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An Observance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Free Kindle Nation Shorts – October 21, 2010 – An Excerpt from Beyond the Pink Moon: A Memoir of Legacy, Loss and Survival By Nicki Boscia Durlester

By Stephen Windwalker
Editor of Kindle Nation Daily ©Kindle Nation Daily 2010
Special thanks to IndieAuthor agitator and author services provider April Hamilton for a big assist in helping us to observe Breast Cancer Awareness Month with this poignant, positive, but unshirking excerpt from Nicki Boscia Durlester’s memoir Beyond the Pink Moon: A Memoir of Legacy, Loss and Survival. As April told me when she shared the excerpt, “this is an important book that can help many, many people—not only those dealing with breast cancer, but their friends and family too.”
Here’s the set-up:
In this touching, frank and informative memoir, Nicki Boscia
Durlester intimately chronicles her transformational journey after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Her story begins with her mother, who was diagnosed with the disease in 1962: a time when breast cancer was only discussed behind closed doors, and long before women took an active role in their diagnosis and treatment.

Nicki provides unique insight into being part of a large Italian-
American family afflicted with the BRCA2 gene, and shares poignant stories about her mother and aunts who faced breast and ovarian cancer with extraordinary grace and courage.

Nicki writes candidly about her frustration in finding the right team of doctors as well as the highs and lows of her journey, sharing humor and heart along the way. She puts a human face on the statistics ranking breast cancer as the second leading cause of death of women in the United States.

This deeply moving story of legacy, loss and ultimately survival is told through the eyes of a daughter who shared an unbreakable bond with her mother. As she travels the scary, unpredictable road through her own diagnosis, treatment and recovery, Nicki discovers the most difficult challenge she faces becomes the most spiritually transcendent experience of her life.


 

or

Click on the title below to download the complete novel to your Kindle or Kindle app for just $2.99.

Beyond the Pink Moon: A Memoir of Legacy, Loss and Survival

by Nicki Boscia Durlester
Kindle Price: $2.99

Text-to-Speech: Enabled
excerptFree Kindle Nation Shorts – October 21, 2010


An Excerpt from 

 Beyond the Pink Moon:
A Memoir of Legacy, Loss and Survival 

 By Nicki Boscia Durlester


Copyright 2010 by Nicki Boscia Durlester and reprinted here with her permission.

Legacy

On Monday, March 23, 2009, the day after spring break ended, I had a 10:00 a.m. date with destiny. My annual visit with the radiologist always brought back thoughts of my mother. It had been almost thirty-two years since she passed away. At fifty-two, I had lived much more of my life without her. It was hard to believe she was nine years younger than I when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

As I drove to my radiologist’s office I wondered what this year’s mammogram would show. The night before, I told Big Al I had a bad feeling. We were lying on opposite sides of our favorite u-shaped couch in our family room.

He glanced over at me with a look of impatience and repeated words he had often said to me, “You’ve been dying since the day I met you. You’re not going anywhere. You’ll outlive us all.”

I had never found those words comforting, nor was I looking for a response. I just needed to think out loud.

I had been Dr. Pritchard’s patient for twenty-two years. Mammogram day had always proved to be lucky for me. A negative test result brought a sigh of relief for another year of good health. For twenty-one years I had received positive news and felt incredibly blessed. But there were some curve balls along the way.

In 2001, when I found out I had the BRCA2 gene, I gave serious consideration to having prophylactic mastectomies. I met with several specialists, including Dr. Armando Giuliano, Director of the John Wayne Cancer Institute at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He was the most direct. He looked me straight in the eye and asked me if I would prefer getting a breast cancer diagnosis someday versus doing something to prevent it now. Profound words of wisdom which I would choose to dismiss. The odds were definitely stacked against me considering the fact that my chances of getting breast cancer increased over time; however, there was also a slim possibility it might not happen. At the time I had two young and very busy children, a business to run, a home to manage, and the list goes on and on. Taking time out for major surgeries, including the mastectomies and reconstruction, seemed daunting. I also knew I would still have a 2-3% chance of getting breast cancer even if I had the mastectomies; much less than the general population, but still at risk. No decision was black or white.

In an ironic twist, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1991 and was concerned a major surgery might further compromise my immune system. My MS had been in remission for years and I wanted it to stay that way.

To make matters worse, sadly, my father passed away in 1991 of colon cancer, another genetically linked disease. Removing my colon was clearly out of the question. Just as I would rely on a colonoscopy every five years to screen for colon cancer, I would do the same with the screening techniques available for breast cancer. My gynecologist, Howard Mandel, informed me that breast cancer typically appeared later in the offspring of BRCA2 carriers, so I felt as though I had time to reconsider my decision. At some point you have to get on with your life. But Dr. Guiliano’s words would continue to haunt me.

In the meantime, I would be more vigilant about my health. I would have an annual mammogram and ultrasound along with monthly self-breast exams, and visits to Dr. Mandel every six months for checkups. I would also have a baseline MRI with a follow-up three months later to get the closest thing to a 360-degree picture of my breasts. Additionally, I would take a holistic approach to my health and do whatever I could to stave off cancer, including maintaining a positive attitude, a well balanced diet, exercise and healthy lifestyle.
Throw in some acupuncture, vitamins, Chinese herbs, therapeutic massage and cranial sacral sessions and maybe, just maybe, I could beat the odds.

Besides, I had already given at the bank, big time. In 1990, prior to being tested for the gene, at the age of thirty-four, when Ally was four and Matthew only eleven months, I had a total hysterectomy including removal of my ovaries due to my family history of ovarian cancer. I lacked confidence in the limited and unreliable screening techniques for ovarian cancer. I felt like a ticking bomb, and more than anything wanted to see my children grow up.

There is never a free lunch in life. Although removing my ovaries greatly decreased my risk of ovarian cancer, Dr. Mandel told me the loss of estrogen produced by my ovaries could adversely affect my heart and bones. My dilemma was whether or not to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT). At thirty-four, I believed I was too young to be thrown into full-blown menopause. So I took Premarin (synthetic estrogen) and kept taking it for eighteen years.

Every six months when I visited Dr. Mandel for a checkup I would ask him the same question. “Is it safe to be on HRT?”

His answer never changed.

“There are no conclusive studies that demonstrate estrogen alone increases a women’s risk of breast cancer. Conversely there have been studies that have shown that estrogen alone can reduce the risk of breast cancer in women who carry the BRCA2 gene.”

I have always loved being told what I want to hear, so this sounded good to me. In my heart however, I never felt comfortable taking a synthetic drug. I would later hear differing opinions on HRT from other doctors. If I have learned anything, it’s that there is a study and an opinion for everything and they seem to change on a regular basis.
Maddening to say the least. I wish I had trusted my instincts more, but life doesn’t come with a rewind button.


Pandora’s Box

As I sat in the waiting room at Dr. Pritchard’s office, I officially began the annual freak-out. I said a few Hail Marys and hoped for the best. The technician finally called my name and ushered me into the mammogram room. I never understood why I bothered changing into that flimsy paper cover-up that I immediately removed once the tech came back into the room. I always felt so vulnerable standing there half naked, waiting for this stranger to take my breasts into her hands.

And then the squeeze fest began. She gently placed my breasts on the mammogram machine before pressing down on the cold transparent plate. It always reminded me of a chicken cutlet being flattened under a piece of wax paper; a barbaric process to say the least. The tech took two pictures of each breast with me standing in different positions. When we finished she told me to put the paper gown back on while I waited for the mammogram results from the doctor.

The five minutes until Dr. Pritchard walked in to give me a thumbs up or down always felt like an eternity. This year would be different.
When the door opened it was the technician who announced she needed one more picture of my right breast. A red flag! When I asked why, she nonchalantly said it was due to a scar I had on that side, a remnant from a mole I had removed years before. Okay, I bought that. A few minutes later Dr. Pritchard came in and said everything looked fine on my films. Phew! Another bullet dodged.

I always had an ultrasound to be more thorough and hopefully catch anything my mammogram might miss. Fortunately, my insurance paid for it because of my BRCA2 status. That is the only benefit of being a gene carrier. As Dr. Pritchard moved the transducer (a small hand-held device that resembles a microphone attached to the scanner by a cord) over my right breast, I watched him pause and go over the same area several times. And then I heard the words that changed my life.

“I think I see something here.”
Continued….
*     *     *

 Want to continue reading?


Click on the title below to download the complete novel to your Kindle or Kindle app for just $2.99.

Beyond the Pink Moon: A Memoir of Legacy, Loss and Survival

by Nicki Boscia Durlester
Kindle Price: $2.99

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

UK Residents: Click here to download From UK Kindle Store

Around the Kindlesphere, October 21: AMZN Stock Surges Hours Before Earnings Report, and We Take a Look at What May Be on Investors’ Minds

***Don’t Miss Today’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert: The Promise: Make Your Life Rich by Discovering Your Best Self, plus Taos Soul by J.H. Farr (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

It happens once a quarter, and today’s the day: Moments after the stock market closes today, Amazon will announce its quarterly earnings and, very likely, include a few juicy tidbits about a subject near and dear to our hearts … the progress of the Kindle Revolution. 

If this is a topic that interests you as a Kindle owner, reader, author, publisher, or investor, you may want to tune in to a live webcast of the company’s conference call with analysts this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET. The event will be webcast live, and the audio and associated slides will be available for at least three months thereafter at www.amazon.com/ir.
As we approach today’s report, Amazon’s share price is within a dollar or so of it’s all-time high, and has traded this morning as high as $166.13 for a new all-time intra-day high. Investors are bullish on the company, the Kindle, and other Amazon initiatives, but investors beware: traders often find temporary clouds among all the silver linings in the earnings report of such a high-profile company, and Amazon often makes long-term reinvestment decisions whose rationales are too complex for your average 27-year-old Gekko wannabe to understand. The result can sometimes be a roiling of the trading waters such as we saw after the last quarterly report, when the AMZN share price fell about 12 percent within minutes during after-hours trading, only to make back all of that loss and then some within the ensuing week on its way to a 50 percent single-quarter gain from that after-market tumble to today’s levels.
Here, courtesy of Kindle Nation’s internship staff, are a few tidbits that observers may have in mind — with particular emphasis on the Kindle and ebooks, of course — as we await today’s earnings report:
Do All Roads Lead to the Kindle Revolution? We’ve seen a spate of predictions about putative Kindle Killers over the past three years or so, but the word from here has been consistent: most of these other devices will only strengthen the Kindle and the Kindle Store. Finally, Wall Street analysts are getting the message, as with the Los Angeles Timesreport of a new Cowen and Co. study showing that the iPad has actually created profit and record-growth for Amazon and its Kindle.

This year, Cowen estimates Apple has only 5% of the market for digital books, compared with a dominant 76% for Amazon. By 2015, Cowan estimates Amazon will have 51% and Apple 16% of a much larger market.

“Not only are sales of the Kindle device expected to grow 140% this year to nearly 5 million units from 2009, but digital book sales via the Kindle store are on track to grow 195% to $701 million in 2010,” the Times summarizes from Cowen’s report on the e-book market.

According to the study, 20% of people who purchase e-books from the Kindle storefront are not owners of the Kindle device. Even yesterday’s Planet iPad report that Apple shipped 27.3 million i-devices in the most recent quarter is great news for Amazon, as there are increasing indications the easy-to-use Kindle store and application is the go-to reading solution for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, and Android platforms as well as for folks who read ebooks on a PC or Mac.

The iPhone and iPad, the BlackBerry now also houses an easy-to-use Kindle store and application.

Other interesting data emerging from Cowen’s survey:
  • Roughly 60% of digital book readers on iPad report using iBooks mostly
  • 30% of these readers use the Kindle mostly
  • Among hard-core readers who go through 25 books or more a year, 44% prefer using Kindle on the iPad, compared with 47% for iBooks
“So it seems we’re into only the first chapters of the e-book wars, with more plot twists to come,” the Times’ Alex Pham writes.

*     *     *
The AAP (Association of American Publishers) released its newest book sales from August reporting “publishers’ book sales…increased 3.4 percent on the prior year to $1.6 billion and were up by 6.9 percent for the year to date.”
Specifically, e-book sales in this same period were $236 million, rising over 3% from last year to 9.03% of total book sales.
Compared to $89.8 million from January-August 2009, representing an increase for of 193% over the same period last year, digital book sales for January-August 2010 represented $263 million. With an astounding 172.4% increase over August 2009 figures, e-book sales remain on the rise.
In non-Kindle or e-book news, the AAP report showed decreases in sales in Hardcover Children’s books as well as Adult Hardcover and Mass Market, while higher education publishing sales grew 11.8 percent for the month ($969.7 million) and increased 12.4 percent for the year.
The Kindle expands it reach once again—this time into Verizon’s cellular home, where the Amazon storefront will be usable in Android Smartphones and other mobile devices. The big news here is that the Droid 2 and Driod X by Motorola as well as the Samsung Fascinate come pre-loaded with Kindle software.
From the newswire Verizon press release: “Kindle for Android lets customers discover and read more than 700,000 books in the Kindle Store and is easy to find on the application screen of the new Samsung Fascinate™ – which boasts a brilliant 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen display – as well as on DROID™ 2 by Motorola and DROID X by Motorola. “
As detailed by Verizon, the Kindle application will enable its standard features:
  • Buy Once, Read Everywhere – Amazon’s Whispersync technology syncs your bookmark across devices, so you can pick up where you left off.
  • With Kindle Worry-Free Archive, books purchased from the Kindle Store are automatically backed up online, where they can be re-downloaded at any time.  
  • The largest selection of books people want to read.  The U.S. Kindle Store now has more than 700,000 books, including New Releases and 107 of 111 New York Times Bestsellers. Over 575,000 of these books are $9.99 or less, including 80 New York Times Bestsellers.
*     *     *

Earlier this month, Amazon launched a new initiative – “Kindle Singles” – to express “compelling ideas at their natural length.” 
What are these volumes, exactly? “They can be twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book,” Amazon aficionados say.
More clearly defined, they are new Kindle books that will have their own section in the Kindle Store and be priced significantly less than standard books.
“Today’s announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world,” Amazon’s press release reads.
“Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President, Kindle Content.
“With Kindle Singles, we’re reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we’re excited to see what they create.”

*     *     *

In an AOL original, writer David Winograd calls Apple’s iPad-based iBookstore “one big failure.”
Six months after its launch on April 3rd, Winograd thought iBookstore would have improved from its early days. How has it progressed, according to Winograd: “poorly…very poorly.”
Why? We’ll let him speak for himself:

“The Kindle store currently advertises that they have over 700,000 books, magazines, and blogs available for download…it’s a safe bet to say that once you eliminate the ability to load .pdf files, the availability of e-books from the iBookstore pales.”
Winograd says that, “at launch, it was reported that the iBookstore contained somewhere between 46,000 and 60,000 titles, 30,000 of which came from the Project Gutenberg library of free out-of-copyright books.”
Unlike most Apple products, the iBookstore is not convenient or simple to use, according to Winograd. In two recent experiences, Apple’s store came up empty when he wanted to buy Steig Larsson’s Millenium Trilogy and Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story. He adds that Apple and publisher Random House have still not negotiated pricing arrangements for their works.

*     *     *

From the U.K., more Kindle happenings: Amazon.co.uk, as reported by the BookSeller, is telling its customers it will “fight agency pricing”—or the higher prices for digital books. The U.K. branch of the company has told publishers “not to impose price increases on consumers.”
“Based on our experience as a bookseller setting consumer prices for many years, we know that these increases have not only frustrated readers, but have caused booksellers, publishers and authors alike to lose sales,” Amazon has said.

This comes in the aftermath of Hachette UK’s decision to move certain booksellers to agency pricing—according to BookSeller, “leading to a number of booksellers including Waterstone’s and W H Smith to remove its e-books from sale.”
While Amazon has not officially commented on these developments, it has written to customers via its Kindle blog.
The letter reads, in part:
“First, as we feared, the US agency publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster) raised digital book prices almost across the board. These price increases were not only on new books, but on older, ‘backlist’ books as well (in the industry, ‘backlist’ books are often defined as books that have been published more than a year ago)…In the UK, we will continue to fight against higher prices for e-books, and have been urging publishers considering agency not to needlessly impose price increases on consumers.”
Available in its entirety here, thanks to BookSeller’s due diligence.

*     *     *
Ebook revolution? The coming end of dead tree books? Could it be that the federal government is the last to know?

Lisa Rein of The Washington Post reports on the federal bookstore that is “the newest haven for paper-loving policy wonks” in the nation’s capital.
The store, according to Rein’s report, “refuses to give in to the scanned, Googled, digital Zeitgeist doing steps from Capitol Hill.”
“What we’re looking at is staying in balance,” the public printer told the Post. “We see ourselves as a community bookstore. We’re not trying to make the last buck. We are here to serve the American people.”
In an era in which digitalization can bring us greater environmental sustainability, we wonder about the merit of this. Also, when studies increasingly show that young people are more willing to read from digital sources than traditional prints ones, this may be the last cool print bookstore of the century. 
On the other hand, some readers will never change:
“There are still a lot of Americans willing to plunk down money to browse in a bookstore,” Tapella said. “There’s a soul. A pulse.”
On the other hand, one innovator who is changing the e-reading landscape is Instapaper founder Marco Arment. Instapaper, as reported by Wired.com, is “a tool that strips clutter from online articles and saves them for later reading.”
At Tumblr Arment’s monitor screens were unimaginable cluttered – hence, his invention.
“In the modern desktop environment, with multitasking and alerts and constant activity, there are always more distractions,” Arment said to Wired in an interview.
Moreover, he adds that society has something of an “obesity epedemic” in our Web navigation and informational intake.
The mission of Instapaper is to “promote attentive reading in the face of digital distraction,” as Wired put it.

The View from Planet iPad: USA Today’s ebook overview, Shelfari is Kindle and iPad Friendly; Ebooks Make Us Better Readers; Ebooks Capture 9% of Market

***Don’t Miss Today’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert: The Promise: Make Your Life Rich by Discovering Your Best Self, plus Taos Soul by J.H. Farr (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

(Editor’s Note: This post by Planet iPad editor Tom Dulaney first appeared over there at our sister blog earlier today. And by the way, if you are among the 20 to 30 percent of Kindle owners who also owns an iPad, be sure to check out Planet iPad free on the web or as a subscription delivered directly to your Kindle.  -S.W.)
By Tom Dulaney, Editor, Planet iPad

This roundup draws from these events this week:

USA Today Ebook Overview
Reporter Test Drives 5 Ebook Readers
Amazon for iPad App Enhanced for Shelfari
‘Ebooks Make Us Better Readers’ Column
Ebook Sales 9% of Book Market, Nearly Double Last Year
USA Today covered ebook readers on Wednesday, pulling together quotes from a variety of book lovers sharing how they use iPads, iPods, iPhones, Kindles and Nooks. The story, by Bob Minzesheimer, was chock full of revealing anecdotal reports, then drew in commentary from author Stephen King and the CEO of HarperCollins along with information from the book publishing industry to put it in context

The story covered the “traditional” e-ink, black-and-white world of Kindles and Nooks, and lumped them together—properly so—with the triad of multiple-use devices from Apple. Reading between the lines, and with the Nov. 2 release of a special illustrated edition of Dan Brown’s popular Lost Symbol, the evidence seems to lead to the conclusion that the nature and definition of “a book” is beginning to change.

The USA Today summary gently skirted an important issue regarding the iPad and its kin which may turn all of the ebook forecasts on their ears: there are Kindles and Nooks and other dedicated ebook readers, but the iPad, iPod and iPhone and its competitors are multi-functional devices already capable of going beyond long strings of words adding up to paragraphs, chapters and whole books.
Connected devices—from Kindles to iPads—are suddenly turning up in the happy hands of “new adapters” of technology, the second wave behind the “early adopters” who take the high-risk plunge into new tech toys first.
In fact, Planet iPad stumbled onto its own anecdote to add to USA Today‘s list.  Planet iPad friend Dick Schoeninger of suburban Philadelphia, in a useful coincidence (for this reporter) used his computer and Skype in an airport in Arizona to contact me. I had recommended the free Amazon Store book Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery, which he was about to finish. He’d read it on his brand new Android throughout a business trip from the East Coast. He wanted another recommendation for a freebie ebook to keep him company on the long plane ride home.
I recommended Henry Chang’s Chinatown Beat,  pulled out of one of the daily Planet iPad free book listings.  Dick, a mid-60s exec in publishing for the insurance industry, says he took very quickly to reading a full-length book on the Android.
And that’s one more anecdote to add to the stack USA Today piled up, all tales of various individual book lovers taking to the ebook revolution in their own unique ways.
The multiple-use character of iPads, iPhones and Androids—so far—suggests strongly that an “ebook” is not what it once was just a few months ago.
The still undefined “Enhanced Book” lurks just around the corner in the future. It might show more of itself with the release Nov. 2 of the new version of  The Lost Symbol.
Another peek at the “Enhanced Book” beast came on Wednesday in an email blast note from Shelfari, the book readers’ social network owned by Amazon. The email touted that “Book Extras” are now integrated into the latest Kindle apps for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

The Shelfari email led to a link which  includes helpful images guiding readers through the mazes to find the Book Extras on the Apple products and on Amazon’s Kindles and the Kindle for PC app. Of course, the paths differ from device to device. Shelfari is a social network of collaborating and contributing members and readers.

Book Extras are “curated factoids” by the Shelfari community that give readers “helpful information” such as lists of characters in the book, character descriptions, important places, popular quotes, themes, and so on. “Curated,” according to Webster’s Dictionary, means to “select, organize and care for” a collection of something, as does the Curator of a museum.
Shelfari’s being “curated” by “the community” is apparently a fancy way of saying the factoids will come from users in much the same way that Wikipedia is curated by its users and contributors.
And in yet another news item out this week, “enhanced book” features figured largely in a report from the Huffington Post: 7 Ways Electronic Books Will Make Us Better Readers, by Steve Leveen, founder and CEO of Levenger, seller of “Tools for Serious Readers.”
But the future shape of the Enhanced Book, whatever it may prove to be, doesn’t change the comparative reality of ebook readers as most are today. And that is the venue for the USA Today story on Wednesday.
The usual pros and cons of ebooks—the physical experience of enjoying a printed book generally versus the ease of getting books without trips to libraries and book stores—showed up in the coverage of more than a handful of readers who are changing their ways thanks to ebooks.
For the author’s point of view, the paper talked with Stephen King for his take on it all. He says a third of his reading is done on his iPad or Kindle, but cautions that consumers “tire of new toys quickly.” That may be a scary story line from the master of horror, but the big-picture numbers in the USA Today piece indicate today’s toys may just become another artifact in life, as common as—uh—books.
Ebook sales are currently running at about 9% of total book sales, according to figures from the American Association of Publishers. That digitized hunk of the book market has been growing by triple-digit percentages over the last 12 months. To date, ebook sales are are nearly double what they were a year ago (up 193%).
More telling, perhaps, are anecdotes from many who are buying greater numbers of books overall this year because of ebook readers.
On some bestsellers, the USA Today story quotes HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray as saying ebooks are outselling print versions of the same book.
That’s happened before, most notably (at least in the media) with Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol.  It logged a number of days, early after its release, when ebook sales outstripped print book sales.
(See Planet iPad’s report later today on The Lost Symbol: Special Illustrated Edition.)
In all of the leading indicators quoted by USA Today—from King’s forecast that ebooks will account for nearly half of all book sales by 2012 or 2013 to Forrester Research’s projection Americans will own 29 million ebook reading devices by 2014—it would seem the ebook surge is on the rise for the near future, at least.
In a companion article in USA Today, reporter Carol Memmot test drove five ereaders—the iPad, a Kindle, the Libre, the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, a Nook. A never-did-it-before ebook device user, she read different chapters of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom for the project. 
And as for the Enhanced Book, so much discussed by the publishing industry earlier this month at the Frankfurt Book Fair, it would seem that the iPad currently has the edge with its ability to serve up “printed” words, color images, video and sound.

(Ed. Note: Back here at Kindle Nation, we’re not quite ready to declare “enhanced ebooks” anything more than a “new and improved” marketing scam in which publishers are looking for a rationale for higher prices. Sure, there will be some books that are made for the enhanced format. But, as Jeff Bezos famously said to Charlie Rose this summer, “You think Hemingway is going to pop more on a color screen?” –S.W.)

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Thursday, October 21: The Promise: Make Your Life Rich by Discovering Your Best Self, plus Taos Soul by J.H. Farr (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

Our Free Book Alert theme this morning involves the spiritual gifts to be found in the natural world and within ourselves as we continue on a roll of sweet synchronicity between our daily sponsors and the latest additions to our listings of the newest free titles in the Kindle Store….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

by John Hamilton Farr
Zoo Pilot Publishing – 5.0 out of 5 stars – Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

(Ed. Note: I haven’t spent any time in Taos since I was a college kid under the spell of a brown-eyed enchantress from Albuquerque, but if you have spent any significant time there in the past decade there is a good chance you have already enjoyed the thoughtful, engaged, and often humorous writing of John Hamilton Farr, our sponsor today and a longtime columnist for Taos’ leading aternative newspaper. Happily, he has collected several dozen stories and pieces together in Taos Soul, and the collection confirms again what so many of us know about reading: it can be almost as great as visiting a new place … and so much less expensive! -S.W.)
Here’s the set-up:



“IT WAS FRIDAY AFTERNOON, and the post office was full of Indians…”

From the opening sentence, you know you’re in a different world! Part memoir, nature writing, black comedy, confession, and journal of spiritual discovery, TAOS SOUL is a collection of 62 true stories about a passionate struggle to survive amidst extremes of weather, spirit, and the intense tri-cultural energy of northern New Mexico. Taos does something to people: What’s it like to live in an old adobe house at 7,000 feet with only a wood stove for heat and coyotes howling just outside the door? Have you ever hiked or driven where no one would find you if disaster struck? What happens to your marriage when your wife moves 1,200 miles away? And what happens in your heart, living on the edge where all of this is true?

The thematically arranged chapters cover the period from 2005 to 2010, beginning six years after the author and his wife moved from the quiet Eastern Shore of Maryland to the terrible beauty of Taos. By the time you finish, you may be wondering if you know yourself or America at all.

Reactions from around the Web:

Reader T.K. says, “Awesome work, and I can’t believe you’re selling it for $2.99.”
FreedomGuerrilla.com – “Each of the stories is dripping with earthy richness and, lacking a better word, soul.”
@jmartellaro – John Martellaro says, “John Farr sees things we miss…”
@mikecane – self-described ebook militant Mike Cane says of the Kindle formatting for TAOS SOUL, “It looks kick-ass good!”

Sections and Chapter Titles:

Love Stories:
Motherly Love, Island, Grounding by Default, Tunnel, River of Soul, Killing the First Elk, Poor Old Hobbes, Busted Down in Babylon, The Devil on Kinney Road, All-America Bloodline Blues, Three Centimeters, Run to Ground, Parts I-IV, Barest Bones, Vivir Otra Vez, Twenty-Five Years, Scenes from Deep Marriage, Lying Eyes, Something Happened to Me

Heroes:
Compulsion, Jesus Water-skis in Waco, Joe Sent Me, Windshield, Nine-Year Itch, Natural Born Killer, Yells-At-Nothing, The Ashley Gets a Knob, Not Coming Home for Supper, My Amazing Thursday, Monday Night Manuel, The Tao of Plumbing, Woodpile Kensho, Angel Stampede, Saved by Salvage, or An Ode to Junk, Grasshoppers of Llano Quemado, Dimensional Shift, Bleeding Heart, Home Canyon Security, Child of God

Wild Adventure:
Message for the Fourth, Daring Death in Dixon, No Bugs in New Mexico, Thirty-Year Gale, Journey to the Land of Giants, Part I & II, Taos for Dummies, Spiders in the Fruit Bowl, Eating the God, The Spring, Invitation, Dowser Man, Life in Mudtime, God Game, Dead Landlord Jokes, They’ll Never Take Me Alive, Crucible, Johnny and the Horned Toads, Adobe Winter Lockdown, Swimming to Arcturus, Piñon Lift

About the Author:

John Hamilton Farr is the author of TAOS SOUL: Love Stories, Heroes, and Wild Adventure, BUFFALO LIGHTS: Maryland to New Mexico, and dozens of columns for Horse Fly, a monthly Taos newspaper. He has published online relentlessly since 1997 and currently writes at 7,000 feet from Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A., blogging regularly at FarrFeed.com.

Click here to download Taos Soul: Love Stories, Heroes, and Wild Adventure (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
*  


Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

The 25 Newest Free Book Titles in the Kindle Store 

The Promise: Make Your Life Rich by Discovering Your Best Self
By: Victor Davich
Added: 10/20/2010 2:01:04pm
Imagine what it would feel like to be effortlessly confident, powerful, and happy – to reap the riches you’re entitled to, just by being born?
From the creator of the program Time magazine calls “the most American form of meditation yet” comes an exciting new 8-minute action plan that will empower you to reclaim the true joy and fulfillment that is all your own. The Promise is a revolutionary new program that will allow you to embrace an extraordinary gift: Your Best Self. This treasure already lies within you – no matter what you may think, or have been told. And you can seize it with Victor Davich’s unique toolkit for transformation: STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN, a program comprised of more than a dozen powerful techniques. Here you’ll learn how to:
STOP runaway thinking, relax, “decelerate,” and de-stress your mind.
LOOK beyond self-limiting, negative beliefs, or judgments and opinions that hold you back.
LISTEN and become attuned to Your Best Self – the treasure within which true riches await you…

These and other exercises central to The Promise are easy-to-follow and done in just 8 minutes. And with names like “Buoyant Breathing,” “You’re Soaking in It,” and “French Press,” you know they’ll also be fun.
The promise of a rich, fulfilled, and joyful life awaits you.
Start living your dreams – as Your Best Self – today!
The Anvil of the World
By: Kage Baker
Added: 10/20/2010 2:01:04pm
Beyond Eden
By: Catherine Coulter
Added: 10/20/2010 4:01:01am
Spy Killer
By: L. Ron Hubbard
Added: 10/19/2010 4:01:12am
Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday
By: Mike Thaler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Living Rich by Spending Smart: How to Get More of What You Really Want
By: Gregory Karp
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Chosen Ones
By: Alister E. McGrath
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Naomi and Her Daughters: A Novel
By: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Truth About Managing People
By: Stephen P. Robbins
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life
By: Geri Scazzero
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions
By: Jeff Manion
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Malacca Conspiracy
By: Don Brown
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Never Blame the Umpire
By: Gene Fehler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Mozart's Sister
By: Nancy Moser
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
How to Not Make Bad Decisions
By: Sydney Finkelstein
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Stumbling On Wins in Football
By: David J. Berri
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Chinatown Beat
By: Henry Chang
Added: 10/16/2010 2:01:04pm
Every Word (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Shuffled Row (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy & Fear
By: Osho
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
An Unwanted Hunger
By: Ciana Stone
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Psalm 23 Mysteries
By: Debbie Viguie
Added: 10/13/2010 2:01:17pm
Quiet As They Come (Free Story for Kindle)
By: Angie Chau
Added: 10/13/2010 4:01:25am
Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace
By: Eric Wight
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Lucky for Good
By: Susan Patron
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Relentless (Dominion Trilogy #1)
By: Robin Parrish
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
By: Bill Hybels
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Tahn: A Novel
By: L. A. Kelly
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Sin's Daughter
By: Eve Silver
Added: 10/09/2010 4:01:20am
CEB New Testament
By: Common English Bible
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
By: James R. Benn
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition
By: B&H; Publishing Group
Added: 10/07/2010 4:01:07am
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform
By: Amazon.com
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Mr. Darcy's Diary
By: Amanda Grange
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN [Keeping Mr. Right] (Optimized & Ad-Free)
By: Francine Saint Marie
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Sandman Slim with Bonus Content
By: Richard Kadrey
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
By: Bruce Springsteen
Added: 10/03/2010 2:01:31pm

PM Update to Wednesday’s Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert: Kage Baker’s Wacky Fantasy Romp The Anvil of the World, plus Need to Know, smart sexy suspense by Christine Merrill (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

We’re happy to add a wacky fantasy romp by Kage Baker to this afternoon’s listings of the latest free titles in the Kindle Store….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

The new man in Liz Monahan’s life is a rogue secret agent who’s trying to kill her.
But at least he’s single.
by Christine Merrill
5.0 out of 5 stars – 4 Reviews
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:
Liz Monahan is in a rut.
Her boss is a jerk.  Her mom won’t stop asking about her love life.  And her boyfriend just might be married.
But since she found a dead body in her hotel room, things have gotten interesting. 
The new guy in accounting has a license to kill.  He thinks she holds the key to a terrorist plot.  And the man in her life is a rogue secret agent who just might want her dead. 
But at least he’s single.

Click here to download Need to Know (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
*  


Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

The 25 Newest Free Book Titles in the Kindle Store 

The Anvil of the World
By: Kage Baker
Added: 10/20/2010 2:01:04pm
Beyond Eden
By: Catherine Coulter
Added: 10/20/2010 4:01:01am
Spy Killer
By: L. Ron Hubbard
Added: 10/19/2010 4:01:12am
Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday
By: Mike Thaler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Living Rich by Spending Smart: How to Get More of What You Really Want
By: Gregory Karp
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Chosen Ones
By: Alister E. McGrath
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Naomi and Her Daughters: A Novel
By: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Truth About Managing People
By: Stephen P. Robbins
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life
By: Geri Scazzero
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions
By: Jeff Manion
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Malacca Conspiracy
By: Don Brown
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Never Blame the Umpire
By: Gene Fehler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Mozart's Sister
By: Nancy Moser
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity
By: R. C. Sproul
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
How to Not Make Bad Decisions
By: Sydney Finkelstein
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Stumbling On Wins in Football
By: David J. Berri
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Chinatown Beat
By: Henry Chang
Added: 10/16/2010 2:01:04pm
Every Word (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Shuffled Row (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy & Fear
By: Osho
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
An Unwanted Hunger
By: Ciana Stone
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Psalm 23 Mysteries
By: Debbie Viguie
Added: 10/13/2010 2:01:17pm
Quiet As They Come (Free Story for Kindle)
By: Angie Chau
Added: 10/13/2010 4:01:25am
Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace
By: Eric Wight
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Lucky for Good
By: Susan Patron
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Relentless (Dominion Trilogy #1)
By: Robin Parrish
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
By: Bill Hybels
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Tahn: A Novel
By: L. A. Kelly
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Sin's Daughter
By: Eve Silver
Added: 10/09/2010 4:01:20am
CEB New Testament
By: Common English Bible
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
By: James R. Benn
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition
By: B&H; Publishing Group
Added: 10/07/2010 4:01:07am
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform
By: Amazon.com
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Mr. Darcy's Diary
By: Amanda Grange
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN [Keeping Mr. Right] (Optimized & Ad-Free)
By: Francine Saint Marie
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Sandman Slim with Bonus Content
By: Richard Kadrey
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
By: Bruce Springsteen
Added: 10/03/2010 2:01:31pm

Kindle Nation Daily Free Book Alert, Wednesday, October 20: Beyond Eden, a brand new freebie from bestselling author Catherine Coulter, plus Need to Know, smart sexy suspense by Christine Merrill (Today’s Sponsor), and over 100 more fully updated and category-sorted free Kindle ebook listings

Call it synchronicity, serendipity, or simply dumb luck, but I love it when we have such a perfect match — in this case, a match of smart, sexy, suspenseful page-turners — between our daily Free Book Alert sponsor and the Catherine Coulter bestseller that leads this morning’s listing of the latest free titles in the Kindle Store….

But first … a word from our sponsor….

The new man in Liz Monahan’s life is a rogue secret agent who’s trying to kill her.
But at least he’s single.
by Christine Merrill
5.0 out of 5 stars – 4 Reviews
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:
Liz Monahan is in a rut.
Her boss is a jerk.  Her mom won’t stop asking about her love life.  And her boyfriend just might be married.
But since she found a dead body in her hotel room, things have gotten interesting. 
The new guy in accounting has a license to kill.  He thinks she holds the key to a terrorist plot.  And the man in her life is a rogue secret agent who just might want her dead. 
But at least he’s single.

Click here to download Need to Know (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!
*  


Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them. 

Authors, Publishers, Kindle Accessory Manufacturers:
Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

The 25 Newest Free Book Titles in the Kindle Store 

Beyond Eden
By: Catherine Coulter
Added: 10/20/2010 4:01:01am
Spy Killer
By: L. Ron Hubbard
Added: 10/19/2010 4:01:12am
Preacher Creature Strikes on Sunday
By: Mike Thaler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Living Rich by Spending Smart: How to Get More of What You Really Want
By: Gregory Karp
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Chosen Ones
By: Alister E. McGrath
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Naomi and Her Daughters: A Novel
By: Walter Wangerin Jr.
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Truth About Managing People
By: Stephen P. Robbins
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
I Quit!: Stop Pretending Everything Is Fine and Change Your Life
By: Geri Scazzero
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Land Between: Finding God in Difficult Transitions
By: Jeff Manion
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Malacca Conspiracy
By: Don Brown
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
Never Blame the Umpire
By: Gene Fehler
Added: 10/18/2010 2:01:05pm
The Choice (Lancaster County Secrets, Book 1)
By: Suzanne Woods Fisher
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Mozart's Sister
By: Nancy Moser
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
A Taste of Heaven: Worship in the Light of Eternity
By: R. C. Sproul
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
How to Not Make Bad Decisions
By: Sydney Finkelstein
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Stumbling On Wins in Football
By: David J. Berri
Added: 10/18/2010 4:01:07am
Chinatown Beat
By: Henry Chang
Added: 10/16/2010 2:01:04pm
Every Word (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Shuffled Row (A Free Game for Kindle)
By: Amazon Digital Services
Added: 10/15/2010 2:01:09pm
Emotions: Freedom from Anger, Jealousy & Fear
By: Osho
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
An Unwanted Hunger
By: Ciana Stone
Added: 10/15/2010 4:01:12am
The Lord Is My Shepherd: The Psalm 23 Mysteries
By: Debbie Viguie
Added: 10/13/2010 2:01:17pm
Quiet As They Come (Free Story for Kindle)
By: Angie Chau
Added: 10/13/2010 4:01:25am
Frankie Pickle and the Mathematical Menace
By: Eric Wight
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Lucky for Good
By: Susan Patron
Added: 10/12/2010 4:01:08am
Relentless (Dominion Trilogy #1)
By: Robin Parrish
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond
By: Bill Hybels
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Tahn: A Novel
By: L. A. Kelly
Added: 10/11/2010 8:17:57am
Sin's Daughter
By: Eve Silver
Added: 10/09/2010 4:01:20am
CEB New Testament
By: Common English Bible
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
Billy Boyle: A World War II Mystery
By: James R. Benn
Added: 10/08/2010 4:01:14am
The Holy Bible: HCSB Digital Text Edition
By: B&H; Publishing Group
Added: 10/07/2010 4:01:07am
Publish on Amazon Kindle with the Digital Text Platform
By: Amazon.com
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Mr. Darcy's Diary
By: Amanda Grange
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
FORTUNE IS A WOMAN [Keeping Mr. Right] (Optimized & Ad-Free)
By: Francine Saint Marie
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Sandman Slim with Bonus Content
By: Richard Kadrey
Added: 10/05/2010 4:01:23am
Thoughts on The Promise and Darkness On The Edge Of Town
By: Bruce Springsteen
Added: 10/03/2010 2:01:31pm