Monday, September 13, 2010

Where you can meet Michele Norris and Robert Reich and plant trees for your new books?

In one word: Strand.

Located in
828 Broadway (at 12th St.), this New York's independent landmark bookstore is not only one of most famous bookstores in the world, but also a partner of Eco-Libris. Strand are taking part in our bookstore program and customers at the store can plant a tree for every book they buy there and receive our sticker at the counter!

And they also have a great list of events for the upcoming month, where you can meet some of the authors of the most interesting new books, such as Michele Norris of NPR, author of
The Grace of Silence: A Memoir and Prof. Robert E. Reich, secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton and author of the new book Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future.

Here's information on more events at Strand this month:


Monday, September 13
7:00pm


Fantasy and reality collide as the book's principal characters-two lovers-meet, part and reunite, time and again, at different stages in life and in landscapes both familiar and exotic.

Frederic Tuten, who has received a Guggenheim fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Distinguished Writing, is the author of Tintin in the New World and The Green Hour, among other fiction.

Tuesday, September 14
7:00pm


James Ellroy returns to the Strand to discuss his new book, The Hilliker Curse-a predator's confession, a treatise on guilt and on the power of malediction, and above all, a cri de coeur. Ellroy unsparingly describes his shattered childhood, his delinquent teens, his writing life, his love affairs and marriages, his nervous breakdown and the beginning of a relationship with an extraordinary woman who may just be the long-sought Her.

Ellroy is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, which includes American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood's A Rover and the L.A. Quartet novels, The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz.

Thursday, September 16
3:30pm

STRAND FAMILY HOUR EVENT
For children of all ages and their caregivers...
Jennifer Berne and illustrator Keith Bendis will read from their new book Calvin Can't Fly; The Story of a Bookworm Birdie.

Jennifer, a long-time contributor to Nick Jr. Magazine and award-winning author, and Keith, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Fortune and Time, as well as in nine books, will tell the story of Calvin, one unusual starling! While his siblings and cousins learn to fly, this rare bird lets his imagination soar while reading about pirates, dinosaurs and other fascinating things.
Family Hour Events occur every Thursday at 3:30PM in our 2nd Floor Children's Department. When we are not hosting an author, Strand Staff read from their favorite book and lead the children in a craft based on that day's reading. Email Christina if you would like to join the Family Hour Events email list.

Tuesday, September 21
7:00pm


Michele Norris, named "Journalist of the Year" by the National Association of Black Journalists for her coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, will discuss her memoir, The Grace of Silence. The Grace of Silence asks the difficult question, "how well do you know the people who raised you?" and answers it in a powerful, honest and deeply moving way that will serve as a model for us all to take up the question with our families, communities and country.

Michele Norris has served as a correspondent for ABC News, and has reported for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times on education, poverty and numerous other social issues. She is a frequent guest on NBC's Meet the Press and The Chris Matthews Show. Her voice is heard by millions every weekday as co-host of NPR's All Things Considered.

Wednesday, September 22
7:00pm

Joshua Ferris The Unnamed

The Unnamed is a dazzling novel about a marriage and a family and the unseen forces of nature and desire that seem to threaten them both. It is the heartbreaking story of a life taken for granted and what happens when that life is abruptly and irrevocably taken away.

Ferris' first novel, Then We Came to the End, won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a National Book Award finalist.

Thursday, September 23
7:00pm


In Aftershock, celebrated economic policy maker and political theorist Robert B. Reich argues that the reason the nation's economy foundered in 2008 is structural: it lies in the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the top--and a middle class that had to go deeply into debt to maintain a decent standard of living.

Robert B. Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton, and was an economic advisor to President Obama.

Tuesday, September 28
7:00pm


Proofiness is defined as the art of using nonsensical mathematical arguments--Cheerios increases your risk of being hit by a bus?!--to convince us of the veracity of things we know in our hearts to be false. In his new book, Seife argues that bad math is undermining our democracy (not to mention our notion of common sense).

Charles Seife, author of Sun in the Bottle and Zero, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for first non-fiction book, is an associate professor of journalism at New York University.

Wednesday, September 29
7:00pm


Historian and cultural critic Thaddeus Russell argues that the freedoms we cherish today were won not by "good Americans" but by the people who lived outside "respectable" society.

Written in the spirit of Howard Zinn's revisionist classic, A People's History of the United States, the new, alternative history revealed in A Renegade History of the United States, shows that drunkards, laggards, prostitutes and immigrants were the real heroes of the American Revolution. Russell upends all the standard assumptions about the United States, from its very beginning to the present day.

Thursday, September 30
7:00pm


Max's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll is a lasting chronicle of the famed venue where Andy Warhol held court at the infamous round table in the backroom; where Willem de Kooning, John Chamberlain or Chuck Close could be found arguing about art; where Burroughs and Ginsberg discussed literature and where the Velvet Underground was the house band. Edited by Steven Kasher, with photographs by Bob Gruen, Anton Perich, Billy Name and more and contributions by Lou Reed, Lenny Kaye, Danny Fields and Steven Watson, the book captures the exuberance and decadence of one of the coolest pop cultural institutions of all time.

The Strand will host author Steven Kasher, writer Steven Watson and featured photographers Anton Perich and Danny Fields.
Oct 6: Vanessa Davis MAKE ME A WOMAN
Oct 7: Gloria Feldt NO EXCUSES
Oct 13: Lisa Birnbach TRUE PREP
Oct 14: R. Sikoryak, Neil Swaab & Keith Carter CREATING COMICS!
Oct 19: Al Jaffee & Mary-Lou Weisman AL JAFFEE'S MAD LIFE
Oct 21: Charles Burns X-ED OUT
Oct 26: Rachel Cohn & David Levithan DASH & LILY'S BOOK OF DARES
Oct 28: Rick Meyerowitz DRUNK STONED BRILLIANT DEAD

Visit Strand's Event Calendar for the complete schedule of events.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Bloggers - Join us on the 2010 Green Books Campaign: 1 day, 200 books, 200 reviews

Last November, as part of our efforts to promote books that are printed in an eco-friendly manner, we initiated a Green Books Campaign, where over 100 bloggers simultaneously published reviews of more than 100 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. This campaign also involved 40 publishers from the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

The campaign last year was very successful - more than 15,000 readers were exposed to the campaign and it received very positive feedback from publishers, bloggers and readers. Therefore, we decided to run the campaign again this November, but this time with 200 bloggers! Also, this year we are also collaborating with Indigo Books and Music, the largest book retailer in Canada to increase the campaign's impact and reach.

Just like last year, the idea is to have 200 bloggers, who review books on regular basis, to simultaneously publish their book review of a "green book" of their choice on Wednesday, November 10 2010. Our goal also hasn't changed: To use the power of the internet and social media to promote "green" books and increase the awareness of both readers and publishers to the way books can be printed printed in an eco-friendly manner.

And we still have room for bloggers who want to participate! Are you a blogger who review books on regular basis and interested in participating? If you are, the list of participating
books is available at www.ecolibris.net/greenbookscampaign_list.pdf (Please note that it's recommended to increase the magnification of the web page up to (at least) 125% to see all the details).

The books will be assigned on first come first served basis. Once a book is taken, the name of the blog will appear next to it in the column 'assigned blog'. So if you find a book that you would like to review on the campaign, just send us an email to info@ecolibris.net with your details.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Shanah Tovah from Eco-Libris














Tomorrow is Rosh Hashanah Eve, the day before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish holiday celebrating the new year's day according to the Hebrew calendar.

Rosh Hashana is one of my favorite holidays, with many beautiful traditions, such as eating apple slices dipped in honey, which represent our hope for a sweet new year. So tomorrow not only President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will be busy tomorrow with Rosh Hashanah issues, but we will will also be celebrating it with a lot of great local food in a traditional holiday dinner.

I would also like to take this opportunity and wish you all Sahanah Tovah on behalf of Eco-Libris. May this Rosh Hashanah be the beginning of a sweet, green and wonderful year!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Friday, September 3, 2010

We have a winner on our giveaway of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting"

We have a winner on our giveaway of the "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting"!

Following our review of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting"
by Chris McLaughlin, we asked you to share with us what you like most about composting and if you don't compost yet, what you think you'll like about it once you start.

We got interesting replies and we have a winner! Our winner is Julie Kieras who wrote:


What I like most about composting is that my husband does all the work! haha kidding - I like that when we compost we reduce our garbage, return energy to the earth, and improve our gardens! My hubby would love to read this book!

Congrats Julie! You won a copy of "
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Composting" and we'll also plant a tree for this book! Thank you also for all the rest of the participants!

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Axis of Structural Decline - Tower Records, Blockbuster and now Barnes & Noble?

"First Tower Records, then Blockbuster, now this [Barnes & Noble].”

This is a quote of Dora Schulman, a shoe saleswoman who referred to the
upcoming closing of B&N store at 66th Street and Broadway in Manhattan.

Ms. Schulman, who was quoted in a New York Times article about the store's closing, was talking about the stores on her route that were closing, but unintentionally she also created what w
e can describe as Axis of Structural Decline.

Tower Records filed for bankruptcy in 2004. On December 22, 2006, the last Tower Records store in New York City was closed down. Why? NPR tried to explain in a report in 2009:

"Folks would say, 'Well, wasn't this all about Napster?' And I'm like, 'Not so much as the fact that I think Tower just sort of lost relevancy,' " Crupnick [Russ Crupnick, who analyzes music retail for a firm called NPD] says. Big-box stores undercut Tower in pricing CDs. Baby Boomers stopped buying new music. Young people stopped caring about liner notes and owning a physical product. And Crupnick says that, by the late 1990s, Tower Records was no longer a music lover's mecca. It was just a higher-end Sam Goody. "They became very ordinary, in terms of their expansion plans," Crupnick says. "And arguably, as they went to about 90 stores, they lost that whole idea of being special."

Blockbuster, as was reported by Wired.com is planning to file bankruptcy:

"Just as video stores once failed to compete with Blockbuster’s larger inventory, the retail chain now can’t compete with Amazon, Netflix, on-demand cable-satellite, and other means of delivering video entertainment that don’t involve going to a store".

So is Barnes & Noble about to fail just like Tower Records and Blockbuster Video did? Well, B&N definitely suffer from the same illnesses: they slowly lose their relevancy and their added value for customer, they face fierce competition, they have trouble to adopt to the new reality of growing online sales and e-book dominance. Still, unlike Tower Records and Blockbuster they're not out of business and they are still in a position where they can influence the way their future will look like.


Right now it doesn't seem like they have a plan, so if nothing happens don't be surprised if instead the old Axis of Evil, we'll have the new Axis of Structural Decline.


My suggestion to B&N? Here's what we think should become of of B&N brick and mortar bookstores to help them become again an asset for the company - http://ecolibris.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-there-future-for-barnes-noble-and.html

More articles on the future of bookstores can be found at http://www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp /bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Natanya by Dror Burstein is the first book in Hebrew to go green with Eco-Libris!






















We're happy to announce on a very special collaboration with author Dror Burstein to green up his new book 'Natanya' - 250 trees will be planted with Eco-Libris for each print run of the book.

This is a special collaboration as this is the first book in Hebrew that is going green with Eco-Libris! As you might know, Hebrew is my mother tongue, so I'm very excited about it. We're proud to add Hebrew to many of the languages of books we worked with to green them up by planting trees, such as Swedish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Italian and English.

This is also the first book that we work with in Israel, so there's another reason for us to be excited about.

'Natyana', the third novel published by Dror Burstein, was released earlier this month and is already available online (on this link you will find more details (in Hebrew) on the book). Even if you don't read in Hebrew, I'm sure you can appreciate the beautiful cover of the book by
Ernst Haeckel (see photo above).

Here's more information about the author:
Dror Burstein was born in 1970 in Netanya, Israel, and lives in Tel Aviv. He first became a fully qualified lawyer, then he left the legal field and started studying literature. He received a PhD in Hebrew literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2001 and now teaches there as well as at Tel Aviv University. He also edits programs for Israel Radio`s music station and writes literary and art reviews. Burstein has been awarded the Jerusalem Prize for Literature (1997), the Ministry of Science and Culture Prize for Poetry (2002), the Bernstein Prize for his novel, Avner Brenner (2005) and the Prime Minister`s Prize (2006).

You can read Dror's blog (Under the Table) at http://drorb.wordpress.com/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Friday, August 27, 2010

A new book of Flux by the Danish Paulo Coelho is going green with Eco-Libris!






















We're happy to announce on a new book that was released yesterday by our partner, the Norwegian publisher
Flux. The book is the Norwegian translation of The Seer of Andalusia, the first book in a special trilogy written by Lars Muhl, who is often compared with Paulo Coelho.

Like always with Flux, this is a green celebration -
we're proud to announce that this book, as well as all the other books published by Flux is going green with Eco-Libris, and 2000 trees are being planted to balance out this great book!

Here's more about 'The Seer of Andalusia', or as it is called in Norwegian
'Seeren fra Andalusia':

Like Paulo Coelho, Lars Muhl was for many years a successful singer/songwriter who, concurrently with his music, studied the world's religions and esoteric knowledge. Then in 1996, he was struck down by an unexplained illness, which neither doctors nor alternative therapists could diagnose. For three years he lay in bed without being able to move or think straight. Through a close friend's intervention, Lars was put in touch with a seer who, via the telephone, brought him back to life. That was the start of a completely new existence and the beginning of that quest he so grippingly describes in The O Manuscript trilogy.

About the book:
The Seer
takes as its starting point Lars’ illness, his meeting with the Seer and their work on the holy mountain of Montsegur in the southern French Pyrenees. The book is not only a spell-binding introduction to the ancient gnosis of everything’s interconnectedness, but also a critical evaluation of a long list of limiting new age dogmas. When Lars and the Seer part, the latter hands an old manuscript into the author’s care; a manuscript that, surprisingly, turns out to be a doorway to the events that take place in the following two books of the trilogy.

About the author:

Lars Muhl was born in Aarhus on November the 14th, 1950. In 1967 he was a member of the band "Dragon Five". From 1968 to 1974 he was a member of the band "Daisy". He attended The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, from 1974 to 1976. He was a member of the band "Warm Guns" from 1979 to 1984. And he worked as a solo artist from 1986 to 1999. He accepted the Price of Honour from DJBFA in 1990 and WCM's Songwriters Million Certificate in 1996.

Lars Muhl has had a great interest in spirituality since he was very young. And concurrently with his music, he studied the world's religions and esoteric knowledge. In 1999 Lars Muhl decided to stop as an active musician to concentrate fully on his spiritual interest.

Lars Muhl is now working as a healer, lecturer and writer with speciality in spirituality and alternative treatment. In 2003 Muhl took the initiative at starting "Hearts and Hands", an apolitical aid organization based on the voluntary work of various therapists. The aim is to help people who are suffering from life crisis such as cancer and stress related illnesses.

Click here for a video clip of Lars Muhl speaking about the O Manuscript.


More books from Flux:
The Living Universe

Turning to One Another

Leadership and Self-Deception

The 100-years' Targets


The 5th Step


The Integral Vision


Dyp glede (Deep Joy):
Arne Næss on deep ecology


TearSoup - A Recipe For Healing After Loss


Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!