Visual Guide to Minor Leaguers: Using Graphics to Find Prospects, Nick Richards
A baseball industry minor league expert explains how to analyze minor leaguers.
Using graphics, charts, screen shots, and videos, Richards explains what metrics work best for minor leaguers, how to find those numbers on the Web, how to put those numbers into graphical form for easier understanding, and how to interpret what you are seeing. Not every stat darling is worth picking up for your dynasty team. Conversely not every poor stat line is meaningful if you look more closely at the numbers, and ideally if you chart trend lines. While scouting comes first, if all you have are numbers, here's how to make the numbers work for you. This is an easy book to read, to skim, to use as a reference any time you wonder if a minor leaguer you heard about is good or not. The book itself is very visual, and Richards shows you exactly how to make best use of the copious amounts of data available on the baseball Web. It is easy once you know how! |
(100 Pages)
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Babyloving: The Emotional Life of a Baby, Hiag Akmakjian
Babyloving is a comfortable and reassuring read to new parents. Hiag Akmakjian, a Book of the Month Club author and an authority on babies and childhood development, explains in this book how emotions grow in the first 36 months of life. Writing in a cheerful and conversational tone, he discusses, among many topics, how a baby learns to tolerate frustration. The importance of love and hugging in the baby’s development. Where healthy self-esteem comes from. How compassion develops to help a baby become a more “human” and loving being. Akmakjian, a graduate of Columbia University and several psychological institutes, draws on his 40 years of work in the field of child development. He was a guest lecturer at New York University Medical Center, and the prestigious Princeton Center for Infancy and Early Childhood cited him along with Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton in the dedication of its series of books on child development. Of Akmakjian’s earlier work on babies and parenting, American Baby wrote: “The advice is sensible, the scope broad, and the approach understandable.” And the Library Journal: “A very interesting, well-written, and sound modern analysis of child development . . . a cheerful, practical book which it’s hard not to like.” In a market crowded with parenting guides of every kind, no book provides the information and help to be found in Babyloving. The substance of the book draws on the work of the greatest leaders in the field of baby and child study, a long list that includes Donald Winnicott, René Spitz, Edith Jacobson, Heinz Hartmann, and especially Margaret Mahler, in her discussions of the mother-infant symbiosis and the three-year long process of separation and individuation. Yet at the same time, its sympathetic approach is designed as a help to parents, not a textbook. The emphasis is not on underlying theories but on how parents can easily learn and apply the knowledge we have in our possession. |
(124 pages) |
Snow Falling on a Bamboo Leaf: The Art of Haiku, Hiag Akmakjian
Many lovers of poetry consider haiku to be literature's most subtle art form. The whole of life seems effortlessly expressed in only a few words and images.
The book presents readers with sixty of the more famous classical haiku in the original romanized Japanese along with their interlinear trans-literations. This unique comb-ination becomes a great help in understanding how they were made. An introductory essay tells how haiku can just as easily be written in English and as a help to readers creating their own haiku, it explains to them the elegant but rigorous structure of what appears to be an easy art form. This charming and informative book is tastefully illustrated with the author's own lovely ink drawings. |
(120 pages) |
Cleo, Hiag Akmakjian
In this raunchy novel, a young American veteran, using the GI Bill to attend an art school in Montparnasse, returns to post-World War II Paris where he meets Cleo.
She is a 19-year-old virginal American studying abroad who, along with a group of café friends and a comic overweight middle-aged Parisian prostitute, hopes to explore love, philosophy, sex and early movies in the easygoing ways of Left Bank Paris. It is an unusual kind of novel: a graphic love story (quite graphic at times) while remaining a fun read. NOTE: Adult themes and language. |
(114 pages) |
Cathouse or The House of All Nations, a Comedy of Eros, Hiag Akmakjian
Christmas season and Zoe is not happy.
The madam of The House of All Nations is dealing with the usual day-to-day issues with clients, needs of the ladies, health regulations, and a bouncer who is so philosophical you can get a classical education just by listening to his asides by the bar. More urgently, the bank wants to foreclose because of derivative losses Zoe has suffered, thanks to poor advice from her former boyfriend, the local banker who has his own problems with finances. Plus one of her girls has come up positive on a public health test. And the local Family Above All wants the brothel closed, and now has the means to do it. And the banker wants to make up with her. A comic play that touches on the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, money, Wall Street, sex, love and Empedocles? It's life. NOTE: This is the script of a play, not a novel. Adult themes and language. |
(118 pages) |
Writing To Get Published, Bill Manville & Hiag Akmakjian
Author Bill Manville taught the course "Writing To Get Published" for both Temple University and writers.com. In this book Bill collected essays and examples that show the working writer how to write in a way that gets your work noticed.
Unlike most books this one is not meant to be read from front cover to back. The reader can pick it up at random and find out tips on writing good dialog, discussions of self-publishing (and whether it works), finding an agent and working through writer's block. Using a variety of fonts to create a conversational style, the reader will feel they are sitting in a classroom with Bill as he shows (not tells) the best ways to write. Every writer, or would-be writer, will find something useful in this book. |
(195 pages) |
Name Dropping: The Cedar Bar in the 1950s, Hiag Akmakjian
This short book is a first-person account of the famous New York City Cedar Bar in the 1950s when it was regularly visited by what came to be known as the "greatest generation in American art history." The author was friends with Willem DeKooning, Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Philip Guston and Franz Kline.
In this short book he describes what these giants of the American art world were really like when they relaxed among friends in their favorite neighborhood hangout. You'll also see how they viewed art criticism as nothing more than profound twaddle -- but appreciated nonetheless for being impressively complimentary, whatever the hell it meant. An impressionistic view of a time and place that no longer exists. You won't view these artists the same way again, but every word is true. Also includes a short story by the author: “I Love You and Isn’t That What Counts?” |
(50 pages) |
Finding Dad, Margaret Pitz
10-year-old Jessie Pike sets off to find her father, leaving an uncaring mother and abusive stepfather. She is pick up by Will, a man who will stop at nothing to fulfil a specific fantasy. Will's dream requires Jessie to become someone else but to what extent is it possible to brainwash a child? And could Jessie's search for a father coincide with Will's fantasy?
This novel raises fundamental questions about the adult-child relationship, which will linger in your mind long after you've read the final page. Margaret Pitz has written an unlikely love story - a chilling and challenging read. |
(164 pages) |
After Dad, Margaret Pitz
After Dad, a coming-of-age tale with a difference, is the story of Ariel's emergence into the world after spending two years as the often-willing abductee of Will, a man who stopped at nothing to fulfill his obsessive fantasy. It is the story of her emotional healing and re-entry into normal life as she absorbs and comes to terms with all that had happened in those two years.
Now living with her birth father, Arial faces the task of integrating with her peers and engaging in activities more appropriate for a sixteen-year-old. She befriends Pat, a fellow student in a philosophy class at the local college and a gadfly and catalyst for Ariel's growth and healing. She quickly becomes Ariel's window on the real world, a sounding board and a counterpoint and mirror for Ariels' feelings. They shape each other as together they reveal the full horror of what happened to Ariel in those missing two years. Told with humor and poignancy, this is a charming sequel to Finding Dad, an earlier novel by Margaret Pitz. |
(190 pages) |
Alice in Madland, Margaret Pitz
It's 1958 and 17-year-old Alice Chorley's career aspirations are in tatters. She takes a mindless office job where she is drawn into – and colludes with – the mad fantasy world of senior secretary Pearl Taylor. Their 'Game' is played out in counterpoint to Alice's more normal (though unsatisfactory) relationship with her boyfriend, Jack. The fantasies escalate and the tension mounts, leading to an explosive confrontation, a startling revelation and, ultimately, a different life for Alice.
"The Game was accomplished with absolutely no physical touching on our part, ever. It would not have made good television – it was ideal for the radio though." |
(124 pages) |
Snow on a Raven's Back, Hiag Akmakjian
A young New York journalist moves to Hollywood to interview his famous movie star friend Roz as well as the renowned film director Max Petrov. His real motive is to create for himself an opportunity for pitching a film idea to the Great Max on the abduction and sexual slavery of women.
The theme of the story gets the director’s attention but Max objects that the film has no ending. Women are missing, true, and their suffering must of course be great, but if they can’t be found or liberated, we can only commiserate, and how much of a story is that? But the young journalist can’t – won’t – give up. He is urged on by his lover Inge: it was the disappearance of her friend Karen that ignited his passion for this cause. He is convinced that a film on this topic, with Roz, its superstar leading lady to insure success and publicity, would focus attention on the problem. Roz – herself a friend of Inge’s – is equally passionate about making such a film and is willing to use all her Hollywood clout to influence the reluctant Max. How can the earnest young journalist, then, get Max Petrov, supposed mover and shaker, to act on this timely and immensely important human story? NOTE: Adult themes and language. |
(252 pages) |
Hardy Boys Book Reviews, Nicolas Akmakjian
An adult looks back fondly on his childhood treasures: the original 58 Hardy Boys volumes. These were not great literature, but they were never meant to be. They are actually surprisingly well-written for children’s books. The great writer Leslie McFarlane got things off to a terrific start and the series benefited from that great foundation.
Each of the 58 volumes is reviewed in this book. This content comes from the popular HardyBoysBookReviews.com site, noting who wrote each book, when it was written (and revised), the cover is critiqued, the chums who appear are noted, and what Aunt Gertrude baked for her beloved nephews is gravely noted. This book expands upon that material, however, to also include notes about the year in which the book was written. What film won the Oscar that year? What was the #1 song? What events happened that year? All of this goes into the mind of the author and you can see that influence in the books. When James Bond shows up in public consciousness, you can absolutely tell in the Hardy Boys. The space race, multiculturalism, post-World War II expansion, the Depression, and, of course, Scooby Doo are all reflected in these books. These are light-hearted, brief reviews that do not spoil the plot. They are written with humor and affection. If you read the book, the review will remind of the basic plot, but will not reveal the identity of the villain. For that you have to read the book again — and this book will make you want to do just that. |
(139 pages) |