New Media Reviews

When I saw Jason Kottke's post on new rules for reviewing, I thought FTC. No. He has noticed something I thought was my personal problem: reviewing based on the quality of the media product. If the TOC in an ebook isn't linked to the chapter titles, the book falls in my estimation.  If I find too many typos or outright errors in the printing--or any of a dozen other irritations--I may pan the product.

Kottke's point is that we are more often turning a blind eye and ear to the content. It's all about format. I disagree with him, though, that purchasers pay no attention to, say, the story and buy a format. If you have a Kindle, do you buy books just because they are in the Kindle Store?  It's not like climbing a mountain just because it's there.

If I focus on the quality of the product, it's because I didn't find glaring errors in the content or the story didn't disappoint.  I'm reading a hard cover of short stories right now.  The book is nice, the cover attractive.  The heft and feel of the product is pleasant. The stories suck.  I thought the same of this author's last novel.  She writes depressing tales of disillusionment and despair that simply peter out.  You're glad to reach the end, emotionally exhausted from waiting for something good to happen.

However, rather than waste my time and readers', I probably will skip reviewing this book I didn't want to receive in the first place.  Why give more free publicity to something just to tell you don't bother buying it?  I'd rather tell you to not bother buying this particular edition of a useful/pleasing book. Just because my reviews appear mostly in "new media" (in digital format) doesn't mean I'm not a "traditional" reviewer, either. I'd say or do the same if my reviews appeared in print.

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Book Review of UNFORGIVABLE

Just noticed my review of Philippe Djian's Unforgivable is an editor's pick today on the Books page at Blogcritics.org. The review itself begins there, but the whole article starts here.  This was one of those smallish books I didn't know was going to arrive. That always irritates me, and inevitably I cannot resist peeking inside.


I must admit that European literature seldom satisfies due to the usual lack of a happy ending (which many American readers expect) and the authors' penchant for leaving loose ends dangling all over the place.  Well, what happens to the writer, Francis?  What was Jeremie going to do with the gun? And will Judith (Francis' second wife) simply carry on in her down-to-earth practical manner? Saaay ... this sounds like a good book for a book club to discuss.

Any book mentioned may have been a gift from the publisher.

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Mini- Review: Write Starts

I am such a sucker for little books!  Hal Bennett's Write Starts did not sound so interesting in the PR blurb.  However, the email came from the publisher's publicity director, and she bothered to fulfill the requests I laid out for contacts: address me by name; include book stats. It was clear the review request came from a traditional publisher (third parameter), New World Library.

The author's name rang no bell, but many of us who toil in nonfiction fields garner no recognitions at all.  The facts that Zinna has over 25 years as a writing coach, workshop facilitator, developmental editor, and is the author of more than thirty books suggested this "slim volume" on jumpstarting your creativity might hold value.
It is so much more than the subtitle promises.  Reading the thoughts of a seasoned writer was such a joy, nay, a comfort.  I saw my advice echoed on printed pages and found nothing that contradicts my experiences, freely shared.

Book provided by publisher on request.
Copyright © 2010 Georganna Hancock

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"Pull" Review on BC

Early yesterday @ghauptf published my review of Pull @bcarticles (http://bit.ly/6kGI2y) after @popgadabout questioned a verb and I changed it. Editors make writers better!

Translation for the non-Twitterati: Early yesterday Gordon Hauptfleisch published my review of Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business on BlogCritics after another editor, Bill Sherman ... well, the rest was understandable, I hope. This is the "real review" as opposed to my enthusiastic recent blurb. What's the difference, some may ask. What I wrote here in A Writer's Edge was a very personal reaction to what I was reading.  The review is a more formal and, I hope, fair assessment of the book after I finished reading it.

Possibly it was also a success at avoiding the word "I."  If you find one, let me know in a comment here, and I'll send you my extra copy of the novel Girl Mary.

Writing the "blurb" was quick and easy.  It was all opinion and personal essay.  Writing the review took three hours of hard work, and it still doesn't please me.  On the other hand, when I checked something on the author's website, a sentence from my blurb (with attribution) appeared at the top of a page.  At first I didn't recognize the words.  When I realized they were mine, I thought, "Damn, I'm good!"

Non sequitur:  another notion occurred as I was writing the review: a potential use for my Google Wave account. I also mentioned using Wave in the post about blogs as communities. What I have in mind is a little research project to collect anecdotes about a particular aspect of writing.  Stay tuned!

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Mini-Review of PULL

Years ago but right before the Web was woven, I had a vision. I'd been meditating on solutions to the problems of homeless people here. I knew the resources existed to help them, but help was often inaccessible for those who need it the most. It was and still is uncoordinated. Thinking about what little of the Internet I knew, I saw these discrete services circling the homeless, electronically interconnected so that from one dumb terminal or a fantastic PC, someone could customize a help plan for each person in need, providing the requisite paperwork, vouchers for transportation included.

"Why do charities have to duplicate efforts and waste so much money?" I complained to the only group that would (pre-blogs) allow me to publish my rambling rants, the local Mensans. Without leadership, sadly, any ad hoc collection of geniuses produces more hot air than hot action.

David Siegel has shown how this type of "cloud" computing is being realized to pull in the resources needed by a client-centered plan. In Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business, Siegel explains in very approachable terms how businesses like the book industry are struggling to not only shift paradigms but transform themselves into more efficient and effective business models.

This is exciting/scary stuff! It is a clarion call for the transparency I've advocated for several years. I hate screen names and avatars as identifiers for people. Be who you are wherever you are, I've been saying. Soon it will become inevitable reality. What effect, I wonder, will it have on white collar crime that relies on computers to game any system, when the entire system becomes standardized? Only those intent of committing felonies have anything to fear from, say, RFIDs embedded in all products, pets, people.

Siegel predicts the end of dead-end jobs like cashiering at the local supermarket and predicts that large main libraries (like the one being shoved down San Diegan's throats while the homeless freeze on the sidewalk in front of the old one) will cease to exist in a few decades. At last! I cheer. Someone else who sees that libraries are for information, not physical books, which are all becoming digital anyway. He says:

Small branch libraries are the libraries of the future. They will provide a good place to sit quietly and research online , a place for kids to learn, and meeting spaces for learning-related events. They will have minimal staff and probably won't be open all day. [This is happening already with a fiscal crisis demanding cutbacks.] There may not be very many, schools will do just as well. Our monstrous downtown libraries with their stacks of books and huge staffs won't make it to the middle of the century.

I haven't finished reading the book yet, but the chapter on "Pulling Books" alone is worth the price. It provides a clear depictions of how the industry operates, which any author needs to understand. It will be available in the next couple of weeks in hardcover and for the Kindle. Pre-order at Amazon by clicking on the image at the right.

Any products reviewed on this site may have been gifts of their producers.

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Zero Cost eBooks

Electronic books seem to have negligible value? According to a writer at Kindle Review, part of ireaderreview.com, the Value Perception of eBooks is going to zero :

eBooks are going to Zero, it’s happening NOW, and it’s INEVITABLE

44 of the Top 50 Kindle Bestsellers are at $0.

The Kindle Store was the best unpolluted channel for ebooks and now it’s dying out.

When people see 44 of the top 50 ebooks free -

* They are reluctant to pay $10 for ebooks.
* They choose free first and read more free than paid books.
* The value perception of ebooks goes downhill.

They think authors who want $5 or more for an ebook are greedy.

I'm not so sure authors are all the problem in Amazon's Kindle Store. Recently I found three of my reviews on sale as digital books for $9.99 (each!). Also, I counted 15 of the top 50 Kindle books with prices. Consider J. A. Konrath's arguments for eBook self-publishing being more remunerative for authors than traditional print publishing. His most notable rant at Newbie's Guide to Publishing runs his own numbers.

Don't forget, you must have a $260-$490 electronic device and a subscription in order to read these zero-cost books. Or my ten-buck book reviews.

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THE HINDUS Book Review

Guilt urged me to review The Hindus: An Alternative History. I've been reading it for months, absorbing the rich, comprehensive description of the world's oldest major religion. You can read my "official" reactions on BlogCritics; it's the first such composition in which I managed to avoid using "I, me or my." This post is a more personal view of the experience of reading Wendy Doniger's opus. Her work clears up my decades-long confusion about Hinduism as a religion--it's been like the blind fondling an elephant. Every time I approached it, I encountered a different set of stimuli. No wonder! Hinduism, I now understand, is a complex mix of influences, some antithetical, but as a whole, tolerant of it's various practices.

Another benefit of Doniger's book is a correlation of world events through time. I have a much better sense of where and when Christianity and Islam developed and how they influenced the Indian cultures. I'd read Bulfinch's MYTHOLOGY since childhood, but now I see how Greek and Roman thinking fits into a more comprehensive understanding of human history. It is as if I had a set of alphabet blocks scattered about my brain, and Doniger arranged them to spell something recognizable.

I've revealed here how much I squandered my opportunities for a classic education at Northwestern University in the 1960s. It's taken me until MY 60s to self-educate a grasp of world history, human development and religious philosophy. Reading The Hindus felt like dropping in the keystone to my wobbly arch of understanding. Thank you, Dr. Doniger, especially for your very approachable writing style that kept me chuckling as well as intellectually stimulated and, of course, challenged. My readers know I'm a great fan of references and back matter--yours is the best!

The Penguin Press was kind enough to send a copy of the book last spring at my request. I appreciate the gift.

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New Books Roundup

Time to catch up on my TBR pile. Catch up on mentioning them, that is. I can't review them until I read them, right? Well, maybe not fully in the case of Scott Donaldson's Fitzgerald & Hemingway: Works and Days. It is a scholarly compilation of the award-winning biographer's essays on both authors, probably less appealing to aficionados of either writer, I suspect. As the front flap blurb indicates, Donaldson has a "deep commitment to close reading." Think intricate details of each author's life traced to lines in a specific novel; positing similarities in lives to influences on works. It is an interesting glimpse into being a literary expert.

A similar academic-type of exegesis is Francine Prose's latest, Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. A top novelist, Prose may be better known to us for her New York Times bestseller, Reading Like a Writer. This new nonfiction offering opens eyes to view Frank's little book as something more and other than just a girl's diary. For instance, did you know Frank's work is published in three different versions? Not languages (dozens of those), but editions with differing material. This happened partly because Frank was of a tender age, training herself to write and rewrite her experiences as a novel. Prose proposes that Frank was already an author before her short life ended too soon.

I've been advised to hold off reading Decoding The Lost Symbol: The Unauthorized Expert Guide to the Facts Behind the Fiction until I see Dan Brown's latest semiotic chase scenes. Simon Cox must have had a preview in order to write his guide. He also wrote Cracking the DaVinci Code and Illuminating Angels & Demons. Maybe I won't wait, though. Subjecting myself to the DaVinci book was torture enough. What could it hurt to cut to the solution?

If I make a mistake, I'll turn to Zig Ziglar and Julie Norman's Embrace the Struggle: Living Life on Life's Terms. In this slim volume, the current pope of positive thinking and his daughter build on a traumatic event in Ziglar's life to convince others with similar struggles that life is still worth living, even if it's on life's terms. I probably need to read this one closely and edit that last.

Finally (until the UPS guy comes this afternoon) is The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing Business Books by Bert Holtje. I couldn't resist peeking inside. I'm thinking it will have application to writing any nonfiction book. It begins with testing your idea and appears to be a comprehensive guide through all publishing stages, ending with publicizing the finished product. I am especially impressed that Holtje stresses working with a freelance editor even if your book will be published traditionally.

These new releases are gifts from their various publishers.

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Jack Rabbit Moon

Texas author Dorraine Darden must be the most patient author around. Surely she is thinking that I am the slowest reviewer she's encountered. Thus, I am happy to announce my review of her debut novel, Jack Rabbit Moon, appears at BlogCritics, and a blurb will be in next month's Midwest Book Review, usually available on the first of the month. This is an outstanding debut novel and one I highly recommend to everyone. Last month I interviewed Dorraine both here, here (post and comments) and on BlogCritics. She is a real, serious writer, hard at work on her second novel. Trailer.

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MBR Self-Publishing Help

Thinking about self-publishing? Here's a list of books on the venerable Midwest Book Review website to help you get started:

MBR: The Publisher's Bookshelf A-L and M-Z

In his monthly newsletter, Editor Emeritus, Jim Cox, usually reviews these types of books and others to help writers and publishers in general. Another informational page on the site is Advice for Writers & Publishers, articles by various professionals.

Ordinarily I'd be telling you where to find "Georganna's Bookshelf" for October 2009, but I was tardy sending in my reviews last month. A gentle tap on the noggin by Jim informed me that I once again have a deadline: the 25th of the preceding month.

I did not know this.

November's page will be awesome!

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FTC & Book Reviews

The new FTC guidelines about disclosure of any relationship between the subject and the writer of a "testimonial" will handicap online book reviewers unnecessarily. If the relationship includes any transfer of something "of value" from the subject to the writer, the FTC is suggesting (albeit strongly) that the writer reveal such a relationship in or with the testimonial. Further, if the subject uses that testimonial in advertising, the disclaimer must also appear.

A book is certainly of value in and of itself. It is a material object worth at least the cost to manufacture. The recipient could possibly sell it at least as waste paper (difficult, but possible).

Because the FTC did NOT exempt people who mention books in their blogs or people who write book reviews in any media, the guidelines apply to them too. At least, if the FTC considers any mention of a book that is or will be for sale as a testimonial. It does not define "testimonial" either.

This situation is quite similar to Google reducing the Page Rank of many innocent bloggers a couple of years ago in an effort to punish the Pay Per Post bloggers. Some blogs (A Writer's Edge included) never recovered from that reduction. I do not relish the thought of wasting at the least two lines of text in every review to include a disclaimer which would have the effect of raising suspicions in the mind of a reader as well a throw a more personal cast on the writing.

Here's what the EFF had to say:

Significantly, the new rules place requirements on social media from which traditional print and television media are exempt. For instance, if a blogger publishes a book review, the rules will require her to disclose whether she received a free copy of the book from the publisher. Book reviews in print media face no such restrictions. [emphasis mine]

The EFF is urging the FTC to "rethink" this move and not as yet mounting an organized attack on the specious new guidelines. I suppose that is understandable in the context of the organization's activities vis-à-vis the Patriot act and the Free Flow of Information act. Or maybe it's just too soon.

Edward Champion interviewed FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection chief Richard Cleland on this matter, specifically the case of book reviewers receiving free books. "Cleland said that a disclosure was necessary when it came to an individual blogger, particularly one who is laboring for free." AND he singled out those who link to a sales page as being especially targeted, suggesting that they return the books after reviewing them.

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Bibliodicks & Tricks

The publicity had me at "bibliodick." I've known a few "dicks" in my days, but never one meriting the prefix "biblio". The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Bartlett is one of the few I really could scarcely put down once I began reading. And I hope the author won't be insulted when I say I kept forgetting it is a true crime story. It reads like a novel. Enthralling. I was also enraptured and encouraged to find a veteran journo who could switch to a long form and write such a lyrical and erudite narration. Kudos! That the story is about old books is a bonus.

Not so enticing is Jill Dearman's bang the keys "Based on eternal principles that work for scribes of all stripes." I hesitate to trash the production of someone I've connected with on LinkedIn for fear she'll drop me, and I won't be able to stand the rejection. Well, let's just say that I am not persuaded by her acronymic B.A.N.G. "four steps to a lifelong writing practice." And I was totally turned off by her style--a breezy affection of a 40's noir film star channeling Tallulah Bankhead (darling!) If you're in need of prompts, the back cover promises "an armful of clever and penetrating exercises." That, there are in abundance. Oh, and lots and lots of name dropping.

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NY Times Book Reviews

Best Sunday morning reading: NY Times book reviews. I knew there must be a good reason why I look to the NY Times Sunday book reviews as role models. I just never knew how picky they are! Book Publishing News: The New York Times Book Review Selection Process Revealed by Scott Lorenz:

Gewen says The Book Review does not print the names of its editors except when they write articles. Furthermore, he stated that there are only about 17 people on the Review roster including support staff.

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Week of Contest Nominations

What a week this has been for A Writer's Edge! First, nominated to the 4th Annual Top 10 Blogs for Writers Contest -- more noms (votes) needed. Don't forget to include the URL: http://www.writers-edge.info/Blog.html and a reason--thanksabunch!

Now comes a message from Michelle at The BBAW Awards Committee of the Book Blogger Appreciation Week competition:

Dear Writer's Edge,

I am so thrilled to inform you that you have been nominated for a Book Blogger Appreciation Week Award in the category Best General Review Blog.

This year it takes place September 14-18. If you haven't heard about this contest, that may be because it is fairly new. The site explains:

Book Blogger Appreciation was started by Amy Riley of My Friend Amy in an effort to recognize the hard work and contribution of book bloggers to the promotion and preservation of a literate culture actively engaged in discussing books, authors, and a lifestyle of reading.

The first Book Blogger Appreciation was observed in the fall of 2008 and occurs every September. The week spotlights and celebrates the work of active book bloggers through guest posts, awards, giveaways, and community activities. Book Bloggers are encouraged to register their participation for inclusion in a database of book bloggers.

If anyone practices promotion and preservation of a literate culture actively engaged in discussing books, authors, and a lifestyle of reading that would be me with this blog, reviewing books, and wrangling the Tierrasanta Book Club in real life. Next step: hook it all up with a literacy program encouraging book reading by upcoming generations.

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Summer Reading Report

I took Wendy Doniger's 780 page opus The Hindus: An Alternative History with me to the hospital. I had time to fill between an appointment to rearrange the rocks in my head and another for making muzzy photos of my boobs. When I signed in early at Radiology, I plunked the book down on the reception area.

"My that's a big book," the girl exclaimed, "but you're halfway through." She'd spotted my mother's tasseled bookmark sticking out from page 287. Halfway, indeed!

"Yes, and I've been reading it all summer." She just made big eyes at that, probably thinking I'm a really slow reader. What I didn't explain is that I get interrupted by surprise deliveries of little treats that divert me for a day or two. One such was Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist, which at first I mistook for one of those little Hallmark gift books. It's not that small in size, but does provoke the phrase "slim volume", pretty apt because it is a novel about a poet. Poets are always producing slim volumes. The only big books of poetry I've ever seen are, well, anthologies. More aptness.

The cover graphic is a ripe plum, and once I'd bit into the juicy treat that is The Anthologist, another cliché came to mind: I couldn't put it down. Fortunately the Baker book is just like a fresh, ripe plum--delicious but gone in a few bites. Leaves you wanting another. Doniger's book is more an Indian curry dinner with a table full of savories to sample. In the case of The Hindus, however, the extras are the meal, and it takes a long time to enjoy and finish the dish.

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Published Book Reviews

My review of the novel about Muhammad's youngest wife, Aisha, is now displaying at BlogCritics as Book Review: Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam by Kamran Pasha. And some others appear in this month's Midwest Book Review on Georganna's Bookshelf in the Reviewer's Bookwatch section.

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Snarking at Critics

I missed all the fun, but caught up with The Cajun Boy's article on Gawker - Look Who's Snarking Now: Novelist Uses Twitter to Trash Critic - Roberta Silman.

Guess I got off easy with Leslie Miller's mild reaction to my review of Let Me Eat Cake, but then she could have encountered the NYT critic who trashed three cooking books in one Sunday review and minced no words doing it. Related articles are in Boston.com, LA Times, and MediaBistro. Meeow!

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Cat Book Reviewer Dilemma

HALP! get me down I is ten stories up

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Nostalgia is in Fashion

Garrison Keillor has a bookstore in Saint Paul, MN where Carlsbad, CA resident, Daniel Van Tassel (below) last month signed his book about boyhood in Minnesota.

Last night I watched a PBS special on Keillor. He mused about his early ambition to become a New Yorker (magazine and city) writer, his chosen geographic relocations and settling back in Minnesota, where he began. I felt such kinship, we are the same age, raised as Midwestern Lutherans, and longed for similar writing careers. We even both began in our respective universities' radio stations, him at the UM reading continuity that I went to NU to learn to write. What is more uncanny, I never made it to the microphones at WNUR, and the UM's transmitter was off the air (but they didn't know it). Our early voices went unheard.

I moved more times than Keillor, but he achieved his New York dream, briefly. Mine was just to have a normal life, but possibly that's an illusion. Now I've embraced living in California, while he has managed to go home again (take that Thomas Wolfe!) Keillor accepts, as he calls it, an ordinary life and he says he finds it good enough. He has the extended family to support him in that choice. I could not determine if he sounded wistful and resigned or at peace with himself at last.

And here in Cali, doncha know, I met someone originally from Minnesota, embarking on a nostalgia tour back there to promote a memoir of "Life in the Heartland at Mid-Century". Back to Barron, by Daniel Van Tassel, delights the Boomer generation no end with true tales of farm life, town trips to Lake Wobegones as well as the big city and all the trouble little boys can get into.

If you're over 60 and still living in the Midwest, you'll chuckle at the memories. If you're over 60 and living somewhere else, you'll chuckle at the memories and perhaps heave a little sigh of sad fondness or relief--your choice, or your luck.

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Serious Summer Reading

The vicious cycle of book reviewing brought serious summer reading this year. I'll spend the season dipping into the rich, dense Wendy Doniger compendium The Hindus: An Alternative History.

A much smaller, more painful one to read is Andrew Levy's A Brain Wider Than the Sky: A Migraine Diary. I had suspected I'd had migraines until menopause, but reading about them seems to be bringing them back--at least while I'm vicariously experiencing Levy's rough ride. His search for a solution brings resolution of his relationship with a painful Other living within his head.

Not quite as dense as THE HINDUS, but equally fascinating, is a fictionalized view of the beginnings of Islam. Mother of the Believers: A Novel of the Birth of Islam by Kamran Pasha, tells the story through the eyes of "Aisha, the youngest and most beloved wife of the Prophet." Although the author's first novel, it is the product of a successful Pakistani-American Hollywood screenwriter, contributing to lush descriptions and intense characterizations that make this one closer to a "beach read."

But wait, there's more! I'm running out of room to mention :

The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
Happy Trails to You: Stories by Julie Hecht
Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain by Lorie Tharps

The first two are rather dreary fiction, and the third--what can I say? A crazy, mixed-up black girl grows up in the vanilla Midwest, never happy with her self-imposed succession of identities until she finds out that slavery flourished in Spain. Huh?

These books were published by The Penguin Press, Simon & Schuster, Putnam and Washington Square Press.

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The Noticer Project

A variation of this review appears at Blogcritics.

Turning 40 seemed to be a traumatic event. I faced it by inviting to dinner the ten women who had most influenced my life. My mother, my daughter, and my therapist joined me at a Benihana, and I never needed to visit another such restaurant. Now my mother is dead, the therapist and I lost touch, and my daughter doesn't speak to me. So much for noticing the important people in life, and turning 40 was nada compared to subsequent life events.

Why am I telling you this? Because it is relevant to an interesting book I just read, The Noticer by Andy Andrews. It's a quick, easy read, not literary but not crap, either. One little story made me stop to think about myself, my life, and my relationships with others. That is a pretty historic event right there. No other motivational material has so influenced me since discovering Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I can't tell you what the book is about, because it is simply a narration of several loosely connected stories concerning an old man who delivers little lessons on life principles to needy people. I don't think he offers anything for which you can't cite a 12-Step aphorism. (12-Steppers have a handy saying for every situation.) Some of the notions I have already discovered for myself, but then I'm 65 years old. So maybe this book might help younger people avoid some of the pain I've caused myself. Would they listen? Would they understand? Did I? Obviously not. And a couple principles require faith that I simply don't have, so I disagree with them.

Associated with this book is The Noticer Project. It asks you to list up to five people who most influenced your life and to notice them. Never mind that the noticing in the book is by the old man observing other people. You can even do the noticing publicly, online. Before I visited the site, I came up with this list (much better than the one I made when I was 40):

Albert Schweitzer
Margaret Mead
Bertrand Russell
Anne Wilder
Stephen Covey

Four of these are well-known. Ms. Wilder was my mentor for a quite few years. She was one of those special people who bring out the best in others. She was also a topnotch bureau chief and a crack news reporter, mainly with The Miami Herald.

I willingly surfed to the site, only to discover that the people you want to notice need to have email addresses. Most of mine are dead! I think that says something about the quality of the lives they led and their lasting influence on the world.

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Reviewing the Books

Carol Buchanan must be thinking, "Finally!" A review of her award-winning historical fiction, Book Review: God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana went up on Blogcritics late last night. Next project: interviewing Buchanan about why she went with self-publishing. This is her first published fiction and, right out of the gate, it won her the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel given by the Western Writers of America. I guarantee the information Buchanan has to offer other new novelists contemplating self-publishing is vital and riveting.

The nice people who run the Midwest Book Review website dedicated a section for my offerings in the Reviewer's Bookwatch. I don't know if my reviews are included in any of the other review collections the MBR publishes (print or digital), and I haven't quite figured out the site's organization, so I don't know if there is a method for finding all my reviews other than the site's search service. My reviews there are not always the same as the ones on Blogcritics.org.

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Tianaman Square Anniversary Book

From my review on Blogcritics:

Twenty years ago on June 4, 1989, the Chinese military took brutal action against student demonstrators in Beijing's Tianamen Square. Many Americans who watched the unthinkable atrocities can only recall watching the People's Liberation Army tanks running over students....Lake with No Name: A True Story of Love and Conflict in Modern China is Diane Wei Liang's memoir of that time in China, of her own role in the Student Democracy Movement...and of the friends and lovers who stood beside her and made history on that terrible day.

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May Reads, or may not

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Author Bites Reviewer

Sometimes miffed authors take umbrage with New York Times reviewers. Finding a response to a review on BlogCritics.org was a surprise. Take a look at the review of Book Review: Let Me Eat Cake by Leslie F. Miller and see if the first comment seems justified. I'll wait while you read ... Hmmm. Hm, hm, hmmmm, hm, hm. I sound like a locust tree, the mock oranges, or my lavender bush. These days in SoCal, the bees are sooooo busy. You know what they say about a humming tree, don't you?

Back from Blog Critics? Well? How about my response. I did reread the review--hardly one of my finest. Any mix of scholarly research with gossip and college days memoirs is bound to be hard to characterize. It is quite difficult to get a handle on what might better be two or three creative projects, one of them attempted on a stage late at night. Mee Yow!

I just hopped over to the Amazon page for this book and scanned the customer reviews. I see that my response was pretty mild! When I dutifully checked in with the author's handler at the publisher, she was surprised and thanked me for "graciously handling" Miller's little snit. We are amused, but scarcely moved toward any effort to accomplish a print version. I only mentioned it here to proffer a sweet insider tidbit for my cupcakes readers.

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Mini-Review: CauseWired

Doing well by doing good--what does that mean? I use this blog to promote a tiny selection of this world's good charities and other activities to help people in need. I do it only for personal satisfaction. However, a bonus for Blog Action Day participation was a copy of CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World by Tom Watson.

The story of the rise of social networking and using it to promote worthy causes is a fascinating read. It's also a primer for engaging the current generation and a blueprint for positive exploitation of digital possibilities for creating change.

Watson has been connected with many of the biggest movers and shakers in the both arenas, online and causes, and he doesn't hesitate to drop those names left and right. The ways in which these people and events are all interconnected demonstrates the unseen network that makes up all our lives.

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How Book Reviews Work

Sometimes, this is how it goes. A few days ago I mentioned a book in a post and then created a full review which went through the vet et edit process at BlogCritics.org.

Teasers for my review of MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE appear on several pages of BlogCritics, as well as the full review on the archive page

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2009/04/21/185125.php. Buy.com picked up the review, and displays it at:

http://www.buy.com/articles/loc/63267/channeltype/3/channelid/120/subtype/2/101576.html.

I did a quick search for any other websites which might have opted to run the review, so I could notify Putnam, the publisher that sent me the book. In that search, I came across the following from http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/blog-powell.html:

Following are Blog references to "Julie and Julia," by Julie Powell:
...

Blog: Writer's Edge
By Georganna Hancock
Date: August 12
Text: My apologies if recent posts that direct readers to N.Y. Times articles lead to dead ends for you. Apparently they've reverted to demanding payment instead of just the annoying registration scheme.
READ MORE

Apparently on August 12, 2005, I mentioned the blog-to-book JULIE AND JULIA by Julie Powell, and the site grabbed the post. Sadly, the link "READ MORE" is malformed. The correct page is http://www.writers-edge.info/2005/08/blog-bestsellers.htm. My paranoid side suggests they deliberately mangled the link because I criticized Times' policy. Links to the other blogs work.

*shrugs*

At least my name appears in the New York Times, and it's probably the only time it ever will!

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Mini-Reviews

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
is subtitled "A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America", quite a mouthful and a mindful. More clearly, Johnson reveals the tangled web of science, politics, and religion that swept the western world in the 18th century. We tend to think of such a mishmash as a new millennial phenomenon involving global warming, abortion, stem cell research, evolution, and Al Gore. Just imagine that even prior to the American revolution, preacher-scientists were experimenting, making momentous discoveries, and fomenting rebellion on the European continent. Men like Priestly, Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin (all friends abroad and in America) carried on this tradition in the New World.

Mistress Shakespeare by Karen Harper lives up to the hype of being a "delicious and intriguing historical novel about the woman who was William Shakespeare's secret wife". Questions of who really wrote the great bard's masterpieces aside, a historical record exists that suggests that he and Anne Whately of Temple Grafton were betrothed shortly before Shakespeare married another Anne, whom he got with child. Again and again. Whately became his "London lover", intimately involved with the productions of his work and possibly the inspiration. Part of the charm of "Whately" narrating this story is the perfect touch of Elizabethan language she uses, just enough to make us believe ... if only for the length of this book.

I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by by Kyria Abrahams is a sad supposed expose of the damages a particular religious sect perpetrates on its children and believers. I found it a disgusting, painful, and pathetic tell-all that should have been shut up. How anyone could tout this book as humorous is beyond me. I could write funnier about Lutherans. In fact, Garrison Keillor already has. And Lutherans can be just as insular and filled with debilitating strange ideas as any other religious cult.

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