The book I read to research this post was Anthropology For Dummies by Cameron M Smith which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is an introduction to the subject of anthropology and tries to demystify what is often considered a difficult subject. As with a lot of for dummies books it does a good job in that respect. In the old days anthropology was a bit of a quack subject carried out by a few eccentrics and often they were what we call social darwinists and didn't respect the new culture and couldn't wait to assimilate it into western ideas or thought the studied culture was going to die out anyway so they would just do a study of it before it did. What more serious anthropologists have discovered is we can learn alot about other ways of life and it can potentially help benefit our society and nowadays this subject is taken very seriously and of course they are a lot let eager to assimilate every culture into the western way of life. We can also learn a lot about ourselves and why our society is the way it is from studying this subject. We know we are descended from primates and that there are over 200+ types of people which is probably simplifying it a bit. One of the big questions in this subject is why people are so diverse. We know the first people probably came out of eastern Africa & of course gradually spread. In many cases at certain points there were landbridges like the Bering Straits which have long since gone. In Australia surprisingly there have been humans for at least 40,000 years which is surprising because this was more remote from anywhere else. In contrast Western Europe has only had people for 20,000 years. One of the big revolutions in humankind was growing crops and domesticating animals. Rice has been grown for 10,500 years, horses have been used for 5,000 years and even guinea pigs were being bread for food 3,000 years ago in Peru, perhaps surprisingly.I enjoyed reading this book and it is a decent length.

The book I read to research this post was Onward by Charles Schultz which is an excellent business autobiography which I bought from kindle. Charles is the ceo of Starbuck's, they always express job titles in lower case letters at that company and later on he was brought back into that role to turn the company around. Charles went on holiday to Italy in the early 70's and was impressed by the specialist coffee shops in Milan & Verona. He then started learning all he could about specialist coffee and how it should be prepared. He worked in a cafe that served instant coffee so he left his job and started his own coffee shop. 10 months later he earned enough to buy out his former employer and their name which was Starbuck's became the name of his company. This book is a kind of a sequel and is primarily about when he was brought back as ceo. One thing he discovered was that the employees didn't make the coffee properly. When they made cappucchino they often put the milk in the milk frother more than once which broke down the sweetness of the milk. When they made espresso they either poured it to quickly or too slowly which spoilt the consistency which should be similiar to that of honey. He closed down all his shops in America and retaught his workers their job which many thought was corporate suicide and cost the company millions but paid off in the long run. They also reintroduced sandwiches at breakfast which they had previously only been doing on request which resulted in a cut in their revenue. This many people requested be reintroduced. Starbuck's is one of the best employers anywhere and even gives shares to it's part time employees. Employees are called partners. It has a very strict but fair policy on the products it buys where it pays more than the market price but the highest standards are expected. Workers don't wear after shave or perfume in case it taints the coffee. Starbuck's has also become a cyber-cafe and was among the first to see the benefits of social networking. Believe me this is a heck of a good read and I think any business person will love this book.

I am reviewing the psychological thriller novel Guilt by Jonathan Kellerman which is a very good story and which I bought from a local supermarket. This book is part of the Alex Delaware series featuring a psychologist who works for the police in Los Angeles along with his partner Milo Sturgis. These stories tend to cover serial killings and this is no exception. The story centres on a well to do neighbourhood where there has been a spate of ritual killings done some time ago. The first one discovered is by a lady who is 5 months pregnant and is in a large metal container in a huge tree in her garden at the house she has recently moved into. There has been problems with the tree which has dead wood and it's as one of the large branches comes down, the metal box is exposed. The body has been there quite a long time. There is the body of a baby later discovered and it becomes apparent the killer is a doctor who used to drive an old classis car called a Duisburg and due to its age there are no records of it. They discover there were 3 of these cars in the area. This isn't as good as some of the other stories in the series but is still pretty good. I think When The Bough Breaks is my favourite. Anyway there is a happy ending and the story is nicely paced. Jonathan used to be a very distinguished psychologist prior to becoming an author and has written some factual books on the subject in addition to his thrillers. He is a gifted writer and most of his fiction books are Alex Delaware novels. I am surprised no one has made any of them into films as I they think they would be quite popular.

I am reviewing the adventure novel The Storm by Clive Cussler et al which is an excellent story which I bought from a local supermarket. In Britain this novel has only just been released on the paperback bestsellers chart and is currently doing quite well. It's part of the Kurt Austin series or the NUMA files as it is sometimes called. Actually he also does a Dirk Pitt series who also reputedly works for NUMA in a fiction sense and occasionally features as Kurt's boss in these novels. This novel kicks off in World war 2 with an American ship being hunted by the Japanese before it is destroyed for it's precious cargo. Actually the main theme of the story is nanotechnology and we later learn that the famed German scientist Wernher Von Braun as part of the story was working on nanotechnology which is creating many microscopic robots which can digest material and replicate and turn it into something else.There was a real scientist called Wernher who helped develop rockets in Germany during the war and later he defected to America where he was a key member of the Space Program. As part of the story there is a plan to change the climate pattern of the world to benefit the Middle East. There are 2 tyrants 1 in Northern Yemen & 1 in China that Kurt must hunt down. There is also a NUMA research vessel that falls victim to these nanotechnological bots. Incidently I did a post on Nanotechnology at http://scratbagroberts.com which is my main technology blog. It may be worth reading. Kurt comes across some survivors from the WW2 ship called the Roosevelts living on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean and worshipping American culture like a religion which results in some rather amusing questions for Kurt that he must get right and with a name like his at first they assume he must be German. He also has to pilot a seaplane and hasn't got a clue how to land it safely. They do say that is the most difficult aspect of flying. There is a nice young lady that helps Kurt and it has quite a happy ending as with all Cussler novels. I found the book very enjoyable and the plot is one of his best.

The book I read to research this post was A Newbies Guide To Nexus 7 by Minute Help Guides which is fairly short but a very good book which I downloaded from kindle. I have done a couple of posts on the Nexus 7 at my technology blog at

http://scratbagroberts.com

This is my computing blog but I thought this is a relevant subject for this blog too. The Nexus 7 is a digital tablet which is much cheaper than the current leading tablet the iPad by Apple but has a similiar amount of processing power and on the whole does away with some of the more superfluous features like a sim card in favour of wi-fi & bluetooth which it still uses but also is very cheap for a tablet especially with the features it has. It generally needs a wi-fi network to do things like install apps via your computer or a wireless hotpoint. It's worth mentioning Google were giving away $25 away in the form of a voucher if you joined Google Play for you to download apps and I know currently give away 1 paid app free every day. It's worth noting Google remove any apps that get a lot of negative reviews but don't check them as such like Apple do with the Appstore. It's best to check reviews prior to downloading an app to make sure it's value for money.

The Nexus holds a charge for 300 hours, lets you watch 9 hours of video & lets you read a book for 10 hours when fully charged. It has a 7 inch screen measured diagonally. You can watch video in high definition. I noticed in a technology magazine that rated digital tablets it was 2nd behind the iPad and it has the latest form of the Android Operating System 4.1 and as new features are rolled out you can update that via a wireless connection to the internet. This book keeps it simple & I think was a free or very cheap download but I think if you want something more detailed on the Nexus I would recommend the book Google Nexus 7 For Dummies by Dan Gookin.

I am reviewing the fantasy novel The Crippled God by Steven Erikson which is an excellent book which I bought from a local bookstore. This book was part of the Malazon Book Of The Fallen fantasy series which has to be one of the greatest of this type of series ever written. Quite a long time ago before I did fiction book reviews I read the first 8 books of this series and this is the 10th and final book and there is a kind of spin off book of short stories. Each of the books of the series is around 900 pages so it will take up a lot of time reading it but it's quite rewarding. Also they are really for adults as they are quite violent but apparently it did well in a poll of fantasy book series of the Millennium. The books are set in and around a country called Malaza & in this book there are various groups vying for control including someone with an impressive army who wishes to challenge the gods, little realizing you need to be dead to become a god. There is another group who wish to reintroduce dragons to the desert where they once roamed and they do come in handy in one of the battles where they smell blood and decide to eat the enemy who at the time are winning. There is a female good character who leads a coalition on a knife edge of collapsing. It turns out she is pregnant and even who own troops think they are done for and suggest slaughtering the horses for food. She does insist on sticking with it and there is a happy ending. There is also a group who want to slaughter all humans and start the evolutionary cycle all over again. I would suggest if you read this series start with the 1st book because otherwise it gets quite confusing keeping up with what is going on. The early books have a section that explains the various characters which is handy although it's a nuisance having to keep referring to it. I am going to re read this series again and I can review it on here so that might be quite interesting. The last few hundred pages of this book are very exciting and I think this final book is a worthy ending to what is a great series. It's strange to think the 1st book was turned down by many publishers before a relatively less well known publisher decided to take a chance with it.

I am reviewing the film We Are The East which is an excellent ecothriller. This film stars Brit Marling & Ellen Page. Marling plays someone who is concerned about an ecoterrorist group called The East who target people in business who do things like sell unsafe drugs or pollute the environment and agrees to infiltrate the organisation. She is taken on by an agency that works on behalf of paying customers in big business and they operate similiar to a spy organisation. As she infiltrates the terrorist group she starts to see their point and while disagreeing with actually killing people wants to help them. Ellen plays a fellow terrorist whose father is a corrupt businessman who pollutes the water tables in many areas with illegal waste but has somehow got away with it. At one point Ellen dies in the film and there is a poignant scene where another ecoterrorist says he would gladly give up they have achieved to get her back alive. It's an unusual topic and a great story & I really enjoyed it. Also the agency Marling works for is only interested in pleasing clients and getting new ones and couldn't care less about upholding the law. As time gores on the ecoterrorists who believe in do unto them as they would do unto others starts out dumping oil in the house of someone responsible for a big oil slick but do get more extreme ie they try to force Page's parents to bathe in a polluted creek which should result in a painful death due to the toxins dumped in it. By the end of the movie the terrorist group is coming apart at the seams and Brit must choose where her loyalties lie. Neither side is perfect.

I am reviewing the album Live Your Life Be Free by Belinda Carlisle which is a very good album. I did pay a visit to the Wikipedia page on Belinda Carlisle to research this post which is worth a visit. The best way to find it is to enter her name into Google and it is one of the top results. Belinda was the lead singer with the Go-Go's who were one of the most successful all girl groups of all time and were a prominent new wave group. She is probably best known as a female soloist however. Her 2nd solo album was a kind of soft rock and featured Heaven On Earth which topped the singles chart in lots of countries including the USA & UK. She has had a very successful career since and Live Your Life Be Free continued in the soft rock direction. There are 2 really good singles the title track & I Plead Insanity. The title track is probably the best track on the album. There is some alternate versions of these songs on these songs on there to. Nowadays Belinda is very much into Buddhism, spends much of her time in France & even released a French language recorded album in 2007. She did also have a reunion with the Go-Go's which resulted in an album and single but as with a lot of reunions the music wasn't as good as their earlier stuff.

I am reviewing the novel The White Princess by Philippa Gregory which is an excellent historical fiction book which I bought from a local supermarket. I think the ending of this novel is the climax of the Cousin's War series based on the story of the Plantangenet rulers and at the end we see the beginning of the Tudor house. Philippa has a PhD from Edinburgh University and really seems to know her history. This book almost reads like an eyewitness account and she is a stickler to the facts in her stories. She has already done a series based on the Tudors so this series is a nice add on. This novel starts with the Battle Of Bosworth & Richard the 3rd's death and how Henry the 7th became king despite there being an unknown disease that many is a punishment from God. Henry marries Richard's sister to try and unite the Houses of Lancaster & York. At first his bride is reluctant to have anything to do with him and considers the sex they have to be rape and can't believe his mother actually condones it. As times goes on she warms to him gradually but when a pretender who is just a boy is trying to take the thrown although there are other people behind it. He eventually gets a job in Henry's kitchens and she is grateful to him for sparing him. Two other people claiming to be her cousin and brother aren't so lucky. Henry goes to all the trouble of staging an invasion of France just so the king will hand these 2 over. They do flee to Flanders but are eventually captured in Spain and handed over. At the end of the day the young lad claiming to be her brother does believe he has a genuine right to the throne and his sister despises how he is treated. It's a great story and I think it shows the best stories are often real life stories.

The book I read to research this post was Promote Your Business Or Cause Using Social Media by Dennis Smith which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book which is around 170 pages is a reasonable length and a good introduction to this subject although if like me you are quite savvy about social media it might not offer that much new information. There is quite a large section on Facebook which is quite interesting and something I didn't know is if you promote a business or cause on a personal profile page which is quite common that is a serious infringement of their rules. Also if you have a page like a product you don't need to authorize every like button message you get which is the equivalent of a friend's request on a personal profile. There is a substantially shorter section on pinterest and this site boasts predominantly women users and apparently the average user clocks up 89 minutes on this site every month. The figure for Google+ is 3 minutes per month. Twitter is another powerhouse on the social media front with micro blogging which they call tweets which has now become a part of our language. I did quite enjoy reading this book and there is some interesting stuff on BlogTalkRadio where you can upload a podcast and there is the option of using the website which is free or downloading the software which you pay for but has additional features. There website is http://blogtalkradio.com.