Ten Year Plan

Whiskey Sour: A Jack Daniels Mystery (A Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels Mystery)

Caution: Puns Ahead!

That should be on the cover of this book–if you hate puns, you won’t find this book as amusing as I did. Because the bad guy calls himself the Gingerbread Man, one might think this was a light book. It certainly was a quick read, but the subject is disturbing, as the Gingerbread Man is a serial killer.

Basic Troubleshooting Techniques

Troubleshooting is tracking down pesky bugs, rooting them from the code and squashing them. Having some basic troubleshooting skills can greatly enhance your bug fighting. The goal of troubleshooting is to quickly identify the root cause of the problem, however, don’t confuse troubleshooting with problem solving. Problem solving is answering the question, “Can this be done?” or “How can we do this?” Troubleshooting on the other hand is answering the question, “Why isn’t this working?

RSS Feed in Zend Framework

Going to get a little geeky here. But I wanted to share a simple, and effective way to create a simple rss feed of content in the Zend Framework.

The new ClubReading site is separated into two parts, the blog, and the books. The books site is now using Disqus for the comments, and so far Disqus is working out great, but that’s a topic for another day. The blog is a wordpress blog. What I wanted to do was display a couple or three of the recently added books from the books site on the sidebar of the ClubReading Blog. My thought was to create a simple rss feed of the most recent books, and use the standard wordpress rss widget to display the feed content in the sidebar. But - how to create the rss feed? Turns out it was pretty simple thanks to a great article by Alex Netkachov called “Syndicate content with Zend Framework Zend_Feed classes”.

"84, Charing Cross Road" by Helene Hanff

This book is a collection of letters from a female writer in New York City to a bookstore in London. She writes for good, inexpensive copies of books which they ship to her in New York. Eventually, she and the man who answers for the bookstore become friends.

The love of books is throughout the collected letters. Helene tries to help her London friends by sending them treats during the rations in London after World War II. She longs to go to London, but doesn’t ever seem to have the funds to go.

"A House in Sicily" by Daphne Phelps

Daphne Phelps inherited a house in Sicily called Casa Cuseni. At the time, Daphne had no knowledge of Italian, no money, and was war-weary. At 34, she moved to the small Sicilian town of Taormina expecting to sell the house.

After 50 years and guests like Tennesee Williams, Bertrand Russel, Henry Faulkner and Roald Dahl, Daphne Phelps has a wonderful story to tell.

"Anonymous Rex" by Eric Garcia

A terrific read! Very entertaining, unusual and fresh with a sly humor and good story.

A detective story of sorts. In Eric Garcia’s world, Dinosaurs are walking among us. A while back, the Dino population of the world took notice of the annoying apes evolving and made the decision to hide their identity. Now living among the apes are various breeds of dinosaur hiding in very elaborate costumes…including our protagonist Vincent Rubio.

"At The Scent Of Water" by Linda Nichols

Reviewer: Sally

‘Life Happens!!’ We’ve all seen the bumper stickers. Some use different words, but the meaning is the same. It’s the cynic’s answer to ‘Why?’ It’s also the optimist’s answer to the same question. I like to finish the statement this way: ‘Life Happens!! Get over it!!!’

‘Why…is this happening to me?’ It is one of the age old questions. Many authors have offered their version of the answers. Viewpoints are varied, of course. We blame others, we blame God, and sometimes we even blame ourselves. One thing is for sure. There are no easy answers.

"Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman" by Alice Steinbach

Alice Steinbach manages to do the things we all want to do: She travels to different places to learn new things. She goes to cooking school in France, tours Jane Austin’s England, and learns a bit about being a geisha in Japan. She does many other things as well.

I loved reading this book; even when Alice learns something I have no interest in, she makes it interesting. The locations, the learning, and the lessons were wonderful to read about.

"Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death and Life" by Gregory Bernard Banks

Reviewer: Bardsandsages

Breaking the boundaries between literary and genre fiction, Gregory Bernard Banks’ Phoenix Tales: Stories of Death and Life is a stunning collection of short stories that confronts the meaning of life and death with beautiful bravery. Part science fiction, part philosophy, with a little horror thrown in, this collection should be on everyone’s reading list.

Yo! Need a vampire hunter over here!

Amazon emailed me a couple of days ago to let me know I might like the new Laurell Hamilton book “Blood Noir”. I don’t have the message anymore, but I remember it going something like “You liked Anita Blake in the past, you might like this one. Why not pre-order?” In reality, it said something like “As someone who purchased from the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series…”.