Genres for books have grown insurmountably over the years. Only a few centuries ago, there were very limited genres. Since then, it has grown into nonfiction subcategories, like memoirs, biographies, or travel guide. The fiction subcategories are even more vast, ranging from historical romance, to comedy, to fantasy. There are even subcategories with subcategories now. Take fantasy, for instance. There is now, saga fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, to name a few.

So why are there so many more categories now? There have always been stories brought forth from the imagination, especially romance, comedy and tragedy. So have we all suddenly become so much more detail oriented and have started organizing everything into their own label? Perhaps.

Or perhaps with growing opportunities and growing technology, our brains haves started to expand more, giving more room for intriguing stories. I think for the nonfiction area, it is pretty self explanatory. After all, people are doing more traveling and it is much more convenient to do that with a travel guide, right?

As for fiction, our minds have been opened up the more possibilities over the years. It used to be that the setting to place on a ship bound for the Indies, or America. Nowadays, the setting could take place in an underground city, or on a spaceship on its way to the newest discovered galaxy. We have moved beyond the old saying, “The sky’s the limit” to “there is no limit”.

With all these interesting things to ponder, one might wonder how the future generations can be affected. With so many movies out that have hover crafts, are our kids going to grow up thinking that it is a real possibility and they just have to figure out the logistics to get them created? Will some child get sick of going to school and invent a way to plug knowledge directly into the brain so school can become superfluous? You never know. I grew up with the idea of cloning being a very real possibility, but my grandparents read about it and thought it complete fiction.

This leads into my next thought of, “Which came first?” Is it possible that the creative part of the brain was able to help science along in the first place, or was the academic part of the brain able to learn first what was and then lead into what could be. My personal opinion is that you simply cannot have one without the other. It is this author’s opinion that Albert Einstein had to be in touch with his creative side in order to elevate himself to his genius status.

So keep on dreaming everyone. Authors, keep using your imagination to publish new and interesting concepts for the world to absorb. Maybe in the future someone will find some way to create that magical pill that will stop aging as well as cure any and all diseases. (I have noticed that to be a popular one in many fictional novels.) But the point is, keep imagining, keep studying, and you might be surprised at the discoveries you’ll make.

Collections of old books, newspapers, and artwork are cool to have and look at. However, keeping them in good condition isn’t always the easiest thing on the planet. It’s also easy to go about it the wrong way. Below are some tips and tricks to keep your precious materials safe.

Things Not To Do

Don’t oil the covers of leather bound books. Oil darkens the leather, creates blotches where not applied properly, and gets onto the pages. Even after the books are shelved, oil bleeds through the spine and onto the pages.

Both books and print media do not do well in temperature extremes. High temperatures, high humidity, and highly concentrated pollutants in the air will damage them. Stay away from storage in attics and basements.

Direct sunlight has permanent damaging effects on any kind of print media. Sunlight fades inks, yellows pages, and dries out leather. Keep print media and books out of the sun.

Proper Shelving

Keep books in glass-front cabinets of glass or baked enamel away from sunlight. This will help keep away the dust. If they have to be kept in open or wood shelving, dust them regularly and make sure the wood is sealed properly.

Do not overcrowd books on shelves. Good air flow is essential. Keep like-sized books together. This will prevent warping of taller books. Use bookends to keep books upright. Any book over 18 inches tall should be laid flat instead of stored upright.

When removing from shelves, nudge books to either side and grasp the chosen volume in the middle of the spine. Tipping the books out of the shelf by the top of the spine causes damage.

Boxes, Covers, and Folders

Archival boxes are a good option for keeping frailer books and print media safe. They protect against normal wear and tear and dust. The boxes cost under $10 each. They should be made of either 100% cotton rag or chemically purified wood pulp.

Mylar or polyester book covers are acid-free and provide stability as well as protection.

For print media, acid-free folders, alkaline mats, or polyester film folders are good options for protection. All folders should be larger than the piece inside.

Storage

Ultimately, because it is important to keep the temperature between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (18.3 and 21.2 degrees Celsius) and humidity between 44 and 55%, storing in-home is not always the best option. The best place to store these is a climate controlled self-storage unit. The temperature and humidity can be kept relatively constant easily.

As you can see, keeping older books and print media in good condition isn’t always easy. However, your efforts can easily pay off. Some of what you keep could be worth a lot of money someday.

Image by Randy Son of Robert and licensed through Creative Commons.

Paul Benjamin is a District Manager at EZ Storage, a storage rental company that offers temporary and long term storage units near Ross Township, PA.

So I just posted on FaceBook how it’s so impossible for me to simply tell what my favorite book is. I could give out a list of my top 50 books that I most like, but to simply say “Oh yes, Pride and Prejudice is my absolute favorite book!” just doesn’t work for me. (I did enjoy Pride and Prejudice, by the way.) That being said, today I am going to do a little review on one of my favorite paranormal series. (Note that it’s not just one book, but the whole series, and I have to classify it with a genre because I have other favorite books/series that could be considered a favorite in a different genre. See how complicated this gets when I try to narrow down my favorites?)

Getting back on track here, one of my favorite series is the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning. In a brief summary, it’s about a young woman named Mac (short for MacKayla) who travels to Dublin, Ireland to investigate her sister’s murder. Once there, she discovers that she’s a Sidhe (pronounced “she”) seer. Someone who can see past the glamour of the Fae to their true self. She meets a mysterious man named Jericho who claims that he will help her if she helps him find a book called the Sinsar Dubh. This dark book holds much power that the Fae royalty would love to have, as well as any other creature that knows of its existence. The series is five books long and each one ends with a major cliffhanger that will have you driving to the bookstore for the next one as soon as humanly possible. I read these books before all five were out, so I was one of the fans that had it pre-ordered and anxiously awaited for the next book release. There were a few times when it took almost two years for the next book to come out. It was enough to have me biting my nails while doing a countdown of when the day would finally come! (What can I say? I’m a total bookworm!)

There are many reasons why I love this series so much, but we’ll just skim off the top for the sake of time. First of all, it has an intricate plot with fabulous twists. Some of them I was able to call, while others blew my mind right out of the water. Secondly, the characters are fabulous. Mac undergoes major emotional transitions and matures along with the books. It’s easy to like her character and root for her from the beginning. Jericho is an absolute mystery. The whole time I read this series, I couldn’t be sure if he was a bad guy or not, but I still wanted Mac to fall in love with him anyway because he had this allure that jumped off the pages. Don’t worry, I won’t give a spoiler alert about him, you’ll just have to read it for yourself to find out if he’ll come through for Mac, or betray her in the end. 🙂

Moning also does a wonderful job of creating a crossover of the world as we know it integrated with Celtic mythology. Her take on the Seelie and the Unseelie Fae is creative and dynamic. She makes them very attractive and dangerous at the same time. Moning is able to bring together four or five different groups of characters and integrate them to perform in a plot that will keep you reading through the night and into the day. It’s a series where you just can’t put the book down until you’ve finished it. That alone puts this series into my top favorites list. I think the most successful of authors are those who suck you in so completely that you have to finish the book before you can go back to your normal reality called life.

So there you have it, in a nutshell, why the Fever series is one of my favorites. I look forward to see if Karen Marie Moning will be coming out with a new series any time soon. If it’s anything like her Fever series, I’ll be one of the first to pre-order her books!

 

It seems that a lot of new writers like to ask the successful or experienced author “What is the most important thing that helps you with your writing?” It also seems to me that most authors almost always give the same answer: critique groups.

If you’re unfamiliar with what a critique group does, it’s easy to sum up. It’s a group of people who read your work and give you good feedback on it. Now, when I say “good feedback”, I don’t mean that they tell you what you want to hear. In fact, if they only tell you good things about your writing, you had better find a different group – fast. But I digress.

So authors say critique groups are important. Why? Well, for many reasons. So many that I might not be able to list them all in this blog. But I’ll try! For one thing, it helps writers to learn how to share their work. I know a lot of writers that will work vigorously on a novel, but when it comes time to have someone else look at it, they can’t bring themselves to do it. In the environment of a critique group, where everyone is sharing their work and getting feedback, it’s a little easier to have others read your work. Everyone takes turns reading each others stuff, and they usually start by telling you the things they liked, then move into the things that need improvement. They are objective in their critiques and don’t try to flower things for you. They tell you how it is.

Critique groups also help you see things that you wouldn’t have noticed on your own. I read a friend’s novel for her and sent her a critique on it. In her book, the main character has psychic powers that are limited in the beginning, then change at the end. This is fine, but the way in which she wrote made it seem sudden. I was confused and asked her if the character’s powers were supposed to develop, and when had they done that, or did she accidentally write the powers differently.  She had no clue that she’d done that and went to work fixing it once I’d pointed it out to her.

Another thing critique groups can do for you is tell you what others are afraid to tell you. When I sent out the first draft of Dissension to my critique companions, they all said how much they liked the plot and what a good job I had done. However, they didn’t like some of my key characters. It was quickly pointed out to me that while my plot was solid, my characters were not third dimensional. It was somewhat hard to take in, but once my weakness was pointed out to me, I used many methods on how to really get into my characters’ heads. (I’ll write a blog all about that later.) It was amazing what a difference it made in my novel.

If you have a critique group that you see on a regular basis, they become your friends, cheerleaders, and champions of your work. They can also open up new connections to help you get published. What it really comes down to, is that a good critique group is invaluable. Once you find one, stick with them and listen to their advice. You don’t always need to follow it, but you should consider what they have to say to you with an open mind. This will improve your work in ways you could never have imagined!

Shopping to me is an experience, one to be savoured with not just shops- but restaurants, cinema and any other little quirks you can get from a large shopping centre.

Whilst shopping can easily be disregarded as a complete faff, and ‘why not do it online?’, there really is something to be said from going out to the shops every once in a while and actually using all your senses to get to know products before you buy.

There are a few items of clothing I feel it’s vital to try on first before buying, namely shoes. If you buy long boots online, you might find a good fit on the foot, but whether they’ll be able to zip up properly is another matter entirely, and an issue that’s far more difficult to address online.

Even things you could easily buy online such as wallets, you really can’t beat being able to pick it up and get a feel for the weight, the texture and the sizes of compartments.

I like to go for long periods without shopping at all, with the intention of making it more of an event when I do go shopping. Often there’s an something fun going on at my local shopping centre which can be good fun to watch with a coffee as a break from wandering around shops with aching feet. It could be a dancing or singing contest, or live cooking.

I have always loved to spend a morning shopping, then buy some sandwiches and sweets and watch a film at the cinema, knowing that there’s a whole afternoon left to patrol the shops to find more cool stuff. Rounding that off with a meal at a restaurant is just the perfect day, and something that’s really hard to beat. Most of my birthdays have consisted of days like this.

It’s a brilliant feeling when you come home and go through all your purchases; it’s an excitement that links back to opening presents as a child, almost – and perhaps that’s part of the reason so many of us enjoy shopping so much. I like to go through each bag and recall that there’s so much more new stuff that I have yet to admire – the stronger and happier that feeling, the more successful I feeling the shopping trip was.

Of course, the convenience of buying online is also a great thing, but I think we’d be missing out if we forgot the pleasures of a real trip to the shops.

Rainbow’s End is a retailer online and in real shops, of gifts and clothing such as Yaya clothing