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Running with the Enemyby Lloyd Lofthouse was awarded an honorable mention in general fiction at the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival.

The winner of the general fiction category went to John Irving’s In One Personpublished by Simon & Schuster, and the grand prize was awarded to The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen & Live Without Regret by Richie Norton with Natalie Norton — Shadow Mountain Publishing.

John Irving won the National Book Award in 1980 for The World According to Garp, and he received an O. Henry Award in 1981 for the short story “Interior Space. In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules.

Richard Norton, the grand prize winner of the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival, is the CEO of Global Consulting Circle. He is a sought…

Ivan Doig is at his best when his pen carries us to the rugged small towns and sheep ranches of Montana.

My first visit to Doig country was in “This House of Sky” (a finalist of the 1979 National Book Award). His latest book did not disappoint as it continued to vividly capture a way of life that has almost vanished in our Facebook, fast food, You Tube world where attention spans are often less than 30 seconds.

“The Bartender’s Tale” takes place in the summer of 1960. And when I finished reading, I envied the 12 year old boy—Rusty—who is the main character of the novel. I envied Rusty because of his father and that fact he was growing up in the small town of Gros Ventre, Montana where no one stays a stranger for long.

His father Tom is a legendary bartender, who owns an equally legendary Montana…

In the United States, Digital Book World.com reported, “In 2012, for the first time ever, online channels accounted for more book purchases than bricks-and-mortar retail in the U.S., according to new data from Bowker Market Research.

“In 2012 (through Nov.), 43.8% of books bought by consumers were sold online versus 31.6% sold in large retail chains, independent bookstores, other mass merchandisers and supermarkets. This is nearly a direct reversal of the situation in 2011, when 35.1% of books were sold online and 41.7% were sold in stores.”

In addition, Jeff Bezos said in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report, “After five years, e-books [are] a multibillion-dollar category for us and growing fast—up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just five percent.” Source: Business Week.com (January 31, 2013)

Let’s look at…

Rape—experts say—is a crime of power and control more than sex. Underlying it all is a sense of arrogance, and on sites such as Amazon, we often have no idea who we are talking to or where they live because they are mostly hiding behind an anonymous, false identity.

The following list summarizes how I was treated starting several weeks after I posted a comment for a brief and poorly written review left by an anonymous Amazon book reviewer for another author’s book. What I wrote was not a review. What I wrote was a comment expressing my opinion of a review. I have since deleted that comment on Amazon and left another comment in its place in addition to explaining why I did it (six customers–guess who they might be—don’t think this post adds to the discussion and it was hidden—-click on “show post anyway”…

So one of the good things from Obama’s State of the Union speech is his proposal for universal pre-kindergarten education–if nothing else it will help women re-enter (or stay in) the workforce. As is the case with any broadly popular proposal, conservatives oppose it. A Heritage Foundation hack explains (boldface mine):

A conservative policy would give money that otherwise would be spent on Head Start to parents so that they could put their children in private or church-based preschools, said Lindsey Burke, an education fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

“Head Start has been a 48-year-long failed experiment with government preschool, and I’m afraid we’ll see more of the same, based on the president’s proposals,” Burke said.

She said birth to age 5 was a pivotal learning period, “which is why I wouldn’t want the government involved in such a critical time. We want children…

The other day, I came across a tweet about a Wisconsin school being investigated for teaching white privilege. Apparently, a parent at this particular school became very upset after reading the content of a course her son was taking titled “American Diversity.” The mother felt the curriculum was being used to teach white students that they are racist and oppressive. She also felt the lesson on white privilege made her son feel unearned guilt for being white.

I can’t speak to how the material was presented or what the exact lesson plans were, but my takeaway is simple: kids aren’t the only ones who need these lesson—adults do, too.

I have attended every book club meeting at my school. I’ve never missed a National Honor Society meeting, a Math Honor Society meeting, a Social Studies Honor Society meeting, or a Latin Honor Society meeting. But when I tell people that I’ve never attended a high school football game, I am always asked the same question: what’s wrong with you?

What’s wrong with me? Let’s take a look at what’s wrong with America’s schools first.