Book Reviews For Your Holilday Shopping Consideration

Bread and Butter by Michelle Wildgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three brothers plus two upscale restaurants—does it equal a recipe for disaster?

In Bread and Butter we’re introduced to three brothers who love everything about food. Leo and Britt, only a year apart, have operated Winesap for over a decade in their aging, industrial hometown just outside of Philadelphia. It’s been hard work educating the local palate through trial and error, but at last they feel they’ve reached a nice balance with their established clientele and are financially successful. Britt, formerly in public relations, takes care of the front and keeps things running smoothly and tastefully, but he puts on his best face for a beautiful and sophisticated regular gourmand, Camille. Leo, a divorcee married to his job, takes care of the paperwork and makes sure his hardworking staff is happy, especially their capable chef Thea, a single mom. Unfortunately their flighty pastry chef Hector has become rather tired of their patrons’ favorite chocolate cake and has flown the coop.

Enter baby brother Harry. He returns home after years of graduate school, failed love affairs, and working in a restaurant on an island in Lake Michigan. Harry wants to start his own place to show off his epicurean tastes. Leasing a run-down building in an area on the cusp of being re-gentrified, Harry envisions a hip new eatery that will help his hometown make a comeback. Once Hector defects to work at Harry’s place and Britt is convinced his little brother’s idea isn’t as crazy as it seems and becomes a partner, the three brothers find themselves at odds—financially, creatively, and romantically. Can sibling rivalry ruin a fine dining experience?

Bread and Butter is jam-packed with the minutiae of the restaurant business, but it doesn’t come across as a Food Network documentary. Wildgen creates fragile but loveable characters who will inspire foodies to keep turning pages even while their hungry stomachs are rumbling.



  Secret of a Thousand Beauties by Mingmei Yip
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Scarlett O’Hara has nothing on Spring Swallow! This young heroine in 1930s China has to endure many tragedies, lost husbands, poverty, and hard work in order to survive. At the age of seventeen, she is forced into a ghost marriage—a marriage to a dead man she was promised to before both of them were born. She bravely runs away, but the choice she makes to leave her village is more than daring—it is dangerous. How will she fend for herself?

Spring Swallow meets another lost soul who takes her to a house on the side of a haunted mountain. There she becomes an apprentice to Aunty Peony, a cold and calculating master embroiderer with a dark past. She learns the “secrets of a thousand beauties” in the Su tradition of embroidery and experiences conflicts of jealousy and betrayal with the other “sisters” as they work on an embroidered painting to enter a competition. Spring Swallow’s walks on the mountain bring her to the notice of a young revolutionary, Shen Feng, and at last she feels she has found true love. But nothing is easy for Spring Swallow. She faces more challenges and disappointments as her lover goes off to follow his dream of a better China.

Rich in detail, the story feels like it takes place one hundred years or more earlier than the 1930s, as the characters are steeped in ancient superstitions and fear of ghost hauntings. The characterization of Spring Swallow as a capable young woman who follows her heart is its biggest draw and should please readers of women’s fiction.

View all my reviews

What Makes a Story? Beginning, Middle...End?

I usually post a modified version of the book reviews I do for an established literary site on my blog and Goodreads, but this time I don’t feel comfortable doing so. I’m a different type of book reviewer, you could say. I’d rather say nice things about a writer’s work, or at least make some constructive criticisms of where he or she could improve it, but sometimes I’m at a lost for words. This is one of those times. Amazing, isn’t it?

Back in the day of the dinosaurs, those of us who had the pleasure of taking English composition classes and creative writing courses where taught the basic structure of fiction. Every short story, novella or novel has a beginning, middle, and last, but not least, an end. These are sometimes called by fancier names such as inciting incident, rising action, and resolution, but they pretty much mean the same thing. When a reader sits down to read fiction he or she expects to find character(s) who start a journey of sorts—physical and/or emotional—and after a series of incidents, which illustrate the personality of the character(s), the story comes to a resolution of sorts. A story may have a “happily ever after” ending or a “happy for now” ending or the merely satisfactory  “that’s the way it goes but tomorrow is another day and we’ll keep trying” ending. One thing is certain—the tale comes to a conclusion. 

I guess this isn’t the case anymore. How did I know my English professors back in the dinosaur days were wrong? After recently reading a “short story” collection by a recent graduate of an Ivy League Institution, I’m led to believe that strings of words thrown onto a page can qualify as a story. Okay, it’s not all that bad, but in a way it is. It’s a crime. A young author, with a strong voice and a talent for coming up with interesting characters and situations, has been taught that telling just the beginning and middle somehow equals crafting a complete story. To me, and probably the majority of humanity, it doesn’t. Who would knowingly mislead impressionable students?

Another sad observation—when did using passive “was” verbs and adding he saids all over the place equate to creating dynamic prose? I’ve learned a lot over the years from genre writing workshops, particularly that a good writer shows not tells the story. Readers don’t want to read a listing of dry facts. Readers want to imagine the characters in their minds taking action. In the process of exercising our imaginations, we readers walk away from the story feeling that we’ve learned something about ourselves or life and, better yet, were entertained in the process.

How can readers learn anything from being told the beginning and some of the middle of a character’s arc? We can’t. An incomplete piece of fiction breaks the cardinal rule of all artists, “Whatever you do, don’t be boring.” Maybe in Ivy League literary fiction circles the entertainment factor isn’t considered all that important and, subsequently, has been junked? Perhaps root canals are considered entertaining in those circles? Yikes!

 Throwing up academic credentials as an excuse for being boring reminds me of a conversation at a party a friend and I had with a man introduced as a creative writing professor from a local private university. My friend asked him what sort of creative writing the professor had published recently. This gentleman stated that he didn’t publish his fiction because, “It was too good to be published.” My friend and I continued talking about our recent novel ideas and book deals while the creative writing instructor looked at us as if we’d grown horns or a third eye.

I surmised the professor didn’t enjoy receiving rejection letters from publishers, so he simply didn’t even try to pen publishable fiction anymore. But then that begs the question—Why should parents pay tons of money to a college which employs an instructor with no interest in writing publishable fiction to instruct their children in the craft of creative writing? Shouldn’t the professor teach “creative ways to avoid rejection” classes instead?

After this recent book review, my impression of creative writing classes offered at prestigious and costly private colleges has not improved. I learned one simple axiom in many writer’s workshops: Writers write. And the sole purpose of writing for publication is to connect with readers—not to bore them. I liken offering incomplete works to the reading public to a master chef tossing uncooked ingredients willy-nilly onto a plate and calling it a culinary masterpiece. (I realize some enjoy sushi, but I want my fish cooked.) When you can’t finish the job, you’re not really a success, are you? 

I can’t boast an Ivy League education, but my books have received some great reviews over the years. Not one reviewer has ever said my fiction was boring or incomplete. I listened in English class and took notes at writer’s workshops and became a published author. Thank heaven I received good advice!

Click on the  book link at the top to learn more about my erotic-romance novels and novellas. You can even review one if you wish. ;)

Two short book reviews for two long books!

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fun tale for fans of the Discworld series. I'm a follower of the wacky wizards and their magic and sadly they only make a brief appearance in this tale, but over all there's plenty of action, adventure, terrorists (of the dwarf variety), and steam engines. Who could ask for more?

View all my reviews


  People of the Morning Star by W. Michael Gear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fascinating look into the Mississippian culture at Cahokia of a thousand years ago... I lived across the river from the mounds and always wondered what its citizens had been like before they disappeared. There's a large cast of intriguing characters in this story--from a thief on his way to becoming the first P.I. to a captured/enslaved warrior on his way to becoming the first paramedic--and the story has more twists and turns than the Big Muddy itself. There is a lot of graphic violence in the plot's resolution, so readers are forewarned if this isn't to their tastes. However, the full-bodied realization of what the Cahokians' city and culture must have been like captures your imagination and makes you wish you could have been there in the day.

View all my reviews

Robot Uprisings by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's hard to sleep at night after contemplating all the frightening scenarios put forth in this wonderful sci-fi anthology. Will we be taken over by our seemingly benign mechanical household servants? Will incredibly small nanobots we create to cure us from disease and infection be our undoing? Will we even have a clue our robot slaves have gained sentience before it's too late? And what is the difference between artificial intelligence and our own, particularly if the machines outwit us at every turn? These and more are part of the exciting worlds that await you in Robot Uprisings. Come the roboapocalypse don't say I didn't warn you.

View all my reviews

Why I Don't Care for Amazon--Home of Death Threats and Fake Reviews

It seems morality and fair play are dead and gone in the publishing world. Here are some articles and blog postings that have come to my attention lately to show you why I'm feeling blue. I've included my comments as well.

Anne Rice signs petition to protest bullying of authors on Amazon

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/04/anne-rice-protests-bullying-amazon-petition

I'm glad that no one pays attention to my books on Amazon now! Death threats aren't funny, and Amazon has a lot to answer for allowing posters anonymity which only protects the bullies and the fake book reviewers.

I haz a sad... Writers are gaming Amazon 
 

Here's a comment I made after reading The Lover of Books blog posting called "I haz a sad..." (link since taken down/blocked) about how an unnamed but well-known author sends out emails saying that (s)he'll give out free books to readers in exchange for 5 star reviews on Amazon. If you want to give her/his book anything less than 5 stars, please don't post it there but email the review to the author directly instead so (s)he can "discuss it" (and not post it) with you the reader. Here's what I had to say about this blog:

This is why you can't trust Amazon's "5 star" book reviews. A lot of them are fakes. Some authors buy them from so-called "beta readers" with free books/giveaways and others just outright pay cash for the reviews. (There's a web site link I won't post since I don't want other buying 5 star reviews). If you see a book on Amazon with lots of 5 stars alongside poorly written reviews, just assume these are paid reviews and not the real deal. The "reviewer" may not have even read the book. It's cheating and it makes all authors look bad. (At least I can honestly say that I have never paid for reviews--and I currently have zero at Amazon. Go figure!)

In reply to the latest way to "pay your way to reviews on Amazon":

http://bestsellerlabs.com/how-to-get-more-amazon-reviews/#comment-37877

I can’t say I agree with this method at all. This is coming from the viewpoint of a book reviewer, editor, and author. To give away free books or to pay cash for reviews up front is basically the same thing. How can you be sure you’re receiving an “objective” review when you’re essentially encouraging the reader to give you a good review or none at all? Are they going to say anything “bad” about their “new friend’s book” and especially to your face via Skype, etc. as you write up "their" review for them? I think not. The review is worthless and is essentially a “fake”.

That’s why I tell people to not depend on their friends and family members to give their writing an honest critique. Those who care about you don’t want to hurt your feelings. And just like those poor tone-deaf people who get on American Idol and then get laughed at and ridiculed by millions because they carry a tune in a bucket (and they don’t know they can’t sing), you’ll have millions of “authors” who need to take a decent writing course and join a critique group before trying to publish their books and they won’t do so because their “new reviewer friends” tell them their work is perfect as is. There’s no room to improve on perfection, is there? More “not-ready-for-primetime” stuff to clutter up the ‘net! (And why would Amazon care as long as they’re making money off it?)

If you want to gain some useful writing tips I formulated after working over a decade and a half in the publishing industry, try my funny how-to guide Defeating the Slushpile Monster now at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1452834946

After my public commentary, I expect a load of hate email and bullying on Amazon any day now. Please leave a comment below on how you see this present crisis of confidence playing out at the online book-selling monopoly's web site and share this blog link with others who may be feeling similarly down about Amazon. Perhaps they'll clean up their act one day? We can only hope!