Wealth, Love, Ambition and Secrets…”Tiny Little Thing”, by Beatriz Williams

Tiny Little ThingAuthor Beatriz Williams has written an intriguing novel that has fictional characters intertwined with historical happenings. It is a story set in the Vietnam War era, and follows in a Kennedy-style, the most gregariously social of the three Schuyler sisters, Christina “Tiny” Hardcastle of Cape Cod. She seemed predestined to meet and marry a man who would attain a leadership position with her help. She possessed elegance and grace with impeccable style. In the new age of television politics, “Tiny” was always looking camera ready. With their handsome attributes, they are poised to become the ultimate power couple…… seemingly unstoppable.

As many times happens, unwelcome characters appear unexpectedly in Cape Cod, who each in their own way can potentially bring down Frank and “Tiny” Hardcastle’s perfect world. Among those characters are Tiny’s volatile sister Pepper, someone bearing incriminating photographs, and Frank’s intimidating, Vietnam War hero cousin, Caspian. Tiny quickly realizes her perfect life may be full of cracks and the only way out is to fight for herself instead of continuing the glossy facade she has created.

As quoted from William’s publisher, the novel is……….a fascinating look at wealth, love, ambition, secrets, and what family members will and won’t do to protect each other……Kirkus.

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For Good, For Bad, Forever…”Finders Keepers”, by Stephen King

Finders KeepersOnce again, the genius author Stephen King, masters another thriller novel with a brilliant title…… Finders Keepers. The book is the second volume of a planned trilogy with main character, Detective Bill Hodges. Mr. Mercedes was volume one in the trilogy, and introduced Detective Hodges. The main theme of Finders Keepers is somewhat of a recurring theme (as was his novel, Misery) of a reader whose obsession with a favorite writer has become very dangerous. The new novel, published on June 2, 2015, promises to fulfill the high expectations that Stephen King’s readers have come to expect.
A thirty year old murder of a writer sets the stage for the premise of the novel. Detective Hodges gets drawn into the complicated story, but does not realize how it will lead to more mystery involving the decades old murder. It is a deadly cat and mouse game that he walks into, but he is the detective who brought down the murderer, Mr. Mercedes.
“Finders Keepers is spectacular, heart-pounding suspense, but it is also Stephen writing about how literature shapes a life……… for good, for bad, forever”.

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There Must be a Pony Here Somewhere, “A Lucky Life Interrupted”, by Tom Brokaw

A Lucky Life InterruptedTom Brokaw, the former news anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News has written a new book, A Lucky Life Interrupted: A Memoir of Hope, in which he reflects back on his life and considers what he would still like to achieve. He was 75 years old and had extreme back pain due to his multiple myeloma. Every day that he went outside his Manhattan apartment, he was smacked in the face by a huge billboard of a young, healthy Tom Brady starring back at him. He admitted to Tom Brady the first time they met, that he therapeutically cursed that billboard every time he saw it. He told Brady that his cursing him got him through cancer treatment. The story gave the New England Patriots quarterback a good laugh.
Brokaw was very touched by all those who reached out to him with support during his battle with cancer. Among them were the current President, President George W. Bush, Charles Barkley, and many more, including David Letterman, who was very kind in checking on him and inviting him to dinner. It was immensely helpful to him to have such considerate people caring about him.
In the book, he considers his bucket list: ● Learn to sail solo ● Learn to play chess ● Get a short story published ● Spend more mornings by the sea, with his wife, Meredith, a copy of The New Yorker, and plenty of black coffee ●Fish more river and saltwater flats
Brokaw insists he is an eternal optimist, even through the difficult journey of having multiple myeloma. A great story he used as illustrating that optimism was when Ronald Reagan used the great line “about a child comes down in the morning, and beneath the Christmas tree there is just an enormous pile of horse dung. And he starts thinking, ‘there must be a pony here somewhere’. That is kind of my attitude about life.”

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Audiobook vs Audio Book

Question MarksWhen you type the word audiobook, do you use “audiobook” or “audio book“? You can tell by my first sentence I use audiobook. It is clear the industry standard is “audiobook”, not “audio book”. The Audio Publishers Association (APA) and AudioFile Magazine both use the word audiobook. Even all the audiobook publishers spell it as one word on their website. So why do I still see it spelled “audio book”?

There are some spell checkers that underline “audiobooks” in red and suggest spelling it “audio books”, even when I type the word audiobooks on my Android phone it automatically breaks it into two separate words. You can even look up the word audiobook in an online dictionary and it will break it up into two separate words and say “Also, audiobook”. I even see it in auto suggest drop downs when typing it into a search like in Apple’s App Store on my iPad mini. I start typing the word audiobooks and it automatically shows me the words “audio books” in the drop down.

June is National Audiobook Month and everywhere I see it advertised it is spelled as one word “Audiobook”. This is what actually prompted me to write this post, given that today is June 3rd and I have been seeing lots of ads about National Audiobook Month. I have never seen it spelled as two words in any of the ads I have seen for National Audiobook Month.

Why does this even matter you ask. Who cares how you spell it, right, wrong. In today’s search boxes are everywhere society, you get different results when you enter it “audiobooks” vs “audio books” in a search box. This is the main reason there should be a standard way of spelling the word audiobooks and it should clearly be “audiobooks”, not “audio books” in my opinion. What do you think?