LOL! Boooooooks

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Thread: the importance of Twitter for authors, which I hadn't realised.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

‘Our mission is crucial’: meet the warrior librarians of Ukraine

When Russia invaded Ukraine, a key part of its strategy was to destroy historic libraries in order to eradicate the Ukrainians’ sense of identity. But Putin hadn’t counted on the unbreakable spirit of the country’s librarians

www.theguardian.com

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

‘Our mission is crucial’: meet the warrior librarians of Ukraine

When Russia invaded Ukraine, a key part of its strategy was to destroy historic libraries in order to eradicate the Ukrainians’ sense of identity. But Putin hadn’t counted on the unbreakable spirit of the country’s librarians

www.theguardian.com

Librarians are consistently hard core.

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

Jeffery writes well for someone who has only read children's fantasy novels.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

I'm going to assume I'm the only one here who's read Spare.

I just started How To Sell A Haunted House. I always expect that guy's books to be funny, but they're actually kind of creepy.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I hunted down the reviewer who was trashing my books on Amazon

“Junius” clearly hated my books. Over the years I’d become used to his scathing one-star reviews appearing on Amazon every time I had a new one published. The anonymous account had become my online nemesis.Just hours after my most recent book, Murder at Home, was released, I noticed a cancerous revi

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link

 

[Isabeau]

I hunted down the reviewer who was trashing my books on Amazon

“Junius” clearly hated my books. Over the years I’d become used to his scathing one-star reviews appearing on Amazon every time I had a new one published. The anonymous account had become my online nemesis.Just hours after my most recent book, Murder at Home, was released, I noticed a cancerous revi

www.thetimes.co.uk

Evernote link

Wow that’s crazy. How insecure one must be..

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Apparently he reviewed his own work at 5 stars.

 

[Lexxi]

Apparently it's a fun thing for some authors to review their own work. Burgess reviewed his own book (and was fired for it, the book was under a pen name, the review was under Burgess name). Walter Scott reviewed his own Waverley novel.

The quote below is a quote by Burgess (in "You've Had Your Time"), though I'm quoting someone else quoting it. anthony-burgess-reviews-himself-8fe80b52bfa0

After all, Walter Scott had reviewed the first of the Waverley novels, and at great length too. A novelist who reviewed his own work might be presumed at least to have read it, which was more than could be said for some well-regarded hacks who would read only its blurb. [Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time (1990), 71–72]

It's also a long standing tradition for authors to review each others work and not exactly praise those works. Occasionally they even write full length works tearing apart another author's work. Sometimes annonymously.

 

[Lexxi]

Burgess on reviewing: Anthony Burgess and the Observer - Confessions of the Hack Trade - The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The sale of review copies remains a source of income for hacks: they would be lost without it. Some really indigent hacks — I could name names but I won’t — have in their time sold their review copies without reading them, need being so great. The publisher’s blurb grants enough information for processing into a cautious notice. When a review is totally laudatory, lacking in “nevertheless”, you may assume that the book has not been read by the reviewer. My discovery of the vast number of novels published in Britain alone was, to me, disconcerting because I was trying to make a primary living out of adding to that number. The competition made my heart fail. And yet there were times when my heart lifted. For so many of the novels submitted for review were of a badness hardly credible. Yet they had got into print. Did aesthetic judgments truly operate in publishing houses? Nobody properly knows.

Given, in the batch for reviewing, a new novel by Greene or Waugh or Powell or Amis, I knew what had to be done, but there was always the possibility of some new genius turning up. One did not dare neglect anything, though there had been glaring examples of neglect in the annals of literary editorship. VS Naipaul told me that his first novel, now considered a classic, had not received a single review. My fourth novel failed to be noticed in several of the upmarket Sundays, and I assumed this was a conspiracy, which it probably was.

 

[Free]

Yeah, that's correct.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Yeah, that's correct.

Hah! As someone who worked in a bookstore for 22 years, though I was in a better position than a cashier. I filled in now and then. I would much rather be a cashier at a bookstore than dollar tree though. The customers are nicer.

 

[Free]

Penguin Random House, advocates and authors sue Florida school district over book bans | CNN

Book publisher Penguin Random House, along with several parents, authors and the literary and free speech advocacy group PEN America, are suing a Florida school district to challenge the removal of several books on race and LGBTQ issues from school libraries.

www.cnn.com

Book publisher Penguin Random House, along with several parents, authors and the literary and free speech advocacy group PEN America, are suing a Florida school district to challenge the removal of several books on race and LGBTQ issues from school libraries.

The suit was filed Wednesday in the Northern District of Florida against the Escambia County school district and its school board in Pensacola, Florida.

It was brought by attorneys representing the publisher and the advocacy group, as well as five authors whose books have been either removed from school libraries or are being challenged, and parents of children impacted by the book bans.

 

[Zaida Gearbox]

I just finished The God of Endings by Jacqueline Holland. I really enjoyed it, and I'm not sure I expected to. It was billed as a different kind of vampire story, and I guess it was - especially since vampires can apparently go out during the day and lead semi-normal lives apart from the whole drinking blood thing. Also the main character, Collette, is changed into a vampire when she is still a child - yet, she still matures to appear as an adult - and I guess it's in her early 20s that she stops aging.

 

[Free]

 

[Isabeau]

This was a tad silly (only 6 questions) but funny if you are or were ever into the fantasy genre. I admit I don’t read as much of those types of serial novels but the book it recommended for me sounds interesting - The Starless Crown by James Rollins. I might get it for old times sake.

Which Fantasy Class Are You? (and what you should read next) - Tor/Forge Blog

Ever wonder what your fantasy ttrpg class is? Ever wonder what book you should read next? They seem unrelated, but these questions are linked. We'll prove it.

www.torforgeblog.com

 

[Lexxi]

This was a tad silly (only 6 questions) but funny if you are or were ever into the fantasy genre. I admit I don’t read as much of those types of serial novels but the book it recommended for me sounds interesting - The Starless Crown by James Rollins. I might get it for old times sake.

Which Fantasy Class Are You? (and what you should read next) - Tor/Forge Blog

Ever wonder what your fantasy ttrpg class is? Ever wonder what book you should read next? They seem unrelated, but these questions are linked. We'll prove it.

www.torforgeblog.com

hmm. I've read James Rollins and James Clemens. Why do I randomly mention this here? Clemens is James Rollins writing fantasy. So it is odd to see he released a fantasy under the Rollins name.

I haven't read the Rollins book mentioned, so I can't really say if I'd recommend trying Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens instead. One plus: it's a complete series; one con: it's a series and you mentioned not reading serial novels much. And this really is one where the story progresses from book 1 to (I believe) book 5.