Alvah's Books

I recently reviewed A Priest in Hell: Gangs, Murderers, and Snitching in a California Jail by Randy Radic for The Internet Review of Books. I had some questions concerning the book, but Randy, who has contributed to this site, took my comments very gracefully and viewed them as constructive criticism. Below is the opening paragraph of the review.

A PRIEST IN HELL:
Gangs, Murderers, and Snitching in a California Jail
By Randall Radic
ECW Press
342 pgs 
$17.95

In early November 2005, Randall Radic, the former pastor of the First Congregational Church in Ripon, California, was arrested for fleecing his flock. The specific crime: Radic sold his parsonage and the church for more than $725,000. With the loot, he went out and bought himself a spanking brand new BMW valued at $100K, wined and dined at exclusive California restaurants, and smoked pricey and aromatic Hoya cigars. When he made a sizeable deposit in his bank account, he writes, “…somebody flushed the toilet.” The bank became suspicious and all bets were off-Radic’s accounts were frozen before he could transfer the dough down to San Diego and make a swift getaway. The church has its main building back, but still owes huge transaction fees.

To read the rest of the review, please visit the April issue of The Internet Review of Books.

Within the next week, I’ll post an interview with Randy about his life, writing, jail, and his plans for upcoming books.

Due to technical difficulties (a slow connection–I can actually watch my hair turn grey-and, to top it off, the monitor is flickering and has gone black on me in the middle of writing emails), I am posting Weekly Reads very, very late.

I’d also like to note that last week’s attempt to get anything read was a dismal failure. Since I changed servers, redesigned the site, and spent too much time learning WordPress, I didn’t get much reading done. 

However, this week without fail I need to read two books. The first one Gabriel Garcia Marquz: A Life by Gerald Martin is for the Feminist Review, which is due by next week; the second one, Private Midnight by Kris Saknussemm,  is for a blog tour. 

A review for In the Woods will be posted later this week, depending on my computer’s health.

If you’ve completed a Google search or in any other directory and you’ve found yourself here at Alvah’s Books, don’t fret. Exiled at the Beach Book Reviews is now Alvah’s Books. Here, you’ll find the information you’ve been looking for (at least I hope so) and more!  I have a slew of upcoming reviews, an author interview, and my occasional wry comment or two. 

Welcome to Alvah’s Books!

. . .Far Bright Star by Robert Olmstead.

Thank you Algonquin Books!

Public Provides Giggles; Bloggers Get the Book Deal

By Jenna Wortham

After Duncan Birmingham, a comedy screenwriter in Los Angeles, got one too many holiday cards featuring miserable-looking pets wearing fake reindeer antlers, he realized the photos were great material for a blog.

Mr. Birmingham started Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves in early January, uploaded the first entry and asked readers to contribute. Within days, visitors were supplying him with snapshots of bulldogs in bunny costumes and cats wearing wigs. The blogosphere noticed – and so did the publishing world. Within a week, he was contacted by editors and literary agents. By the second month, he said, he had sold a book based on the photos to Three Rivers Press, an imprint at Crown Publishing Group, for “enough money to buy a Lincoln Town Car” – with change left over.

To read the rest of the article, click the headline.

Although I spent hours updating the look of this site, let’s face it, I rather be on WordPress.

I made the leap and went ahead got a brand new host for the site–warning plug ahead–The tech support team at Blue Host is fabulous. They were so patient with all my stupid questions, if you need a host for your site, go Blue Host. Thumbs up from this luddite.

However, life at the beach–when it comes to technology–is not all that simple. Once I had the host, all I had to do was point Exiled at the Beach Book Reviews to their servers. Simple, right? Nope. This domain name was bought through one of Google’s resellers. To make the switch would have been easy, but I had several snafus.

To manage my domain, I had to go to the access login, type in the name and my password. it wouldn’t let me in because I couldn’t remember my password. So I clicked the “email password.” Nothing happened. For a long time. Repeat. Nothing. After several attempts to retrieve the password and failing, it turns out these emails were sent to an address that doesn’t exist (apparently it was a typo in a user name I rarely use. Who’s at fault, me or whoever set up the domain remains a mystery).

Once that was discovered, I tried to go through the Google maze of support. Here’s the rant, skip ahead if you don’t want to read it. What the Hell were those supposed geniuses at Google thinking?  There isn’t a single and simple, fucking “email us with your problem” form. Nothing. I spent a good three hours going from page to page for NADA. They have the worst customer service on the planet. Done. Moving on.

I’m the type of person who always has a Plan B in my back pocket. Since I knew there wouldn’t be an easy or quick way to resolve this issue, my plan was to go for a complete overhaul and just change everything including the domain’s name and start over. What happens to this site? It will still be here, but once the new site is up and ready I’ll post with a new link.  Now I just have to learn WordPress and all it’s fancy stuff.  As for the name of the new site, it’s no longer a tongue twister and, yes, there is story behind the name.

The Story

Alvah Bessie is my one of my favorite writers. He was also an Abraham Lincoln Brigades volunteer who went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. When he returned from Spain, Alvah wrote, Men in Battle a memoir of his experiences in Spain.  After the book’s publications, Alvah worked for The New Masses as the magazine’s literary and drama critic. From there, he went to Hollywood and was employed by Warner Brothers as a screenwriter. During his stint there, he wrote the screenplay for Objective, Burma. In 1945, he was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Story category for that film.

As much as Alvah loved the movies, Hollywood wasn’t kind to him. He was  one of the original 19 unfriendly witnesses that were later wittled down to the famous “Hollywood Ten.” Convicted for Contempt of Congress for not answering the HUAC’s questions or naming names, Bessie spent ten long months in the Texarkana Federal Pentitentiary in Texas. After he was released, Alvah never worked again in Hollywood. He was blacklisted.

The name of the new site, though, really has to do with a story that happened before Spain, before The New  Masses, Hollywood or the Blacklist.  It harks back to 1928, before the crash, when Alvah tried his luck on Broadway and this is what he wrote:

“I had spent four years getting exactly nowhere on the new York stage; unless you consider a six-month case of gonorrhea somewhere. I had somehow acquired 1,000 books (mainly by theft, I’m sure) during my four years in high school, four in college, and another four on the stage, and I decided that there was only one thing for me to do; I would sell the books for one dollar apiece and go to Paris–to write. And that is what I did.”

In memory of a great writer, a fearless hero and radical, I dedicate the new site to Alvah Bessie and his 1,000 books, as “Alvah’s Books.” Stay tuned. . . .

After having a near nervous breakdown last night about changing the look of the site and screwing it up, this morning I found a similar template that temporarily serves my purposes. However, I still have issues with Blogger. 

After complaining about it to the husband and explaining what I wanted, he said he would pay for one year’s hosting so I can have a professional looking site with WordPress. This is my birthday present. I know, he got off cheap. But if I hadn’t asked for that I probably would have gotten a book or two or a new pair of yoga pants.

 In any case, I’ve reached a point that surviving another year in relatively good health, having food on the table, a roof over my head, and of course reading a great book, makes me happy. I really don’t want much. Well, a new pair of yoga pants would be nice.

. . .Private Midnight by Kris Saknussemm.

This is the book I’ll be reviewing for blog tour I previously posted. Thanks to Tolly at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists for considering me!

This is a warning for those who have a nice looking site, but are bored with the look. DON’T CHANGE IT at least not in Blogger.

It does look pretty, BUT, the margins are all screwed up and I don’t know how to fix them. My widgets won’t load properly and I’m getting place markers. I can’t change the fonts or the colors and slew of other problems.

So for the next few day, you’ll be seeing my technical difficulties. I will continue to post reviews and try to fix these problems. If I can’t then so long Blogger, hello WordPress.

Last night I followed all the tweets on Twitter concerning this sales ranking controversy at Amazon.com. All I can say was that feathers were very ruffled. To learn more about what happened, below is the article from Publishers Weekly:

 Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for “New” Adult Policy

By Rachel Deahl & Jim Milliot — Publishers Weekly, 4/12/2009 5:49:00 PM

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove “adult” titles from its sales rankings. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a “glitch” had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new policy regarding “adult” titles. As of Monday morning, a number of titles affected by the glitch were still without sales rankings. No one at Amazon was available this morning to discuss when the problem might be fixed or what caused the glitch. 

 To read more about the Amazon ranking debacle go to Publishers Weekly.