On Monday I sat down with local author Hilary Hauck for an interview. She is one of the organizers of the 2024 Festival of Books in the Alleghenies. Allegheny Independent Media is a media sponsor for this event. It will be on September 20 & 21 in Ebensburg, PA. Day one of the Festival The […]

In 2018, I saw that PBS had an online poll called the Great American Read for the best novel or series of novels. To Kill a Mockingbird won the poll followed by Outlander (series), Harry Potter (series), Pride and Predjudice, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Wuthering Heights (of which the title of my […]

It has been one year since I created the poll for the greatest nonfiction book of all time.  This poll was created in response to the PBS series The Great American Read which was for the greatest novel of all time.  Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird won that one followed by  the Outlander series by Diana […]

It has been harder to find time to write on this blog between work, working on my book, and life in general.  Tonight I did have time to write about some of the books that have been helpful to me in writing my book.     The first series of books I would like to discuss […]

While I have still been getting responses to my online poll (36 responses so far) I have been writing on my blog and working on my book about Johnstown.   I saw a post on Facebook about the  Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction and Essay Contest The essay writing contest was of interest to me.  According […]

Three weeks ago a member of a wrtiers group on Facebook posted this image asking “Who (in this group) is a blogger?”  The post received over 630 comments with 206 unique blogs listed.  I thought I would take a look at the blogs listed to see what kind of platforms that they used (WordPress vs. […]

I have been tied up with other writing assignments to post on this blog lately.  I saw this video on Facebook from Real Time with Bill Maher where he criticizes comic book fans and thought I should comment. I posted it on my Facebook and got one negative comment and one positive one.  The negative […]

It has been one month since this online poll has begun.  There have been 27 responses to the poll so far with a wide variety in the books receiving votes.  Of the 112 books listed, 69 received at least one vote.  The top vote receivers so far are listed below. Title, Author (Year) Votes (%) […]

Last week I discussed the PBS series The Great American Read and the need for an online poll for the greatest non fiction book of all time.  This week I thought I would take it upon myself to create such an online poll so that you can make your voice heard on the matter.  Admittedly […]

I thought I would take a break from the recent election to discuss another topic I was thinking about.  I really enjoyed watching The Great American Read (GAR) on PBS last fall.  They put together a list of 100 novels and or series of books and profiled them on their program.  They had celebrities endorse […]