The Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spices, & Flavorings

Hi Chums,

It has been rather a while since I last recommended a book to the World at large ,that would be you lot by the way.

In the main this is because I have been far too busy working on my own cookery book which will be launching rather soon. Hint Hint…

As such it is rather fitting that the book I am all in a lather about is one that dovetails nicely with my own.
The Encyclopedia of Herbs, Spices, & Flavorings 

Here is what those nice chaps over at Amazon have to say about it:

“An illustrated sourcebook to these all-important cooking ingredients includes information on more than two hundred herbs, spices, essences, edible flowers and leaves, aromatics, vinegars, oils, teas, and coffees”

I on the other hand will stick to simply issuing an instruction -

IF YOU COOK  AND DON’T OWN A COPY GO AND BUY ONE. NOW.

Not quite Wordsworth but hopefully the point comes across. I very rarely encounter anything that I look at and think wow this is something which everyone should own. However on this occasion I really am that impressed.

Not only are they lots of high quality pictures, excellent descriptions of various herbs, spices and flavourings and their uses but there are also over 200 recipes so you can leap straight in and start applying all this new-found knowledge.

New cookery book coming soon!

Hey all.

Today seems like a good day to indulge in a little bit of shameless self promotion!

As such I am proud to announce that work on my new cookery book “Some Like it Hot” is very nearly complete… just a few finishing touches to be made and will be launching soon.

More updates and a sneak preview to follow shortly so watch this space!

Where to Market your Ebook

Reblogged from Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner:

Instead of a post about occultism, for a change I will deal today with “Voodoo Statistics” (i.e. please don’t shout at me too much in regard to my methodology) – in order to answer the question, what are the Top 10 Countries in which market an ebook in the English language?

By my calculations they are (biggest potential market first):

Read more… 198 more words

Made for some interesting reading over lunch today. Wouldn't have thought the Philippines would have been big Ebook consumers...

HBO Developing Series Based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods

The series based on Gaiman’s 2001 novel would showcase his new pantheon of deities based on American culture.

 The details are scarce, but HBO is currently in talks to write and film a pilot for a new fantasy series. Interestingly, the series would be produced by Playtone – the outfit of Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman who made Big Love and Band of Brothers. Gaiman first gained notoriety as a comic book writer with his Sandman series in the late eighties but he’s since branched into writing novels, short stories and movies (Beowulf). Gaiman’s works are no stranger to adaptation as his novella Coraline become the 2009 animated film and his Graveyard Book is also tapped to be a feature film. No one knows who would write the script for American Gods or when production would begin, but it seems that HBO is becoming more interested in genre content with the success of True Blood and the imminent Game of Thrones.

The main character in American Gods is an ex-convict called Shadow, who starts working as a bodyguard for a mysterious con-man named Mr. Wednesday. As Wednesday travels across the United States meeting with strange people, Shadow eventually figures out that his employer is an incarnation of the Norse god Odin and that he is recruiting other mythological figures whose power has diminished to fight a war against new American “deities” such as the Internet, media, and mass transportation.

Typically I don’t watch a lot of telly but I really have to take my hat off to HBO who in recent years have pumped out some absolute crackers;  Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and Six Feet Under to name a few.

Having watched the first episode twice so far it seems that Game of Thrones is set to be another classic and if they do even half as good a job with American Gods it will be outstanding.

Original source Hollywood Reporter

The Magician’s Guild – Trudi Canavan

The Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan

Seeing as the story revolves around a pre-teen child who has no knowledge of her magical abilities but ends up being whisked away to a magicians guild and ends up being pretty much the top of the pile there were always going to be similarities drawn between this book and the Harry Potter series.

I really can understand how on the face of things it all seems a bit of a coincidence. Especially when in the second book of the trilogy we discover that the real enemies were believed defeated years ago but are back in secret and it will take huge sacrifice to defeat them…

Ok so I lied –  the similarities aren’t just on the surface. This really does read in parts like a mild re-write of some of the HP books.

But that didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment, not just of this book but of the trilogy as a whole. The story is different enough that you don’t feel like you should just be replacing the name Sonea with that of HP himself and for the most part is well written, if a tad simplistic.

The class issues that Canavan brings up are a little bit clumsy and play out much as expected but even so it is a nice touch and helps keeps things fresh when otherwise you could be about to swap the Magicians Guild for Hogwarts.

There are however two big problems for me that keep me from scoring this book higher and unfortunately they carry on pretty much through out the latter installments of the trilogy.

Firstly there is the characterisation which is a little bit lacking on occasion.
The principal characters are surprisingly two-dimensional and formulaic and you never really find yourself building any attachment to them or indeed giving two hoots as to whether they all die in a fire.

This is a real shame as there is plenty of potential to really build some tension between the main protagonists right from the start.

 One prime example of this is the relationship between Sonea and her friends in the slums; it is obvious that Cery, one of the thieves, has strong feelings for Sonea but rather than build this up into anything too deep or emotive Canavan has the character dismiss his own feelings and cast them aside quite casually over the space of two or three paragraphs.

The second big issue that I have with this series is that I never really get a sense of immersion into the world the story is set in.

The slums and the guild are outlined reasonably well but even they are rather thin on detail and everywhere else we venture is so sketchily outlined that you are squinting to see it.

I am not asking for Tolkien like levels of detail about every blade of grass crushed underfoot but I would like to feel some sense of connection.

If I had to give an example of a fantasy writer who manages to pull this off to perfection it would have to be Terry Pratchett; on one hand I haven’t a clue what colour the second daffodil to the left of the buttercup and indeed don’t want to know was but on the other hand I can walk the streets of Ankh Morpork in my head without having to fill in huge chunks of blank canvas.

When I read that Sam Vimes stops and buys a sausage in a bun off of C.M.O.T Dibbler I can not only see Sator Square where they are standing I can smell the sausage.

In contrast to this I can read that some Bolhouse (a pub in Sonea’s world) is about to be destroyed by marauding Sachakan magicians (the bad magicians) and I really couldn’t give two figs. I haven’t a clue about the place in question other than the mere fact that it is a kind of pub and that they better have insurance. 

I am probably coming off sounding more displeased with this series than I mean to; it really isn’t bad but I feel that it lacks depth and a bit of originality and I am hoping that Canavan’s next installments will give me a bit less Potter and a bit more sense of her world and what she wants the reader to see.

View all my reviews

Man Walks into a Pub: A sociable History of Beer by Pete Brown

Man Walks into a Pub: A Sociable History of Beer by Pete Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read quite a few books on beer in the past and have found that typically they all have one thing in common: they are either monumentally dull or a total farce.

Weighty volumes that document the complete history of a particular brewery right down to what tiny changes were made to a particular recipe and when are all very well and good. No doubt they are of great interest to men with big bushy beards who wear cable knit jumpers and who carry note books around with them but they are a bit too serious and stodgy for the more casual reader.

On the flip side of the coin I don’t want to read a book written by some tracksuit wearing chav who just wants to brag about how he can drink 20 pints of Stella, fight some rival football fans and still drive his barely legal Vauxhall Nova that should have been scrapped before he was born.

That is where Pete Brown has got things bang on the money, he treats the subject seriously and manages to convey a lot of useful information whilst keeping things light and smattered with humour throughout.

By choosing to focus more on the social history of beer brewing and drinking he avoids bogging the reader down with some of the useless minutiae that a lot of the more serious beer books pride themselves on.

I am also very impressed with the way that Pete Brown handles the often tricky real ale vs. lager issue. A lot of writers fall heavily on one side of the fence or the other and as such we often hear lager being decried as tasteless or a children’s drink or ale being slagged off for being a drink for fat, bearded weirdos who need to get out more.

Whilst I have my own views on the matter I realise no one really wants to hear them, and in return I don’t really want to hear their views rehashed over and over again either.
So it was certainly pleasant to come across an author who wasn’t using their book as a soapbox to take pot shots at their target of choice.

If you have anything more than a passing interest in beer and have ever considered reading more about beer and drinking then you could do an awful lot worse than to take this book as a starting point.

View all my reviews

Terry Pratchett joins staff of Trinity College in Dublin

Fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett has been added to the academic staff of Trinity College University in Dublin.

Pratchett’s first lecture will take place on Thursday 4 November at 7 pm and has been entitled ‘The importance of being absolutely amazed about everything’.

“Professor Sir Terry Pratchett brings a new depth of creative genius to our cohort of distinguished international adjuncts in our School of English,” commented Provost John Hegarty.

“His contribution to the student experience and to the wider Trinity experience will be absolutely unique and we are delighted to have him on our staff.”

Just how awesome is this??

Imagine walking into your lecture and being greeted by arguably one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time!

See the article in full at : http://www.joe.ie/news-politics/current-affairs/terry-pratchett-joins-staff-at-trinity-college-dublin-006625-1

Tweet Tweet mother funkers

As you can probably guess this post is about twitter.

I was asked recently if I have twitter and indeed I do: https://twitter.com/TomWebster25

Not that I really use it that much but if you ever find that you are bored and can’t sleep than it might do the job

ASSociated content

Those of you that have been paying attention will remember that a little while ago I decided to see if there was any real benefit in joining up to a paid to write site such as suite 101 or Associated Content.

Well I joined up with AC and published a selection of reviews, guides, informative pieces etc on there. I also made sure that the same articles were published to my blog  so that I could compare the number of views that I received for one vs the other.

When I looked at things a couple of weeks ago it wasn’t great but I decided to soldier on; I can now confirm that it is completely pointless, at least for me.

In total I have had 230 views on AC approximately, the figures for the latest day are estimates, the same articles on this very blog have had over 700 hits during the same space of time!

I just wonder how this can possibly be beneficial to me? I need 5x the number of views before I would get anything out of AC and then it would be a measly $1.50, that isn’t even enough for a can of coke.

Some people might think that this would work for them and it might, but you would have to be churning out articles at a rapid pace, plus there is nothing about using AC that would help you improve as a writer.

Sure your articles are looked at by a “reviewer” to ensure that they are suitable but this is only the 1st three articles that you submit, after that you can post what you like when you like. Also these reviews of your work that are carried out are nothing more than checking to make sure that you have bunged in as many keywords as it possible in order to assist with SEO.

I never once received a single useful comment as you would from an actual human editor, I even threw in a few deliberate spelling and grammar errors in order to see if I would be pulled up on this by anyone, not a chance.

To top it all off I received an email from AC yesterday stating that it was very important.

So of course I read it, turns out that due to some tax mumbo jumbo in the states they can now only make a pay out to foreign contributors if they are one of their “featured contributors”; however from what I can see this is like sitting on top of the dung heap, sure you are on top but you are still sitting in a pile of shit.

Personally I would have to say that this experiment of mine has been a failure and I would say that if you are looking to get your foot in the door as a writer this certainly isn’t the best way to go about it.

Get yourself a good blog going instead

Spring Cleaning

Well it is very definitely spring and I have decided to do a little online spring cleaning.

I have decided to collate together my various different email addresses (a mighty 9?!?) into to one main address, tom-webster@live.com, so from now on feel free to send all your fan mail, marriage proposals and pay-pal donations here.

I also decided that I don’t want to run two separate blogs; especially since this one is such a jumble of various different topics!

As such I am going to be taking my various beer related musings from there existing home at Bottoms Up and moving them all here where they can reside alongside paedophile priests, spicy food, cute ducklings and my online gaming tales of woe.