Posted in #non-fiction

The Book of Funny Sports Quotes

Humourous Sports Quotations for Sports Fans everywhere (Quotes For Every Occasion 5)

A great book for all sports fans everywhere

This is a book of sports quotations from a huge range of sports for those who love sports and all that goes with it. From American Football to the best and funniest quotes from wrestling they are all in this book. There are amusing observations, outrageous insults and the exquisitely stupid comments that are all an integral part of the sports that we love to play.

The quotes provide a wealth of humorous comments which embroider and enrich the playing and watching of sports bringing additional dimensions to the game.

This collection brings together the favorite quotes of the author from a range of sports. Some selections are current while many are from famous sportsmen and commentators of the past.

Tags: American football, Archery, Athletics, Baseball, Basketball, Bowling, Chess, Cricket, Cycling, Dancing, Darts, Boxing, Fencing, Gymnastics, Fishing, Golf, Horse Racing, Hunting, Motor Racing, Ice Hockey, Rugby, Soccer, Tennis, Skiing, Snooker, Pool, Squash, Tennis Weightlifting, Wrestling inspirational messages, inspirational sayings, good quotes, sports book, sports quotes, sports quotations

Posted in #BookTours

Waves of Light and Darkness


Waves of Light and Darkness challenges and delights a reader’s perception with surreal and surprising world-building.

Waves of Light and Darkness

by John K Danenbarger

Genre: Speculative Short Stories


Waves of Light and Darkness challenges and delights a reader’s perception with surreal and surprising world-building.

Whether they are set in the past or the future, in a Kansas farmhouse or a potentially supernatural cave, these short stories share one commonality: a search for something beyond what one knows is needed. Through a multitude of unexpected perspectives (a cat, a coma patient, a ventriloquist), this utterly novel collection of stories examines and reconfigures universal themes of life, death, and human connection.

Several stories focus on finding identity amidst societal pressure, such as “Seduction,” and “Alexandria Her Smile,” while others like “A Pusillanimous Human” and “The Gift for Albert Smoots” explore mortality and grief.

 

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An excerpt of “Death of Angst” from WAVES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS: STORIES


“When my eyes have the ember slits of a viper, some humans think I must be plotting death and murder. Although it happens, out of necessity, most of the time I am merely researching, scrutinizing, and processing feline perfection, because I was found as an orphan under a box. I know now that I must have been in severe pain from having survived an attack by a thug, a ruffian tomcat that wanted to breed with my mother. I remember the sharp claws digging into my fur, the putrid breath hot on my neck. So, no wonder I am skittish; it just does not leave you. The trauma, I mean. My brothers and sisters, dead and gone. More to the point, leaving me with no one to learn from . . . to emulate.


I was certainly lucky to be found by Adele Petrini outside the building where I now live on the third floor. I think Adele was around five years old back then. Human years, I’m talking about. Just a tiny, muddy thing, with messy braids and curious eyes. She wanted to name me Anxiety, but it got shortened to Angst. I don’t mind; I am certainly happy with the name. I find it important that it’s easy for humans to call my name when it’s time to eat.”




John Danenbarger spends much of his time writing in Italy. Born in Atlanta, he graduated from University of Kansas with a degree in English and Creative Writing. With a backlist of short stories, Danenbarger established the Salem Massachusetts Writers’ Club. After living in Oslo, Norway, Stockholm, Sweden, and Salem, MA, Danenbarger achieved a merchant marine captain’s license, sailing for two years on the New England coast including two round-trips to Bermuda.

 

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Posted in #BookTours

Rainy Day Rescue


Deciding to take a second chance at love is an act of courage! 


Rainy Day Rescue

Seattle Lost Lovers

by Josie Malone

Genre: Contemporary Second-Chance, Fake Romance



Real estate broker, Claire Rocklin, buys distressed properties, rehabs, and sells them to support her pet project, ‘Senior Housing Apartments’. She believes nobody has time for the elderly–and no one ever had time for her. After the death of her mother when Claire was a child, her serial-cheater father remarried several times, but those marriages didn’t last more than two years each.

Three years ago, Claire’s once-upon-a-time stepbrother, Master Sergeant Tony Baldusi, retired from the Army and became a fulltime business partner in Claire’s brokerages. The son of a single mother who divorced Claire’s father, Tony learned how to survive long before he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He’s been packing a proverbial torch for Claire, along with a diamond engagement ring for three years.

When Claire’s grandparents invite them home for Thanksgiving, Tony suggests they pretend to be engaged. After all, they’re already business partners, and their families would easily believe the relationship runs deeper. But can he convince commitment-phobic Claire that she deserves real happiness? Will their little deception turn into something real, or will she run from love again, breaking both their hearts in the process?

 

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Ghost Writer’s Inn

Baker City: Hearts and Haunts

by Josie Malone

Genre: Paranormal Ghost Romance


Former Army Ranger, Mac MacGillicudy served his country for almost twenty years, fighting in one hotspot after another. Since he retired from the military, he’s roamed the U.S., unaware he’s accompanied by a woman with a hidden agenda. He enjoys writing action-adventure romances which never turn out the way he plans or expects or designs. Still his agent, publisher, and readers love them. Learning he’s inherited the old family hotel, Mac heads to Baker City, Washington for Christmas. He’ll help restore the hotel, write his next book which will hopefully end the way he wants, and perhaps discover a home.

Registered Nurse, Lillian Bryce didn’t hesitate to answer the call when her country needed her after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She joined the US Army and went off to war but didn’t return home, at least not alive. Since she loved books, she went back to the Seattle Public Library where she’d spent so many happy hours. She was perfectly content studying, researching, observing and enjoying the other patrons—the live ones, until she saw Mac MacGillicudy. She was fascinated, focused on him—well on his writing, on his books, except he had them all wrong! So, she fixed them, not once, but again, and again, and again regardless of how many times he tried to change them while they traveled the country! Now, they’re off to Baker City.

Will the two of them find love in a place where ghosts are real or just continue writing about it?

 

**can be read as a standalone!

 

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Josie Malone lives and works at her family business, a riding stable in Washington State. Teaching kids to ride and know about horses, she finds in many cases, she’s taught three generations of families. Her life experiences span adventures from dealing cards in a casino, attending graduate school to get her Masters in Teaching degree, being a substitute teacher, and serving in the Army Reserve – all leading to her second career as a published author. Visit her at her website, http://www.josiemalone.com to learn about her books.

Posted in #History

Animals in the Great War (Images of War)

Tails from the Great War throws a spot light on the experience of creatures great and small during the First World War, vividly telling their stories through the incredible archival images of the Mary Evans Picture Library. The enduring public interest in Michael Morpurgos tale of the war horse reveals an enthusiasm for the animal perspective on war, but what of the untold stories of the war dog, the trench rat or even the ships pig? Through unrivaled access to rarely seen illustrated wartime magazines, books and postcards, discover the sea lions who were trained to detect submarines, and witness the carcass of the 61ft mine-destroying wonder whale. Meet the dog that brought a sailor back from the brink of death, and inspired a Hollywood legend. See how depictions of animals were powerfully manipulated by the propaganda machine on both sides, and how the presence of animals could bring much needed and even lifesaving companionship and cheer amid the carnage of war. As the centenary of the Great War is commemorated all over the world, take a timely journey via the lens of Mary Evans wartime images, and marvel at the often overlooked but significant contribution and experience of animals at war. By turns astonishing, heart-warming and occasionally downright bizarre, Tails from the Great War champions the little-known story of the bison, the chameleon, the canary et al in wartime.


Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lucinda Moore’s book Animals in the Great War is a comprehensive pictorial spotlight shining on the many ways a menagerie of animals, great and small, contributed their service and their lives to the cause of World War I. Using archival material from the Mary Evans Picture Library, Moore’s choice of images vividly tells their stories and gives the reader privileged access to the intimate relationships between humans and animals in dire and desperate conditions.”
Journal of Animal Ethics Volume 10.1 (Spring 2020)

About the Author

Lucinda Moore is a picture researcher at the Mary Evans Picture Library in Blackheath, London, where she relishes exploring the archive and writing about the hidden treasure that she uncovers. A graduate of classical archaeology and ancient history from Oxford University, she has more than a decade of archival research experience. She lives in Kent with her husband and baby son.

Posted in #non-fiction

The Sounds of Capitalism

Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture

From the early days of radio through the rise of television after World War II to the present, music has been used more and more to sell goods and establish brand identities. And since the 1920s, songs originally written for commercials have become popular songs, and songs written for a popular audience have become irrevocably associated with specific brands and products. Today, musicians move flexibly between the music and advertising worlds, while the line between commercial messages and popular music has become increasingly blurred.

Timothy D. Taylor tracks the use of music in American advertising for nearly a century, from variety shows like The Clicquot Club Eskimos to the rise of the jingle, the postwar upsurge in consumerism, and the more complete fusion of popular music and consumption in the 1980s and after. The Sounds of Capitalism is the first book to tell truly the history of music used in advertising in the United States and is an original contribution to this little-studied part of our cultural history.  

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Taylor is to be commended for his organization of the text (which is exhaustively researched and annotated) and accessible writing style, which invite readers into his narrative personably, effortlessly, and enjoyably. His examples ably illustrate his points, and while he competently nods to the scholarly community through his implementation of cultural theory (especially in the last chapter), the clear, jargon-free language in which he has couched his analyses will appeal to a broad audience.” ― Ethnomusicology

“For anyone interested in how music interacts with consumer desire and conceptions of self within consumer society, Taylor’s work is essential. It makes a compelling case that all of us interested in discussing music or U.S. culture in the last century must account for advertising as part of the story.”
  ― Journal of the Societey for American Music

“In The Sounds of Capitalism, Timothy D. Taylor presents a rich and compelling story about music’s emergence within the broad fields of US advertising and consumer culture. With great clarity and critical acumen, Taylor charts a complex history of the various ways in which advertisers have relied on music in order to sell consumer goods, employing strategies which, over time, have produced a complex semiotics blurring distinctions between the auditory and the material, between taste in music and desire for purchasable things. Taylor’s book is stunning in its exhaustive accounting of a vast, unexplored territory in US cultural history. And as we read through the tale, we gain something even more: a startling realization of how deeply intertwined our musical values and practices of consumption really are. The book promises to become a major text in the history of consumption as it establishes a new foundation in the study of US popular music.” — Ronald Radano ― University of Wisconsin-Madison


“This strikingly original work skillfully weaves together the author’s unmatched knowledge of modern music and perceptive reading of previously untapped sources to reveal how popular music and advertising became mutually dependent industries across a century of change. It will force us to rethink what we know about the popular arts and consumer culture.” 

— Gary Cross ― author of An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America

“Timothy D. Taylor’s unique contribution is his application of the historical approach to his subject, tracing, through extensive interviews and archival research, the evolution of music in American advertising from the early days of radio to the present. In doing so, he offers both a thorough and detail-rich history of this increasingly ubiquitous part of American life, and a broader meditation on the politics of sound in contemporary culture.”
— Caroline Waight ― MAKE: A Chicago Literary Magazine

“Today, in a business where everyone knows everything, Timothy Taylor has written a scrupulously researched, thoroughly enjoyable history of the wild world of advertising music. The Sounds of Capitalism is the engrossing story of how the musical face of America’s economy has evolved through the generations; told in the words of those who were there. This is a landmark book.”
— Steve Karmen ― “King of the Jingle”

“As the musicologist Timothy D. Taylor shows in The Sounds of Capitalism, the links between American popular music and advertising are longstanding. While he briefly covers the “prehistory” of the phenomenon in the cries of 13th-century street hawkers recorded in the Montpellier Codex, Taylor’s real starting place is radio, which, he argues, is where the marriage between music and advertising was first truly consummated.” — Evan Kindley ― n+1

About the Author



Timothy D. Taylor is professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology and Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Global Pop: World Music, World Markets; Strange Sounds: Music, Technology, and Culture; and Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World.