Alvah’s Books

I am nice, really I am. However, there are times when I read a book that I can get a bit annoyed. Why? Well, it could be for a number of reasons–the overall story didn’t seem plausible, the characters weren’t fully developed, the plot seemed too convoluted, or it was poorly written.

When I come across a book I don’t like, I tend to give it a fair chance up to 100 pages before I call it quits. I do this because I don’t want to waste my time reading a bad book, and I don’t want to write a bad review (or maybe you can interpret that as being a little lazy on my part).  But that’s not  fair, is it? Why only include the good books and not the bad ones?

I fear that some of my upcoming reviews (well, maybe not) will anger some authors. Is it to be mean? Not at all. It’s just my opinion of why I wasn’t entertained by the premise, became impatient with the characters, caught easy grammatical errors, and so forth.

I know some authors might get a little peevish and go as far as writing nasty comments on Twitter or Facebook, but I ask that you accept the review gracefully. I’d like to point out that I am not Michiko Kakutani, whose opinion carries a lot more weight than mine (and you really don’t want her to dislike your book). As for me I’m just one reviewer–of thousands on the Internet–who may have not liked your book, that’s all.

I have shamefully been remiss with reviews and I apologize to all of my readers. Why the long break? Well, I got a full-time freelance writing job with a brand new publication called HAND/EYE Magazine. Check it out and read my articles too while you at  it.

What does this mean for Alvah’s Books? It means I am back to requesting and receiving new books, reading and reviewing them. I can’t make any promises of how often I’ll post during the week because I do have an enormous backlog of books that were sent, and I did promise to review every single one, and I have a job. So…what’s in line for review?

Meg Tilly’s Gemma and Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic. Two very different books that kept me turning the pages in one fell swoop. I usually can’t pull off reading one book in a single session, but obviously these kept me riveted to my seat.

A few changes are also in the mix. I’ll restart the bestseller list this coming Sunday, but I’ve gone through the cookbooks I like and now it’s time to look at some of my favorite books on writing. Come Sunday, I’ll post a review I did a while back for my previous blog on William Zissner’s On Writing Well.

It’s been a long time that I’ve written a review for my own site. Shame on me for not being the dutiful book reviewer, but truth be told I’ve been overwhelmed by my reading piles. In previous posts I wrote that I would no longer request books until I’ve completed the ones I have in my numerous to-be-read stacks, and I’m happy to report that I’ve been good on my word. However, there is the library and I’ve found several books that I had to read.

So what’s the problem you might want to know. As much as I love to read, it sometimes becomes a chore, especially writing the review. Writing is not an easy task for me. It takes me time to clearly articulate what I want to say. I ruminate about what I’ve read and sometimes it takes me a long time to say whether I liked a certain book or film. The problem,in this case, was once I finished one book, I started another one and that went on for a while, which left me with little time to contemplate the previous book and write a review. After a half dozen books read–all that needed their reviews–I realized that I managed to unintentionally overwhelm myself by doing too much (let’s not forget that I also write for a living too, have deadlines to meet, and I’m working on a novel).

After this long period of silence, I will get back to my regular reviewing schedule this week. Upcoming is Frank Bruni’s Born Round. For Steig Larsson fans, I will review the final book of the Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest.

Stay tuned….

…well, now you can. Alvah’s Books has become an Amazon affiliate. You’ll notice that the last two titles reviewed by Randalk Radic are hyperlinked (I would have linked the book’s covers, but somehow WordPress is not cooperating). 

If you click on the title, it will take you directly to Amazon where you can read other reviews and buy the book. Hopefully, Randy’s or my reviews will have swayed you to purchase any of the books reviewed on Alvah’s Books.

Like Oklahoma’s Ado Annie, I am easily seduced. However, my seducers are not men, but books. On Monday, after clearing another surface to make room for yet another pile of books, I said aloud to anyone who would listen, “No more books until I’ve read through these six piles.” Lola, my Labrador retriever, picked up her head from the floor, and shot  me a look that basically said, “Yeah, right, I’ve heard that before,”  sighed loudly and then went back to sleep.

Well she was right; my resolve to not request or buy any more books went like smoke out the chiminey. Yesterday, I received emails from three publicists, inquiring if I’d be interested to review the books they were publicizing. After reading the blurbs and the synopsis, how could I say no? The titles seemed too tantalizing and as I my finger pushed the mouse cursor to “Reply” for a mere second I thought, but do you really need to read this? Don’t you have enough to tide you over for the rest of the year? Apparently not because I hit reply three times.

If you recall my Bibliophile or Bibliomaniac  post, I listed recent acquistions. Here’s my progress: I’ve read and completed  two of the 14 listed (The Angel’s Game and The Scarecrow, reviews awaiting) , currently reading four (You or Someone Like You, Stardust, The Rise and Fall of Communism, Beowulf on the Beach) and outsourced two for review (Hunter  and Two to Six) to my brilliant reviewer and speed reader Randall Radic—I still don’t know how reads these books so quickly when he’s editing his own book, Blood In, Blood Out: The Violent Empire of the Aryan Brotherhood, to be published in 2010 by the U.K.’s Headpress, maybe it’s all that Merlot he drinks.

That leaves me with five from that list that are patiently waiting for their turn, but after I finish reading Julie & Julia and The Puzzle King, but wait what about the seven recent ones that came in the mail these past few days?

Okay, I have you all as my witnesses, no more books until I’ve finished and written reviews for all the books I have stacked all over the house.  There, it’s in writing. Now hold me to it.

Continuing with the leftist theme, August offers reviews about….Communism and the Russian Revolution. Just like the Spanish Civil War there’s a vast number of books on the subject that can make anyone’s head spin like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist. This month, we’ll try to recommend the books we like best. Some have been around for a long time like Richard Pipes’  The Russian Revolution,  Theodore Draper’s The Roots of American Communism, and other’s like  Archie Brown’s The Rise and Fall of Communism published this summer.

This month will also include some new fiction reviews as well as the weekly bestseller lists and cookbook reviews.

So to kick off August and get you in the spirit,  here’s a little song:

Readers of this site know that I have a mild obsession concerning the Spanish Civil War. This month marks the 73rd anniversary of the start of the war. If you don’t know much about it (and confuse it with the Spanish-American War) and its importance in history, then come visit and read all the book reviews that will be posted for the next 31 days and beyond.

Once you start to read about the SCW–and there’s a lot of reading, more than 15,000 books have been written on the subject; a Google search will come up with 3.4 million entries—you’ll understand the fascination.

Why am I so passionate about it? My mother was from the Asturias–located in Northern Spain and known as “Zona Roja”—and I grew up listening to all the horrors of the war. Sadly, after several years of hearing the same old stories over and over, I tuned my mother out. However, my personal interest wasn’t sparked until a few years ago when I started writing my novel Julius. It started with one sentence, some research and then BANG! I was hooked.

Although there are thousands of books on the topic, if you visit your local bookstore (chain or independent) you’ll discover that many of these don’t carry any of the titles at all. I have recreated my mother’s collection (they were damaged in storage) via Amazon and combing through used bookstores.

If you want to familiarize yourself with the subject before you go and spend a small fortune,  below are some websites that hopefully will inspire you to learn more about the subject:

• Wikipedia.  This is a good start. There’s so much information and it can be overwhelming, but spend a few hours with it and you’ll have a decent introduction.
• Spartacus Educational. Another good source. The opening page is broken down by subtopics or chapters.
• About the Spanish Civil War. This site is compiled by Cary Nelson, a professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
• La Cucaracha. This site has a lot of fun stuff, music of the Spanish Civil War, links to just about anything related to the war.
• Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives. This is a great site for readers interested in the volunteers who went to Spain (including this site’s namesake and my hero, Alvah Bessie, but you all knew that, right?)

Not interested in reading and spending your entire day clicking links? This month, I have a special treat and I might do this more often if readers drop me a comment and tell me if they liked it or not.  Thanks to the folks at Viddler and embedding technology, I’ll be posting Granada’s The Spanish Civil War series. You’ll be able to watch all six parts.

Salut!

Readers of Alvah’s Books received a very generous offer from Keith Harmeyer, author of Commercial Break. For a limited time, if  you order the book from this site – http://www.CommercialBreakTheNovel.com – and enter the following code – SQR6DBHZ – at checkout, you’ll receive 20% off the retail price.

Please note: this discount is only available at http://www.CommercialBreakTheNovel.com, not at Amazon.

I have to admit it that I have serious book problem. I vow that I’m not going to request any more review copies, but then something catches my eye and bang! I’m typing an email to a publicist requesting the book.

For a couple of weeks I was good, but I admit I started missing the daily packages. Some books that I requested a while back never arrived, but then I started to receive a deluge. Sometimes three or four a day, usually one a day. As it turned out, a bunch of these had been sent via media mail while others were sent regular mail or UPS.

No matter how they long they took to arrive, I now have a huge “To Be Read” pile that it would be shameless for me to jot off another book request until I finish these.

Since I’ve been busy this month with the Alvah Bessie tribute, writing a review for a Blog Tour, and I’ve been working on my own novel (and now I am trying to revise it as quickly as possible because an agent has expressed interest to read the entire manuscript), I haven’t had a chance to post “In this Week’s Post”  for quite a while. So I thought I would list what’s come in. On another note, I am discontinuing Weekly Reads. It was fun to assign books to myself for the week, but the truth was that it was getting to be too much like work . I already have enough deadlines for my job and other projects I’m working on, why add more stress?

Now to the books:

• A Circle of Souls, by Preetham Grandhi
• Hunter, by Cambell Jeffreys
• You or Someone Like You, by Chandler Burr
• The Embers, by Hyatt Bass
• The Angel’s Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Stardust, by Joseph Kanon
• The Hunted, by Brian Haig
• The Rise and Fall of Communism, by Archie Brown
• From Where the Rivers Come, by Terin Tashi Miller
• Germany 1945, by Richard Bessel
• Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold
• Two to Six, by James P. Cornelio
• Beowulf on the Beach, by Jack Murnighan
• The Scarecrow, Michael Connelly

These were all the ones that came via mail. I also have three books I borrowed from the library, a half-dozen I bought at our local bookstore and library sale. And…I also have ten more that are slowly climbing up the to be read pile.  Last, but not least are the ones from my own collection that I’ve pulled out for the Spanish Civil War and Communism monthly theme.

There’s no question that I like to read, but is this becoming an addiction? I’m curious what others do to handle the backload of books. What do you do so that it doesn’t seem like work? I look forward to reading your comments and tips.

For those who don’t follow me on Twitter (and shame on you, if you don’t) that’s my handle. However, this post isn’t about Twitter or me (well, a little about me, but really more about books). It’s all about that favorite pastime that many bibliophiles have and that’s the beach read or the pool read, or the cabin read. We’re five days away from the Summer Solstice and it’s time to do some thinking of what might be good reads for the summer.

For yours truly, I have an esoteric list that might make some eyes glaze over or maybe roll up to the ceiling–that’s what my husband does accompanied by a muttered, “Fun stuff, Boo.” But then again HE’s reading a book about the Romany (which does seem fascinating).

For  the next three months, my reading will focus on the Spanish Civil War, the history of Communism and two classics, but don’t fret I do have some “fun stuff” thrown in between the serious subjects. So here’s a rundown of my Beach Reads:

June (fun stuff in italics)

Men in Battle, Alvah Bessie

The Un-Americans, Alvah Bessie

A World I Never Made, James LePore

If the Buddha Came to Dinner, Hale Sofia Schatz

July

The Spanish Civil War, Hugh Thomas

A Passionate War, Peter Wyden

The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction, Helen Graham

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

From Where the Rivers Come, Terin Tashi Miller

The Last Dickens, Matthew Pearl

August/September

The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown

The Roots of Amercan Communism, Theodore Draper

The Communist Party of the United States, Fraser M. Ottanelli

Black Boy, Richard Wright

Stardust, Joseph Kanon

Fun stuff,eh? I think so…