Kristen Bell
Friday, September 19th, 2008Maxim Magazine, March 2006, Kristen Bell Cover by Ed Needham
Cosmopolitan May 2008 Kristen Bell by Cosmopolitan
Entertainment Weekly Magazine – December 10, 2004: Ocean’s Twelve, Kristen Bell & More by Entertainment Weekly
Holistic Aromatherapy for Animals: A Comprehensive Guide to the Use of Essential Oils & Hydrosols with Animals by Kristen Leigh Bell
In the last five years, I have studied with and interviewed aromatherapists from around the world for books and magazine articles. Since our first phone interview, Kristen Leigh Bell has been my favorite authority on the use of essential oils and hydrosols for dogs, cats, and other animals. It was my pleasure to write this book’s foreword, which gives me an intellectual (not financial) interest in its success.
I expected this book to be user-friendly, comprehensive, and helpful — but Kristen’s work is a masterpiece. She makes important technical information easy to understand, helping aromatherapy newcomers understand how essential oils are made, how to judge their quality, and how identical sounding oils can have different chemical signatures and very different effects. With her constant emphasis on safety, Kristen’s book does more to protect animals from the inappropriate use of aromatherapy products than any other publication. In addition, Kristen generously shares her formulas and recipes, something few manufacturers would consider doing.
The result is a well-organized reference, “how to” guide, and resource — in short, an aromatherapy crash course devoted to companion animals.<BR Holistic Aromatherapy for Animals by Kristen Leigh Bell is the world’s first major book on a subject that is rapidly gaining attention but is poorly understood. Thanks to Kristen Leigh Bell and Findhorn Press, caretakers, groomers, trainers, veterinarians, and pet lovers everywhere finally have an authoritative guide to help them make informed decisions about what aromatherapy products to make or buy and how to use them. The health of our dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and other animals can only improve as a result.
“… Kristen Bell, Ian Somerhalder, Christina Milian, Rick Gonzalez, Jonathan Tucker, Sarum Levine, …”
Hollywood Representation Directory, 35th Edition by Staff of the Hollywood Creative Directory
Provides great information – not only contact information, but a description of what type of people each agency represents and works with, and what guilds they are affiliated with. It even has worksheets to help you keep track of who you have contacted. Provides phone numbers, addresses, websites, and names of employees and their titles. It has been very helpful and an essential tool for anyone looking for representation. I have already heard back from a couple agencies after sending queries and have not contacted even a fourth of the agencies listed.
“… Avon – Borders – New Line – Sofitel (LA) – Kristen Bell – Molly Simms – Guthy-Renker/Proactiv – SBE – Anheuser Busch …”
Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews 1967-2007 by Roger Ebert
as it says on the jacket to one of ROGER’s annual film reference guides , it’s like having a conversation with a good friend . when i was younger , i saw eye to eye with MR. EBERT the lion’s share of the time . as i grew older , a greater dispairity of opinion between myself and ROG began to occur . i noticed he had a strong disposition in favor of film with a very liberal agenda . that’s hardly the point though . not only would it be profoundly boring if we always agreed , i’d lose . i’d lose one of the very best sources of film appreciation to which i could avail myself . oh , many is the time i wondered who slipped him an envelope to grant a good review to a film i though haughty or pretentious or heavy handed or crumby or stupid . but at the end of the week or month or however long i would go without reading ROGER , i knew i was not utilizing my favorite film critic . hell , we seldom agree on horror or comedy movies . who cares . he’s still the man . he’s put himself out there for public consumption for 40 years now . when he’s on (and it’s often) he’s simply a great author . and he writes to meet deadlines . amazing body of work really . enthralling as a matter of fact . ***** . oh , and he’s not watchin’ the DVD like we are .
“… H. Macy (Stoddard), Ed O’Neill (Burch), Ta Texada (Jackie Black), Kristen Bell (Laura Newton). Directed by David Mamet and produced by Art …”
The Girl’s Guide to Kicking Your Career Into Gear: Valuable Lessons, True Stories, And Tips For Using What You’ve Got (A Brain!) To Make Your Worklife Work For You by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio
I love this book. Caitlin and Kim have lived what they write about. Their style is engaging and motivating, not stuffy and overbearing as in some self-help books. The examples they provide cover a wide range of situations–a variety of professional, financial, social and personal goals, a mix of ages and experiences, successes and failures.
The authors also explore topics some other books tip-toe past–tears at work, PMS, ‘family comes first’–and how other women have dealt with these in their professional life. Read the book. For sure, you’ll get information and insights you’ll want to use in your own career.
“… school private eye Veronica Mars, as played by the amazing Kristen Bell, is the type of female character we loveâ?’smart, loyal, and …”
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Friday, September 19th, 2008Making a statement like Madame Bovary is the “greatest” novel ever written would be superfluous. It could be argued that it is the most perfectly written novel in the history of letters and that in creating it, Flaubert mastered the genre. What can’t be argued is that it is one of the most influential novels ever written. It changed the face of literature as no other novel has, and has been appreciated and acknowledged by virtually every important novelist who was either Flaubert’s contemporary or who came after him.
It’s interesting to see the range in opinion that still surrounds this novel. Some of the Readers here at Amazon are morally affronted by the novel’s central character, viewing her as something sinister and “unlikeable,” and panning the novel for this reason. Such a reaction recalls the negative reviews Bovary engendered soon after its initial publication. It was attacked by many of the authorities of French literature at the time for being ugly and perverse, and for the impression that the novel presented no properly moral frame. These readers didn’t “like” Emma much either, and they took their dislike out on her creator.
But this is one of the factors making Madame Bovary “modern”. One of the hallmarks of modern novels is that they often portray unsympathetic characters, and Emma certainly falls into this category. How can we as readers “like” a woman who elbows her toddler daughter away from her so forcefully that the child “fell against the chest of drawers, and cut her cheek on the brass curtain-holder.” After this pernicious behavior, Emma has a few brief moments of self-castigation and maybe even remorse, but very soon is struck by “what an ugly child” Berthe is. Emma’s self-centeredness borders on solipsism. For readers looking for maternal instincts in their female characters or for a depiction of a devoted wife, they had better turn to Pearl S. Buck and The Good Earth, perhaps, rather than to Flaubert.
Much has been made of Flaubert’s attempts to remove himself from the narrative, that he was searching for some sort of ultimate objectivity. His narrative technique is much more complex than that, however. It is his employment of a shifting narrative, sometimes objective, sometimes subjective, that again is an indicator of the novel’s modernity. At times the narrator is merely reporting events or is involved in providing descriptive details. Yet often the authorial voice makes rather plain how the reader is to look at Emma and her plebeian persona. When she finally succumbs to Rodolphe and thinks she is truly in love, Flaubert becomes downright cynical: ” `I’ve a lover, a lover,’ she said to herself again and again, revelling in the thought as if she had attained a second puberty. At last she would know the delights of love, the feverish joys of which she had despaired. She was entering a marvelous world where all was passion, ecstasy, delirium.”
Emma is a neurasthenic, in the modern sense, but in the 19th century she would have been said to suffer from hysteria, a mental condition diagnosed primarily in women. When her lovers leave her, she has what amounts to nervous breakdowns. After Rodolphe leaves her she makes herself so sick that she comes near death. Her imagination is much too powerful and too impressionable for her own good. This is part of the reason for Flaubert’s oft-repeated quote, “Bovary, c’est moi.” Flaubert was a neurasthenic as well and could easily work himself into a swoon as a result of his imaginative flights. There is even conjecture that he may have been, like Dostoevsky, an epileptic, and it is further intimated that this disorder was brought on by nerves, though this may be dubious, medically speaking.
Madame Bovary is not flawless, but it comes awfully close. It is one of the great controlled experiments in the fiction of any era. It even anticipates cinematic technique in many instances, but particularly in the scene at the Agricultural Fair. Note how Flaubert juxtaposes the utterly mundane activities and speeches occurring in the town square with Rodolphe’s equally inane seduction of Emma in the empty Council Chamber above the square:
“He took her hand and she did not withdraw it.”
“`General Prize!’ cried the Chairman.’”
“`Just now, for instance, when I came to call on you…’”
“Monsieur Bizet of Quincampoix.”
“`…how could I know that I should escort you here?’”
“Seventy francs!”
“`And I’ve stayed with you, because I couldn’t tear myself away, though I’ve tried a hundred times.’”
“Manure!”
This is representative Flaubert. With a few deft strokes, he lays the whole absurdity of both the seduction and the provincial’s activities bare.
If you have read this book previously and have come away feeling demoralized and even angered, please try reading it again, this time concentrating on the richness of its metaphors, Flaubert’s mastery of foreshadowing, symbolism and description. Maybe you will come away with your viewpoint changed. For those who have not yet read this classic of classics, I know that if your mind remains open, you will come away with an appreciation for this master-novelist and for this monumental work.
The Escape of a Princess Pat by George Pearson
Friday, September 19th, 2008I was first captivated by this book when searching for new reading material for my young son. My eye was immediately drawn to the lovely cover, so I picked it up and started skimming the first page. I couldn’t put it down! I bought it that day.
Princess Ben is a wonderful fantasy story set in a ficticious kingdom with rumors of dragons. When Ben loses her beloved parents, it sets into motion a string of fantastic adventures and events for her. From prisoner of war to princess of court, she emerges and transformers herself from misfit to royalty. I loved this book from page one.
It’s a must read for those who love a good fantasy with romantic and magical elements. I highly recommend it!
Out of Time’s Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Friday, September 19th, 2008I’ve just finished rereading this novel within the last hour. Again, I’m not disappointed.
The story involves a young adventurer named David Innes who decides to accompany an elderly professor on a test drive of an “iron mole.” This drilling machine is intended to penetrate the earth in search of minerals. However, something goes wrong. The controls break, and the iron mole plummets straight down for hundreds of miles, to break through into an “inner earth.”
This world is inhabited by dinosaurs, primitive tribes, and a race of evil bat-like creatures called Mayars. David must rescue a stunningly beautiful young woman, who’s completely stolen his heart. But more, he must somehow end the dominance and exploitation the Mayars exert over the primitive humans in this world.
At the time this book was written, before 1920, there were serious treatises being written about the possibility that our earth was hollow, with an inner world to be discovered. Burroughs apparently just capitalized on this now out-of-date scientific notion.
The Mayars are terrifying, the girls are fantastic, and there’s a nonstop series of action scenes. The friendships David makes with various prehistoric warriors are well drawn. For an episodic adventure novel, the characters are made real enough that the reader really CARES what happens to them.
This is the first of the Pellucidar novels. There were at least six, I believe. Pellucidar is what Burroughs called the inner world within the heart of the earth.
The language is clean– the book could be recommended to young people with no concerns at all. In fact, teens — or the young at heart — are the prime audience for these fine adventure books.
Zip file of the entire book (107MB)
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi
Friday, September 19th, 2008Wow.
Amazing – Bugliosi presents a very clear case for taking the president to court for 4000 murders for his war in Iraq
Very upsetting book. What can I say? Read it, read it!
Its very well written (makes me want to check out his other books, particularly Helter Skelter, on the Manson murders). I found it a more interesting read than Scott (McClellan)’s book on the failure of the Bush presidency (Bugliosi is nowhere near as kind as Scott to Bush)
Where to begin? well, Bush makes a compelling argument as to why Bush should be taken to court and tried for first degree murder. He goes over the legalities in great detail (which is not too tedious – the more tedious legalities concerning intent and malice aforethought are relegated to the notes in the back of the book)
I’m gonna have to read it again, and I’m also gonna have to check the sources (Michael Moore is notorious in his books/films for misleading and stretching the truth but I don’t think thats the case here)
Very rarely do I read a book twice (Tolkien, Dostoyevsky deserve to be reread; most books don’t). But this is such a compelling tome (and ANGRY. Bugliosi is PISSED)
Ok – back to the book. Bugliosi goes thru what the CIA knew, what Bush knew, how Bush deliberately lied about Iraq being an imminent threat. Its absolutely heartbreaking to read this book. I was willing to give Bush the benefit of the doubt (with regard to his presidency) but now I see that he is truly a bad person. Who knew he was so excited to bring the nation to war.
That the weapon inspections were working – thats something thats NEVER come out.. Bugliosi seems to know what made Saddam tick (his point of view is that Saddam was not a good person, but that he was never going to attack the States, which now is blindingly obvious)
This could well be one of the most important books written. Its already number 10 on the NY Times Bestseller list, and Bugliosi has even testified (like McClellan before him) before the Justice Department with regard to Bush misleading the American people into his war in Iraq (no end in sight to that as well)
I’m not political. I LIKED Bush – I was pulling for him, to somehow work out things
But his failures – all delineated in this book by Bugliosi.. oh boy.
I’m still stunned he won a second presidency
Pick up the book. Read it. Then buy it for your friends as well. Its worth the read, though its absolutely heartbreaking. It will open YOUR eyes
Vincent Bugliosi has written one of the most important books of 2008, clearly laying out the case against George Bush for lying our country into an illegal war and occupation of Iraq, and for deceiving the American people by creating the erroneous deception of linking Iraq to Al-Qaeda and the events of 9/11. There is no defense of the indefensible, and what George Bush and his co-conspirators have done to America is treasonous. May all Americans read this book, call for Bush, Cheney and Rice to be brought to justice, and help restore America’s integrity and standing in the world. To do otherwise would be criminal. Thank you Vincent Bugliosi for writing this book.
