Author Spotlight: Gillian McKeith
March 25, 2008 by Romy
Scottish nutritionist and health guru Gillian McKeith has been a household name across the pond for several years now, hosting several popular British television programs and penning bestselling guidebooks and recipe collections.
Inspired by her father’s passing due to lung cancer, McKeith made a vow to dedicate her life to the crusade for anti-smoking and health awareness that led her to meet her husband, the owner of a successful health food store chain in the United States. While in the USA, McKeith appeared regularly as a health correspondent on television, including a stint on the Joan Rivers talk show. Her family now resides in the UK where McKeith runs a successful online business promoting her popular diet programme and food products.
McKeith’s programme takes a holistic approach to nutrition and ill health, promoting exercise, a pescetarian vegetarian diet high in organic fruits and vegetables, and suggesting the avoidance of processed and high-calorie foods. She recommends detox diets, colonic irrigation and supplements, also making statements that yeast is harmful and that the color of food is nutritionally significant, which has led her methods to be questioned by many health professionals.
Her bestselling book, You are What You Eat, has sold well over one million copies since it was first published in 2005.
You Are What You Eat
By Gillian McKeith
Love and Consequences – Consequences of a White Lie?
March 14, 2008 by S C
Upon receiving media praise and rave reviews within the literary world for her ‘memoir’ “In Love and Consequences” – a tale of growing up as a foster child and gang member in South Central Los Angeles – author Margaret B.Jones has since had her “ghetto pass” revoked. Margaret B.Jones depicts herself as being a half-white, half Indian youngster brought up by a black foster mother she refers to as “Big Mom”. She jots down the moment in which her brother was shot and killed by members of the notorious L.A. street gang, the Crips while she transported weapons and moonlighted as a drug aficionado for the Crip’s block rivals, the Bloods. But alas, it appears that Margaret B. Jones – I mean, Margaret Seltzer might have had a bit too much 40 oz. in the system to pull off the Girl In The Hood routine and make the clean getaway. Seltzer attended private schools growing up as a well off suburbanite and couldn’t hold a joint let alone last a few seconds in one. Seltzer, a Caucasian in her early 30’s, went on record by admitting that she is not a product of the environment that she depicts in her book. As a result, she is being found accountable for fraudulence and pleads guilty on all counts of legitimacy, her memoir of “hope and survival” has being recalled by the publisher and her book tour cancelled. Case Closed.
Tower Book Club, March Selection: Lush Life by Richard Price
March 14, 2008 by Romy
After 5 years, Richard Price has finally delivered his latest masterpiece of detective fiction in Lush Life. If you’ve been following the hit shows on HBO lately, you’ll know that the urban gritty reality of cities is something worth paying attention to – just check out The Sopranos or The Wire. In fact, Price has been a writer for The Wire, so can just imagine the setting for Lush Life.
Set in New York, actually in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to be more specific. Where a murder has just taken place early one morning in a dive bar. What unfolds is a masterful detective story, devoid of the classic clichés and full of the suspense and character richness that we have come to expect from Price. We are invited into understanding the dialogues and relationship found in big cities between cops and criminals, bartenders and their alcoholics, disenfranchised artists and their successful counterparts, and so forth. For a truly filmic experience while reading a novel, check out Richard Price’s novel Lush Life. For a unique experience – try a copy of the audio Lush Life and listen to it in your car as you drive through your own city.
Go Digital with Scott Kelby
March 14, 2008 by S C
Scott Kelby, the man who changed the “digital darkroom” forever with his groundbreaking, #1 bestselling, award-winning book The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, now tackles the most important side of digital photography–how to take pro-quality shots using the same tricks today’s top digital pros use (and it’s easier than you’d think). This entire book is written with a brilliant premise, and here’s how Scott describes it: “If you and I were out on a shoot, and you asked me, ‘Hey, how do I get this flower to be in focus, but I want the background out of focus?’ I wouldn’t stand there and give you a lecture about aperture, exposure, and depth of field. In real life, I’d just say, ‘Get out your telephoto lens, set your f/stop to f/2.8, focus on the flower, and fire away.’ You d say, ‘OK,’ and you’d get the shot. That’s what this book is all about. A book of you and I shooting, and I answer the questions, give you advice, and share the secrets I’ve learned just like I would with a friend, without all the technical explanations and without all the techno-photo-speak.” This isn’t a book of theory—it isn’t full of confusing jargon and detailed concepts: this is a book of which button to push, which setting to use, when to use them, and nearly two hundred of the most closely guarded photographic “tricks of the trade” to get you shooting dramatically better-looking, sharper, more colorful, more professional-looking photos with your digital camera every time you press the shutter button. Here’s another thing that makes this book different: each page covers just one trick, just one single concept that makes your photography better. Every time you turn the page, you’ll learn another pro setting, another pro tool, another pro trick to transform your work from snapshots into gallery prints. There’s never been a book like it, and if you’re tired of taking shots that look “OK,” and if you’re tired of looking in photography magazines and thinking, “Why don’t my shots look like that?” then this is the book for you.
Dungeons & Dragons Creator Dies
March 14, 2008 by Romy
Perhaps you heard soft whimpering of a RPG fanatic crying this week? Ernest Gary Gygax, the ingenious co-creator of the world’s most popular fantasy role-playing games — Dungeons & Dragons – passed away this past Tuedsay at the age of 69. Since its creation in 1974, Dungeons and Dragons has taken the gaming and fantasy world by storm. In addition to the hundreds of books available, there are also films, a cartoon, accoutrements and soundtracks all based on D&D. Or maybe you need a little more sci-fi adventure in your reading? Check out the various fiction novels, like Cityscape or Complete Warrior that bring D&D to life!
Click here to browse the entire Wizards of the Coast book selection on Tower.com
