Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program

by Eric Giguere (Author)
Get your Web site to "show you the money" by using Google to draw more eyes--and wallets--to your content. In this friendly, four-color guide from veteran author and Web developer Eric Giguere, you'll learn all about Google's AdSense program and how you can use it to make your Web site or blog more profitable. Written in an easy-to-read, non-technical style, this book follows three average people--Claude, Stef, and Anita--as they learn to create money-making blogs and Web sites. Through their experiences, you'll learn: basic Web terminology; the Google Adsense nuts and bolts; how to host, build, and publish targeted ads and Google search boxes to your Web site; filter out inappropriate ads; track page performance; drive traffic to your site; and more. A four-part companion Web site features a blog, includes reader resources, and details the techniques discussed in the book.
Online marketers agree that AdSense is one of the best tools you can use to draw dollars to your site. Let Giguere show you how to make the most of Google and have fun doing it!

A Thousand Splendid Suns

By Jennifer Reese

Laura Bush loved it. Isabel Allende loved it. Howard Stern loved it; so did The New York Times. Afghan-born Khaled Hosseini's 2003 novel The Kite Runner arrived at the perfect post-9/11 moment, hooking readers curious about the suddenly notorious Islamic nation of Afghanistan, then reeling them in with a deeply affecting and sentimental melodrama of undying friendship, treachery, Taliban cruelty, and redemption. The novel affirmed the humanity of ordinary Afghans while decrying the barbarity of their erstwhile leaders, and became a top pick for book clubs across America. It has spent more than two years on the best-seller list and sold more than 4 million copies.

While Afghanistan has virtually disappeared from the headlines, Hosseini's follow-up, A Thousand Splendid Suns, offers all the crowd-pleasing appeal of his debut, with some star-crossed lovers thrown in for good measure. The main action begins in the early 1970s, when 15-year-old Mariam, after her mother's suicide, is forced to marry Rasheed, a much older Kabul shoemaker. One of the most repulsive males in recent literature, Rasheed has ''watery bloodshot eyes'' and fingernails ''yellow brown, like the inside of a rotting apple.''

He's not just ugly on the outside: He keeps his nubile bride under a burka, essentially tethered to the grounds of their shabby house where, over the years, she gradually loses beauty, teeth, and her fighting spirit.But through the turbulent 1980s and '90s, another would-be heroine is growing up down the street. Pretty Laila has a liberal, bookish father and a best friend named Tariq, who eventually becomes the focus of her sexualawakening,described in regrettably purple prose: ''When he was near, she couldn't help but be consumed with the most scandalous thoughts, of his lean, bare body entangled with hers...'' Tariq feels the same, but there is one force stronger than young love: history. Mujahideen rockets rain on Kabul; Tariq and his elderly parents flee to Pakistan; and through a hideous twist of fate, Laila ends up, at 14, as Rasheed's second wife. There's no joy in this grotesque union, but Laila's slow-growing friendship with Mariam sustains and transforms the women over the gruesome years that follow.Hosseini's depiction of Mariam and Laila's plight would seem cartoonishly crude if it were not, by all accounts, a sadly accurate version of what many Afghan women have experienced. The romantic twists and fairy-tale turns are not so accurate. But, as in The Kite Runner, they are precisely what make the novel such a stirring read. Childhood promises are sacred; true love never dies; justice will be done; sisterhood is powerful. It's unrealistic, and almost impossible to resist. B+

NYTimes Best Sellers List. (200408)

Fiction

01. "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri
02. "Small Favor" by Jim Butcher
03. "Compulsion" by Jonathan Kellerman
04. "The Appeal" by John Grisham
05. "Belong to Me" by Maria de los Santos
06. "Change of Heart" by Jodi Picoult
07. "Remember Me?" by Sophie Kinsella
08. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
09. "7th Heaven" by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
10. "Winter Study" by Nevada Barr

Nonfiction

01. "Mistaken Identity" by Don and Susie Van Ryn and Newell, Colleen and

Whitney Cerak, with Mark Tabb
02. "Home" by Julie Andrews
03. "Beautiful Boy" by David Sheff
04. "Armageddon in Retrospect" by Kurt Vonnegut
05. "Vindicated" by Jose Conseco
06. "Brett Favre: The Tribute" From Sports Illustrated Magazine
07. "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan
08. "The Bin Ladens" by Steve Coll
09. "Stori Telling" by Tori Spelling with Hilary Liftin
10. "Losing It" by Valerie Bertinelli

Walk Two Moons

Thirteen-year-old Salamanca Tree Hiddle leads a perfectly normal life in Bybanks, Ky. -- a small town nestled on the edge of the Ohio River. "Sal" enjoys living in this ideal rural community, with plenty of space and a good view of the river. It is the type of town where you can walk down the street and recognize everyone who passes by.
Sal lives on a farm with her grandparents, mother and father. But when Sal's mother, Chanhassen , unexpectedly announces that she's
leaving her family and going to Lewiston, Idaho, to "find herself," Sal's normal world suddenly begins to unravel.
Sal and her father are crushed by Chanhassen's absence. Margaret Cadaver, an acquaintance of Sal's mother, convinces Mr. Hiddle to find a change of scenery. Reluctantly, Sal's father packs up and drags his unwilling and upset daughter to their new home in a box-like suburb near Cleveland, Ohio:
"...My father plucked me up like a weed and took me and all our belongings (no, that is not true - he did not bring the chestnut tree, the
willow, the maple, the hayloft, or the swimming hole, which all belonged to me) and we drove three hundred miles straight north and stopped in front of a house in Euclid?"

In Euclid, Sal meets unforgettable characters like Phoebe Winterbottom, a "respectable" 13-year-old worrywart, and Mrs. Partridge, Margaret Cadaver's blind mother. As time passes, Sal gets used to living in Euclid, although she still misses her grandparents and Bybanks.
Sal and Phoebe become fast friends, and Sal begins spending most of her time at Phoebe's house, which ironically is located next door to Margaret Cadaver's. One day, when Phoebe finds a mysterious note on her doorstep, its meaning initially confuses her: Don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccasins. Phoebe wonders what this cryptic message has to do with her life, until Sal helps her discover the surprising, intertwined relationship between the message and herself.
Over a year later, Sal's mom still hasn't returned. Because her dad still does things like weep over family albums, Sal senses that he is not ready to go searching for answers. She convinces her grandparents to travel to Idaho to find Chanhassen. Sal believes that if she gets to Lewiston by her mother's birthday, she will be able to bring her back and everything will return to the way that it used to be.
During the long car trip to Lewiston, many stories begin to unfold. Sal tells her grandparents about Phoebe and the mysterious messages -- and the potential lunatic whom she believes is sending them. Also on their journey, readers learn more about the characters' lives. These stories are a key element to the reader's understanding of the story.
Walk Two Moons is a thought-provoking tale that uses humor and a well-written plot to enlighten its readers. Its insightful themes are expressed in a very creative way, as the messages that Phoebe discovers on her doorstep: In the course of a lifetime, what does it matter? And, You can't keep the birds of sadness from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.
I enjoyed Walk Two Moons so much that I also read Sharon Creech's other novels, including Chasing Redbird, Absolutely Normal
Chaos, Bloomability and The Wanderer. Although these books are not a series, the characters and settings are linked. For example, Absolutely Normal Chaos tells the story of Mary Lou Finney, one of Sal's friends from Euclid, and Chasing Redbird is about Zinny Taylor, Sal's best friend from Bybanks.

Walk Two Moons is a must-read for kids ages 11 and up. Adults would also enjoy this book. It won a well-deserved Newbery Medal in 1995.

Chocolat

Joanne Harris was born in her grandparents' candy shop in France and is the great-granddaughter of a woman known locally as a witch and a healer. As most first novels often carry a fair-sized load of autobiographical elements, it comes as no surprise that Chocolat is set in a chocolatiers' shop owned by a mysteriously bewitching woman in the south of France. Harris blends these familiar (to her) ingredients to create a novel as delightful and indulgent as the taste it celebrates.
Free-spirited drifter Vianne Rocher blows into the tiny French hamlet of Lansquenet on a warm February wind, right behind the Shrove Tuesday carnival. Sensing something special about this conservative little town just off the tourist maps, Vianne decides to stay for a while. She and her precocious young daughter Anouk alight in the village square, setting up a chocolate shop right across from the town's Catholic church. As in any small town, the locals are chary of strangers, but Vianne's almost preternatural sensitivities to their needs and desires draws the townspeople to her and her shop. One notable exception: the village priest, a suspicious man whose secret guilt and shame ties him fast to a community whose petty sins and predictable ways he despises.
A band of gypsies making camp in their houseboats on the river outside town becomes a flashpoint between Father Reynaud and his "Bible groupies" and the newcomer and her friends. While Vianne tries to help an abused woman get out of her marriage, to reconcile a dying woman with her estranged grandson and to console an old man who is losing his best friend, Reynaud connives to put a stop to the chocolate festival Vianne has planned for Easter Sunday. He is convinced that such a debauch must be planned by a minion of the devil. Certain that Vianne can only be a witch, Reynaud pits himself against the supposed author of the paroxysm of sinful indulgence ruining his flock. This contest of wills for the spirit of a community rolls toward a final confrontation that is funny, sad, and deliciously ironic.
Not quite as profound as it wants to be, Chocolat delivers a sweetly satisfying story all the same. The Catholic Church takes some hard knocks without any answering redemption. "Good," in the guise of treating yourself, inevitably triumphs over "evil" Lenten (and other) asceticism. But there's no way the pursed-lipped priest is going to win the battle of appealing against the delightful Vianne. Period. This ode to the kitchen and the heart was made into a movie (that garnered several Oscar nominations) starring beautiful people Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche, and tasted just as delicious to theater-goers. May Joanne Harris continue to make good on the promise she shows here.

The Kite Runner

THE KITE RUNNER is an outstanding first novel, devoid of the cliches the blurb might have presaged. The characters have life and complexity, the story is involving and relevant to the present sociopolitical climate, being centred in Afghanistan over the last forty years, and the Afghan community in America. The author, KHALED HOSSEINI, an Afghani who has lived in America since his family received political asylum in 1980, is a skilled and gifted writer.

Amir is the son of Baba, a huge Pashtun, "a force of nature", who is something of a legend, with a story that he had once wrestled a black bear. The son wants desperately to be thought well of by his towering father, who is the sort of man brave enough to risk being shot by a Russian soldier in order to defend a young woman from rape. To counter this legendary status, which could reduce the character to cartoon hero, the author has Amir’s tortured asides to temper it ("Do you always have to be the hero?"), as well as Baba’s own, gradually revealed, complicated personality.

Baba has servants, the polio-afflicted Ali and his cleft-lipped son Hassan, Hazaras who are teased mercilessly by the older children of the area, and persecuted because of their perceived lower status. But Ali and Baba are more than servant and master: they grew up together, and the bond between them is strong. Hassan’s mother ran away five days after the birth, and Amir’s mother bled to death after he was born: the two boys were nursed by the same woman, at Baba’s instigation, forging another bond that is not easily broken.

But Amir is cruel to Hassan, just as much as he values his friendship, and loves him in his own way. Hassan stands up for Amir time and again, but Amir fails his friend, and on one particular day, the day of the famous kite flying contest, he fails him in a way which haunts him for years to come.

The kite flying contests occur every year in their neighbourhood, and the crucial one which forms the moral centrepoint of this novel is in 1975, when Amir is thirteen. It is brilliantly told, every detail described to advance the story, and colour the images forming in the reader’s mind of the world in which the characters live. Amir is a deeply flawed young man, lacking the courage which his father possesses so abundantly, and yet I also felt him to be very likable and sympathetic, which attests to the skill of the author in developing his characters as rounded and vital entities.

The narrative makes integral the political events occuring throughout the time period from the 1970s through to 2001, so that we get an idea of the effects wrought by the Russian invasion, the Mujaheddin and the Taliban. Hosseini is capable of writing very moving, but unsentimental prose, particularly about

people struggling to make a life despite gross adversity. He is able to meld the global political with the local everyday survival of those caught up in horrendous upheavals and the destruction of their country, livelihoods and families.

I have obtained, through powerful storytelling, a feeling of what it is like to be an Afghan, to see one’s beautiful country destroyed, to live in fear. The author is able to depict moral complexities without clunkiness, instead catching the breath, and heart, of the reader. Because of this skill, I feel he is able to do risky things with both character and plot, so that any occasional moment where the reader’s credulity could be stretched turns out to be a moment of immensely satisfying narrative pleasure.

This is, apparently, the first Afghan novel to be written in English. It is a most distinguished beginning.

(the movie site is here: http://www.kiterunnermovie.com/ will have to wait until it releases in India)

CHANGE OF HEART

by Jodi Picoult
Shay Bourne - New Hampshire’s first death row prisoner in 69 years – has only one last request: to donate his heart post-execution to the sister of his victim, who is looking for a transplant. Bourne says it’s the only way he can redeem himself…but with lethal injection as his form of execution, this is medically impossible. Enter Father Michael Wright, a young local priest. Called in as Shay’s spiritual advisor, he knows redemption has nothing to do with organ donation – and plans to convince Bourne. But then Bourne begins to perform miracles at the prison that are witnessed by officers, fellow inmates, and even Father Michael – and the media begins to call him a messiah. Could an unkempt, bipolar, convicted murderer be a savior? It seems highly unlikely, to the priest. Until he realizes that the things Shay says may not come from the Bible…but are, verbatim, from a gospel that the early Christian church rejected two thousand years ago…and that is still considered heresy.
Change Of Heart looks at the nature of organized religion and belief, and takes the reader behind the closely drawn curtains of America’s death penalty. Featuring the return of Ian Fletcher from keeping Faith, it also asks whether religion and politics truly are separate in this country, or inextricably tangled. Does religion make us more tolerant, or less? Do we believe what we do because it’s right? Or because it’s too frightening to admit that we may not have the answers?

Nineteen Minutes

by Jodi Picoult

In this emotionally charged novel, Jodi Picoult delves beneath the surface of a small town to explore what it means to be different in our society.
In Sterling, New Hampshire, 17-year-old high school student Peter Houghton has endured years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of classmates. His best friend, Josie Cormier, succumbed to peer pressure and now hangs out with the popular crowd that often instigates the harassment. One final incident of bullying sends Peter over the edge and leads him to commit an act of violence that forever changes the lives of Sterling’s residents.
Even those who were not inside the school that morning find their lives in an upheaval, including Alex Cormier. The superior court judge assigned to the Houghton case, Alex—whose daughter, Josie, witnessed the events that unfolded—must decide whether or not to step down. She’s torn between presiding over the biggest case of her career and knowing that doing so will cause an even wider chasm in her relationship with her emotionally fragile daughter. Josie, meanwhile, claims she can’t remember what happened in the last fatal minutes of Peter’s rampage. Or can she? And Peter’s parents, Lacy and Lewis Houghton, ceaselessly examine the past to see what they might have said or done to compel their son to such extremes. Nineteen Minutes also features the return of two of Jodi Picoult’s characters—defense attorney Jordan McAfee from The Pact and Salem Falls, and Patrick DuCharme, the intrepid detective introduced in Perfect Match.
Rich with psychological and social insight, Nineteen Minutes is a riveting, poignant, and thought-provoking novel that has at its center a haunting question. Do we ever really know someone?