Book Lovers

My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, edited by Ronald Rice (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $23.95, 384 pages)

In My Bookstore, edited by Ronald Rice, numerous authors pay tribute to their favored bookstores, which are usually, but not always, the ones located near their homes. Eighty-one bookstores are examined, including three of the best, essential bookstores — Powell’s Books of Portland, Vroman’s Bookstore of Pasadena, and the University Book Store in Seattle (across from the University of Washington). Chuck Palahnuik explains that the city-block sized Powell’s is divided into color-coded rooms and “…each of these rooms is the size of most independent bookstores.”

Californians will be pleased to see that ten of the state’s bookstores, including two in San Francisco, are lovingly described here. (But San Franciscans will be shocked to find that both City Lights Books and Dog Eared Books are excluded.) Only 3 of these “favorite places to browse, read, and shop” happen to be in southern California. The underlying message of these accounts is that one-on-one service counts. These private businesses have thrived and survived the onslaughts of Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and now-departed mega-chains.

This collection of essays will no doubt cause some to visit bookstores that they were previously unaware of. And perhaps at some point Mr. Rice will ask book reviewers to write about their favorite places, and this reader will shed a light on Orinda Books and Lyon Books of Chico.

Well recommended.

Joseph Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Note: City Lights Books is located at 261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway in San Francisco. Dog Eared Books is located at 900 Valencia Street in the Mission District of The City. Both are worth paying a visit to.

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The Nook Color Review

This holiday season many readers are going to decide whether to purchase either an Amazon Kindle Fire for $199.00 or a Barnes and Noble Nook Tablet for $249.00.  But there’s another option, which is to buy a Nook Color e-reader for the newly discounted price of $199.00 (at sellers like Target, Wall-Mart and Staples, in addition to Barnes & Noble).   Since I’ve owned a Nook Color device for a few weeks, I decided to write-up my impressions – for what they’re worth – here.   Maybe my experience will assist someone who is attempting to make an informed decision about the pluses and minuses of owning this 7″ tablet, with a small “t”.

With any reading device the strongest impression is going to come from the quality of the viewing screen.   The screen on the Nook Color, made by LG, is bright, sharp and offers great depth when viewing color scenes.   The depth is so noticeable that it seems to be a 3-D type of effect, and will be greatly appreciated by avid photographers.   When it comes to devices smaller than the now almost standard 10.1-inch tablets, the Nook Color’s screen is second in quality only to the Samsung Galaxy Tab in the 8.9″ Goldilocks-sized version.   Buying the Samsung involves spending $449 to $549.   So, the high quality viewing experience on the Nook Color is literally a bargain.

I’m not able to read books on a PC because of eye strain issues, but eye strain has not been a problem with the Nook Color.   This may be because the screen has been treated with an anti-glare solution, or because it is remarkably easy to adjust the brightness at any time to compensate for a change in lighting conditions.

The web browser on the Nook Color is very, very fast – and definitely faster than when one’s browsing pages on a netbook, low-priced laptop or an antiquated BlackBerry “smart phone” made by RIM.   If you have an opportunity to test a Nook Color, try calling up a Wikipedia page on almost any subject and you’ll see that it loads wickedly fast.   Of course, since the Nook Color is a Wi-Fi only device, actual speeds will vary depending on the capacity of your home wireless network.

I tested the public Wi-Fi feature in a restaurant in downtown Oakland, CA where the system required a log-in password, and it worked effortlessly and flawlessly.   And, of course, you can use the Nook Color in any Barnes & Noble store, where the device automatically connects to the bookseller’s network.   Downloading a book that you’ve ordered from the Barnes & Noble shop takes just seconds (and always less than 10 seconds), and you can read a sample preview of almost any book that’s offered for sale.   With the bestseller Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, the free sample is an excerpt of the first 118 pages!

If the Nook Color trips on occasion, it’s when it comes to memory.   In theory, you can stop reading a book at any point and return to it hours or days later and the device will remember the last page you were on.   However, in practice, this only works about 75 percent of the time…  The more hours/days that you put the Nook Color down, the less likely it is to remember where you were last.   The device is also supposed to let you select a home page of your own, but even after following the very specific directions needed to set your personal home page, the Nook Color will periodically forget your selection and open with the staid Barnes & Noble page.   Sigh.

Battery life seems to be fine while you’re reading or surfing the web, but if you let the device run down to 5% or so of its remaining power, you’ll be sad to find out that it will take a full three hours to recharge it fully.   Three hours seems like an eternity now when the best smartphones can recharge in less than half an hour.

The build quality on the Nook Color seems to be admirable, and it’s a small device with some heft.   On the flip side, it often feels a bit too heavy when one’s spending a good period of time holding it while reading.   The new Nook Tablet is 1.7 ounces lighter, which seems like a positive development.

If the Nook Color were a book rather than a technological device, I’d rate it on the borderline between Well Recommended and Highly Recommended.   As a practical e-reader and web surfing machine, it gets the job done 98% of the time, and the price is just right at $199.00.   But today, for an extra $50.00, you can have a Nook Tablet that’s lighter, faster (with a dual-core rather than single core processor), and has a longer-lasting battery.   All that’s needed now is for some boy or girl genius to develop a turbo-boosted charger for the Nooks that will recharge them in 20 minutes instead of 3 hours!

Joseph Arellano

A Doggone Good Giveaway

We’ve loved the dog-related crime novels from David Rosenfelt.   We earlier reviewed both New Tricks (on December 17, 2009) and Open and Shut (December 18, 2009) and listed them both as highly recommended.   Now, Mr. Rosenfelt has a new book coming out soon, Dog Tags.   This Andy Carpenter series novel will be released on August 25, 2010 and will carry a list price of $24.99.   But we would like to give away a copy of Dog Tags for free.

The copy to be given away in this contest is an Advanced Reading Copy in pristine (A grade) condition.   Dog Tags is already rated as a 5-star book at Barnes and Noble.   Our intent is to choose a winner on Saturday, August 21, 2010 which should leave just enough time for the winner to receive the ARC on or near the book’s publication date.

Author David Rosenfelt is the former marketing president for Tri-Star Pictures.   He now lives in southern California with his family and stable of 35 dogs.   Here is a synopsis of Dog Tags:

A German Shepard police dog witnesses a murder and if his owner – an Iraq war vet and former cop-turned-thief – is convicted of the crime, the dog could be put down.   Few rival defense attorney’s Andy Carpenter’s affection for dogs, and he decides to represent the poor canine.   As Andy struggles to convince a judge that this dog should be set free, he discovers that the dog and his owner have become unwittingly involved in a case of much greater proportions than the one they’ve been charged with.   Andy will have to call upon the unique abilities of this ex-police dog to help solve the crime and prevent a catastrophic event from taking place.

Interested?   In order to enter this book giveaway, here’s all you have to do.   Just post a message here with your name and e-mail address, or send an e-mail with this information to Josephsreviews@gmail.com .   (E-mail addresses will only be used to contact the winner.)   This will count as a first entry.   For a second entry, explain why you think a dog would make a good or great crime detective.  

The winner – whose name will be chosen at random by Munchy the cat – will be contacted by e-mail and asked to supply his/her residential mailing address ASAP.   Yes, it must be a residential (street) mailing address in the U.S. rather than a P.O. box or a business-related address.    

You have until midnight PST on Friday, August 20, 2010 to submit your entry or entries.   Good reading and good luck!

“I’ve got a thing about dogs; I am totally and completely crazy about them…  Maybe it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with the criminal justice system, but the average dog I know is paws and shoulders above my species.”   David Rosenfelt

Note:  Dog Tags will be published by Grand Central Publishing, part of the Hachette Book Group U.S.A.   To read our earlier reviews of books by David Rosenfelt just enter his name in the SEARCH IT! box on this site and hit enter.

A Simple Question

A Simple Question, Not So Easily Answered by Joseph Arellano

One seemingly easy question facing a book reviewer is – When should a book review be published?   Yet the answer varies greatly – and surprisingly – in the publishing industry.   I say surprisingly because I once wrote music reviews for a college newspaper.   At that time, if one asked when a record album review should be published, the answer would be “any time is fine.”   Record companies did not seem to care whether their albums were reviewed prior to release, on the date of release or even days, weeks or months later.   (Today you can find books with recent reviews of record albums that were released decades ago.)

Major publishers have so many different policies on book reviews that it’s a wonder they’ve been able to agree on an International Standard Book Number (ISBN).   One publisher wants no reviews posted prior to the date of release because, in their view, people get angry if they read about a new release and can’t find it at their local Barnes and Noble or favorite independent bookseller.   Another says a review is OK if it is posted one week or less before the release date.   Several publishing houses encourage book reviewers to post their reviews within the first one or two weeks following the book’s release.

If this isn’t confusing enough, a few publishers indicate that they do not embargo reviews.   In other words, if a reviewer has a galley or advance review copy (ARC) of a future release in his/her hands and wants to write about it now, that’s fine.

There’s similar confusion over posting pre-release excerpts; so-called sneak peeks.   Some publishers won’t allow them.   Some will allow them if the reviewer requests permission, and will then respond with specifics as to when the excerpt can be posted online or in print.   Ironically, some of the publishers who do not allow the posting of pre-release excerpts themselves post them on their websites or on online sites which cater to librarians and booksellers!

Confusing, huh?   You bet…

Then we have the policies of book review publications to which reviewers like me submit reviews.   Some want only reviews that they’ve received prior to the book’s release date so that they can post on the date of release.   Some review only new releases (often in hardbound form) but not the subsequent popular re-releases in trade paperback form.   Some, like this publication, review new releases and those re-releases missed the first time around.   It all means that a book reviewer needs something akin to a flow chart to track which policy applies to which publisher, and which policy applies to which publication.   Oh, my!

Why do things have to be so confusing?   I have no idea, except that if a publishing company foots the bill – and assumes all the risks of failure – it is fair to assume that the publisher can call the shots.   However, if I ran a publishing house – let’s call it Brown Cat Books for the purpose of illustration – I would have no problem with reviews of BCB releases running at any time.   Why?   Because from everything I’ve read, publishers must rely on the sale of back catalog books to keep them in business.

Think about high school and college students, and boomers who walk into a Barnes & Noble or community bookstore these days.   How many of them would you guess are buying a book that was released more than a year or two ago?   Perhaps not half of them, but it’s probably a higher number than your first guess.

Despite my view, one source has written that the expiration date for buzz to be generated on a new book is its release date.   In this source’s view, if people are not talking about it – and reading about it – on the first day it is sold, it is not likely to become a best seller; which translates into dead on arrival.   Yes, of course, there are and have been spectacular exceptions to this “rule” – two examples being The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Lovely Bones.   These are popular fiction releases that took months and years to become overnight best sellers.

This reviewer simply wonders sometimes why things are as they are in the publishing trade, but then I can’t complain.   I just need to remember to continuously update my Publishers and Publications Review Policies flow chart.

Reprinted courtesy of Sacramento Book Review.   Written for “The Critical Eye” column.

Pictured:  The Stuff That Never Happened: A Novel by Maddie Dawson, which will be released by Shaye Areheart Books on August 3, 2010.

Win Dark Deceptions

Thanks to Anna at Hachette Books, we have 5 (five) copies of Dark Deceptions by Dee Davis to give away.   This is a Forever novel, just released on April 1, 2010, and rated as a 4-star book at Amazon.   Here is a quick synopsis:

Covert operations expert Nash Brennon has spent the last eight years trying to forget Annie Gallagher, his former field partner and the only woman he has ever loved.   Annie betrayed him when he needed her the most, then vanished without a trace.   Now suddenly she’s back in the game – as a suspected traitor and threat to the national security.

Annie’s son has been kidnapped by political terrorists.   The price for his life?   The assassination of a U.N. ambassador.

This is a unique suspense romance thriller.   “…(a) page turning, white knuckle, romantic thriller.”   ReadertoReader.com  

“Dark Deceptions was delightful!” wrote a reader at the Barnes and Noble website.

“Don’t miss any book by Dee Davis.”   Christina Skye

“Dee Davis is at the top of her game.”   Mariah Stewart

In order to enter this book giveaway, just post a comment here or send an e-mail with the heading Dark Deceptions to Josephsreviews@gmail.com.   Make sure to include an e-mail address where you can be reached in case you are one of the 5 winners of Dark Deceptions.   This will count as one entry.

In order to enter a second time, please tell us what you think about digital “e-books”.   Would you read a book on a Kindle (Amazon) or a Nook (Barnes and Noble) or a Sony Reader?   On an Apple iPad?   As a download onto your PC?   Why or why not?   Your answer will count as a second entry.

You must live in the United States or Canada to enter and have a valid residential address.   Books cannot be mailed to a P.O. box.   The deadline for entries is 12:00 midnight PST on Wednesday, May 26, 2010.   If your name is drawn by Munchy the cat as a winner, you will be sent an e-mail message and you will need to respond with your residential address within 72 hours.  

This is it for the contest rules.   Good luck and good reading!