Pennyworth Books

His name was Ted and he worked for Standard Oil for fifteen years. Few people know those facts about Theodor Seuss Geisel; they only know him for the Grinch, the Cat in the Hat, the Oobleck and Horton Hears a Who. Few people know that Ted Geisel went to Oxford and Dartmouth; they only know that Dr. Seuss wrote children’s books like no one else.
?br>The early years

Ted Geisel was editor of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, the college’s humor magazine. A party that Ted and his friends threw got him relieved of his editor duties, but he continued to write for the magazine signing off as simply Seuss. An alter ego was born.

Dr. Seuss, as he would eventually be known as, started his career as a cartoonist. He decided to pursue the artist route after hearing the suggestion from his first wife-to-be, Helen Palmer, an Oxford classmate. His first published cartoon was…

I had been carefully studying kissing for years. When the men pressed their lips against the women’s, they made sounds and sometimes even moved their bodies. My regular Saturday afternoon movie viewing provided me with a deep pool of endless and infinite kissing research. When Troy Donahue kissed Sandra Dee in A Summer Place, I carefully studied his posture, his attitude, and the formation of the very kiss itself, being born out of his lips exploding onto Sandra’s waiting, open, pouting mouth. I watched the way his arms looped around Sandra, how she seemed to melt into him. I was careful to not give myself away, to not be too conspicuous in my kiss-study. It was very important that nobody knew. My shame-filled secret was not the studying of the kissing; it was my perspective about the kissing.

The deep, dark secret was this: I wanted to be Troy Donahue. I…

Maryann Davenport taught school in both cities and rural areas from Chicago to the West Coast, before having children of her own. When she returned to work, away from home, she went into production engineering. Seventeen years ago, she retired from Rockwell to write novels full-time with her husband, Joe. They live in a rural mountain area of California.

Tyler: Thank you, Maryann, for joining me today. To begin, would you tell us briefly what 揟he Park?is about?

Maryann: The main character, Coral Wood, returns to her grandfather抯 ranch in Emerald Valley, California, where she spent her happy childhood summers. She is dismayed to find him worried about losing his ranch to a city club, on the coast, which wants to make Emerald Valley into a public park.

After accepting the job of social studies teacher at the local high school, she meets Mac Maclane, the fiery but very attractive biology teacher. After…

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

Terra’s dream is to leave her small town for college and start anew, where the port wine stain on her face will not draw so much attention. Her verbally abusive father constantly tells her she can’t make it on her own in hopes of controlling her future. When Terra meets Jacob, a Goth Chinese teenager who doesn’t care to fit in, he begins to show her that she can take control of her life. What follows is an utterly compelling journey that’s both geographic and emotional. Best for grades 7 and up.

3Willows 3 Willows by Ann Brashares

Jo, Ama and Polly were inseparable in third grade, but that’s changed as they’ve grown up. During the summer before high school, each girl is tested – Jo discovers her parents are separating, Ama goes on a trip she didn’t choose and Polly learns some hard truths about…

I enjoyed reading this book. The characters were portrayed very well. Jack, a multimillionaire who experiences mid-life crisis and ends up finding meaning to his life – but it costs him millions of dollars and emotional pain. Adele is a heavy-drinking, free-living, multimillionaire with an independent mind and a sense of humor. Wendy, a single mother who finds the love of her life. Mixed up educators playing with their students’ lives in their conquest and the retiring professor who resists this plot has a big secret. A married advisor carries on an affair with another man and when he is discovered, he thinks his world has ended.

I would say this fiction is a light comedy that is quite entertaining and has some romance elements as well. Author Robert Mercer-Nairne brings attention to common human frailties with a sense of fun. He clearly reveals the desire to ‘get rich quick’ in…

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read. -Mark Twain

Do you read? I bet you do. I do too. But do you have to struggle to read or you find it easy to keep up with today’s best-sellers that come into the market one after another?

Have you ever been in situations where you find yourself getting bored of reading because it took you so long to finish a book that you can’t wait to switch to another books with new themes and ideas?

True, some people do have the skills to speed read that they can finish reading a book within a few hours (and are still able to grasp the whole idea of the book like sponge absorbing water!) but as for me unfortunately, reading a book can take hours, weeks and sometimes months!

It is a widely known fact that knowledge equal…

Sin & Vengeance by C.J. West opens with a bang but the erotic threesome comes to an end when an uninvited guest is murdered.

Charlie Marston’s dreams of being a football hero were dashed when he was injured and forced to join the family winemaking business. He uses the house of an acquaintance to hide out whenever he feels the need to escape his father’s wrath. On this particular day he and his buddy Randy are using the place to meet with Deirdre who they contacted through an internet sex ad.

Unfortunately her husband comes looking for her and interrupts their m閚age a trois. Henri is killed and in the ensuing chaos Charlie and Randy find a large amount of money hidden in the wall of the farmhouse they’re “borrowing.” Henri is creatively disposed of and Charlie, Randy and Deirdre split the money. The repercussions will change their lives forever.

Evidently there are…