Halloween Book Review/Recommendation: A Murder of Crows

It was we crows who took your daughter, in case you were wondering. She didn’t run away.

Here's the basic premise of Deanna Knippling's latest book – the crows have found a human girl who tells stories and, being somewhat… possessive of stories, carry the girl away to live with them.

But the girl is shocked to silence by the flurry of wings and talons and beaks and (let's be honest) bird shit, and won't talk – won't tell the stories that drew the crows to her in the first place.

Awk-ward, you might say. *

The solution to this problem is that the girl's new feathered foster family tell her the human stories they know: a way of priming the pump and reminding her who and what she is.

Those stories, and the interstitial moments with the girl and new and old family, form the bones of A Murder of Crows – as a fine a skeleton as you could want for Halloween.

Deanna had me hooked from that first, wonderful line, and the short stories were exactly what I wanted, this time of year, both in subject and length.

Are you in the same kind of mood? Need a little macabre for chilly autumn nights?

Allow me to make a recommendation…

A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre – Kindle edition by DeAnna Knippling. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre – Kindle edition by DeAnna Knippling. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre.

Why Google+

I've quoted Guy Kawasaki before to explain the differences I see between places like Facebook and Twitter and Google+, but this article really focused on the Google+ microcosm and nicely explains why I continue to find it the best fit for me for almost everything I do with social media.

Why Google+ is the place for passions
The single biggest controversy about social media is whetherGoogle+ is a dying wasteland of non-activity or a hive of conversation and engagement. Mike Elgan is here to explain why it’s the latter.

This is What Happens Now

"This week, a prominent woman in games talked about Gamergate. She said she wished things weren't the way they are, that she was afraid and didn't want to be. The attack that followed said it plain as day: You should be afraid. This is what happens now. This is what happens when you speak up."

Felicia Day And Gamergate: This Is What Happens Now
Earlier this week, Felicia Day wrote a blog post. In it, the well-known actor eloquently expressed something that a great number of people in the video game scene have been feeling lately: She said she was afraid.