It's been a lot of fun working with the minds behind Pridebit Kitchen Tools to prepare their sales copy and the ebooks they send to customers as a gift with purchase. 

Very excited to see the launch of Emerald Harvest's website and product line. Emerald Harvest makes fertilizers for hydroponic plants. It's a pleasure working in their team to create the web copy and other communications. Congratulations!

This month on Displaced Nation I take a look at Allen Kurzweil's globe-trotting memoir about the search for his childhood bully as an adult. Part thriller, part comedy and all too-crazy-to-be-fiction, WHIPPING BOY was a pleasure to read. Check out the full review here.  

Click on the image above to go to this month's book review on The Displaced Nation. "Passionate Nomad" by Jane Fletcher Geniesse looks at the early life and development of hotshot wartime Middle East expert and lifelong adventurer Dame Freya Stark and is a gripping read.

This week in my Booklust, Wanderlust column on The Displaced Nation, I review Peter Hessler's  "Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip." 

I loved old China hand Peter Hessler's books on his early years studying and working in the Middle Kingdom. "River Town" and "Oracle Bones" are detailed memoirs that were both good reads and a good primer for what to expect when I moved to China. "Country Driving" continues in Hessler's tradition of showing the small details of everyday Chinese peoples' lives to illustrate some of the bigger challenges facing the Middle Kingdom.

Please stop by the site to take a look at my review and the dozens of other articles by The Displaced Nationers--international creatives. 

Happy reading!

I'm excited to announce that today my first review as a columnist for The Displaced Nation is live! 

The Displaced Nation, which bills itself as "a home for international creatives," invited me to start a book column to review books on topics that would be of interest to their readership of long-time expats and adult "third culture kids."

My first column looks at an engrossing series I recently finished, the Dublin Murder Squad books by Irish writer Tana French.  Please stop by the site and check out my review, and the other great articles by Displaced Nationers! 

I'm not a huge fan of organized sporting events, but I *am* a big fan of social media! 

One of my clients, the social media analytics company Socialbakers, has released a fascinating (and addictive!) new tool  that will measure fan participation--mentions are counted as "cheers"--for the FIFA 2014 World Cup, happening now in Brazil. Want to find out which teams get the most love on Twitter? Which players are pictured most often on Instagram? Check out the tool--and my blog about it on the Socialbakers site. Who will you cheer for at #Brazil2014? 

Every year, sometime in January, I try to calculate how many books I read in the previous 12 months. Reading books (specifically novels, though I seem to be reading more nonfiction in the  last two years) is a daily habit, and I usually have more than one book going at a time.

Last year and the year before, I was able to make a guess at how many books I read because I could count the titles on my Kindle. Unfortunately, over the Christmas holiday my Kindle decided that three years of constant use was a long enough life span and stopped working. I'm trialling reading Kindle books on my iPad instead, but will probably bite the bullet and get another dedicated ebook reader in the next couple of months. I read email and webpages on my iPad every day, but it's not really a comfortable platform to read a novel on, especially just before going to sleep: the screen's bright and it's too heavy to hold up for several chapters.

Anyway, this year, I've decided to look forward rather than back and plan a little as how many books I'm going to read this year. In January, I read 12 books--behind my usual pace for a month that included a holiday, and I'm blaming that on the indecision about reading on my iPad or not. I'm guessing most months I read between 5-15 books, with an annual total of around 100. 

One of the books I did read this month was part of the Untreed Reads reading challenge, which I'm happy I stumbled upon before the deadline to enroll. Basically, they're giving me a book a month and asking me to then write an honest review of it when I've finished. I've been meaning to post more book reviews on Goodreads for some time now, so this seemed like a fun way to make that happen (and get free books, whee!). For January, I picked Lesley A. Diehl's A Deadly Draught, which looked like fun because it mixes mysteries and beer--two topics I enjoy. You can see my review on Goodreads here. As the year progresses, I'll mention the other titles I read in this blog under the "untreed reads challenge" tag.

What are your reading goals for 2014?

Shopping for souvenirs can be a lot of fun. I love making lists of things to take back for friends and family, or to keep until the next gift-giving holiday rolls around. And heck, yes, I like buying things for myself too. But first-timers to Southeast Asia can find the markets and street stalls intimidating, not because of choice or crowding, but because of haggling. In my article for ThaHoliday.com today I give seven tips for bargaining gracefully. Check it out at this link. 

Is it beer o'clock yet? When I travel, I love sampling local beers. For this week's ThaHoliday.com article, I introduce some of the most popular beers in Southeast Asia. Cheers!