, and smells of a crumbling Calcutta are powerful.
So what goes wrong here?
As a Paul Theroux fan, I like to think he was talked into doing this book—a formula murder thriller in the (gulp) detective-novel genre. I tell myself it must have been a greedy agent or publisher—one eye on the bestseller list, the other on a ranch in Montana. Imagine the possibilities here! We’re talking Paul Theroux meets Stieg Larsson! For me, it’s like watching Ernest Hemingway doing an episode of “Dancing with the Stars”—I’d look at it, but I’d also wish to hell someone had talked him out of it.
Exotic location, a dead body, a beautiful woman who asks travel writer Jerry Delfont to take her case (huh?), Howard, Jerry’s cheerful friend from the U.S. consulate general’s office who helps him solve the crime—down the malodorous, torturous murder-mystery road we go. There’s something creepy going on when Jerry takes tea with celebrity travel writer Paul Theroux—they’re instant enemies—and Theroux’s immoderation handling the bedroom scenes made me wince for him as an author. (But here’s the takeaway: Merrill Unger is a beguiling woman with secrets, and under her power the worldly-wise Jerry becomes more or less Hermie from “Summer of ’42.”)
You can almost feel Theroux straining to pull the reader through the story, as if he were peddling us all uphill on a cycle-rickshaw. And it shouldn’t feel that way because the writing is so good—that’s what kills me about this book.
Eric Peterson is the author of the novel “Life as a Sandwich.”
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