The B&R Samizdat Express

The once and future Internet: Here you'll see the Internet the way it was and should be: useful information for free, with no annoying graphics or glitz. This site is designed to provide maximum content for minimum clicks. For more information about our site, see the bottom of this page. Enjoy, and please spread the word.

Simple but Special Do-It-Yourself Gift for a Two-Year-Old

How to make a personalized photo book for a toddler -- http://www.samizdat.com/blog/?p=490
Example ("Lila's Book. Christmas 2011). http://www.samizdat.com/lilabook.html

WORKS OF ANDRE ORBELIANI

Andre Orbeliani was the only child of Princess Mary Orbeliani and Prince Alexei Orbeliani (of Georgia).  He was the nephew of Alexander Bulatovich, about whom I wrote the novel The Name of Hero.  After having met his mother in Penticton, British Columbia, in 1972, I corresponded with Andre, trying to get more details about the life of his uncle.  He and I never met face-to-face.

In the course of our correspondence he sent me copies of his self-published fiction and poetry, which he intended for me to post on the Web to reach a larger audience.  I procrastinated, then he died (in 2001), then I misplaced the box in which I had stored them and his letters to me.  I found the missing box last week (in November 2011).  I will post here his fiction and poetry as .pdf images and his letters (some in English and some in French) which I will type in.

Go to http://www.samizdat.com/orbeliani/ for links to
Twenty Eight Gramms of Poetry (1982)
Herr Luftinspektor, a Poem (in English, no date)
Lunaya Sonata (a poem in Russian, 1967)
The Scarlet Lady (a novella, 1973)
Jeff Smeerkaas, a play in five acts (no date)
 

My latest book -- "Saint Smith and Other Stories" by Richard Seltzer

Saint Smith and Other Stories consists of two novellas and five short stories. "Saint Smith" focuses on Charlie, a would-be experimental film maker, Sarah his traditional Bible-believing mother, and Irene the clever ironic uninhibited German woman he marries. "The Barracks" takes place in basic training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, at the time of the Viet Nam War. The five stories deal with puzzles of human nature and the meaning of life. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/sasmandotstb.html  or  http://www.amazon.com/dp/1455400866   or    http://www.createspace.com/3507928

"[Saint Smith is] rich in thought and peopled with intriguing characters (each soul exotic in its own peculiar mix of angels and demons, reality and fantasy, order and anarchy). The selected episodes of their lives are like pieces in an interlocking jigsaw puzzle which, when assembled, present another puzzle – the “What’s wrong with this picture?” kind. Everyone and everything is in its appropriate place, all is proper. Yet something is missing. Something isn’t right. Somehow it all has the quality of a dream. And yet it isn’t a dream – it’s life. The theme of sandcastles, the building of houses, the mansions in houses, the building of lives, the dream of living, Charlie with his camera like waves sweeping over fragile constructions at once real and make believe is all brilliant, and challenging. It has a Barth, Vonnegut, even Borges aspect to it, as do the rest of the pieces in the collection, only without the surrealism, which may make it even more effective as the impact settles in."
-- Rex Sexton, author of "Desert Flower", "The Time Hotel", Night Without Stars", and "X Ray Eyes"

Latest issue of our newsletter -- Internet-on-a-Disk #72, December 2011

Out-of-the-Box Thinking Fuzzy Thinking about Big Questions Fiction Book Reviews and Thoughts on Literature Notes on Ebooks and Ereaders Web and PC Notes
Our online store at Yahoo with all our book-collection CDs and DVDs
PayPal alternative -- Catalogue with PayPal Shopping Cart links

New customer orientation (a summary of everything we do related to books)

We are making books available on CD and DVD, at very low cost, selected and organized in an easy-to-use, well-indexed format. These CDs and DVDs contain text, not audio or video; they are designed for PCs and recent Macs (OS X), that have CD and/or DVD drives. Our mission is to use technology to make books extremely inexpensive and easy to use.

Our CDs and DVDs are hand-crafted. The selection and organization are based on our judgment, not automated programs. These are the complete, unabridged books, in plain text format, with no compression and no encryption, to make them easy for anyone without computer skills to read, using Word, a Web browser or any other application that takes plain ASCII texts. You can move a copy of a book from the CD to your hard drive to edit and add notes. You can use the capabilities of Word or whatever other application you use to increase the type size, to copy-and-paste, to print. And the blind can use these books with their screen readers (which convert text to voice).

Anyone can put hundreds of books on a single CD, and thousands on a DVD. (Isn't technology wonderful?) But we're interested in providing not just large quantities of books at ridiculously low prices, but also providing a "context". The selection matters. Putting the right books together in ways that make them easily accessible can create a unique context that makes it possible to better understand a region of the world, an historical period, or an author. That's our goal. That's why each of our CDs and DVDs is "hand-crafted" -- selected and arranged by human judgement, not by an automated computer process, with file names that are the same as the book names, arranged first by the major categories used on our CDs, and then in logical folders,by author or topic, and with html indices that make it easy to find the book you want and then simply click to open it in Word or in your Web browser. Related article: www.samizdat.com/dvd.html

Free Ebook of the Week: Please let me know if you want to join our ebook of the week club and/or our kids' book of the week club seltzer@samizdat.com Each week, on Tuesday, I send out a free book as a plain-text attachment. This service is intended  to help people get used to reading books on their computer screens. Details: http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/freeb.html and http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/kid.html

For details about all our CDs, see http://www.samizdat.com/readme.html or visit our store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat

Reviews of our CDs

Teachers' and Students' Guide: Suggestions on how to get the most out of your books on CD

Articles about the implications of this new way of publishing and reading and creating

Business on the Internet