Today I am very excited to be writing a guest post for author Harry Patz on his website The Naive Guys. As many of you know, my day job is a Latin teacher. My two passions, reading and teaching the Classics, have collided in this essay. I explain how Roman authors went about selling their books and I compare it to how authors, especially Indie authors, sell their publications in the 21st century. Read my post here..
Filed under Uncategorized
I received an Advanced Copy of this book from the author for an honest review. I invite you to read my review, learn a bit about the author and enter to win your own copy (US/Canada).
My Review:
Ray Bancroft is a widowed fisherman in Alaska trying to raise his 11 year old granddaughter by himself. He has had a tough life and nothing comes easy to him. He surrounds himself with statues of gods from different religions in order to gain some good karma and extra luck from the universe when he is carrying out his daily tasks.
The Alaskan setting in this book is captivating. Ray and his partner Felix are out on their boat in bone-chilling weather for 12 or more hours a day trying to catch crabs and shrimp. The descriptions of the sea, the Alaskan landscape and Yatki Island make you feel like you are shivering on the boat right beside them.
At times it seems like the whole universe is against Ray. His job is dangerous, a tourist that he took out on his boat for a fishing trip has filed a frivolous lawsuit against him and he is always struggling to make ends meet. The one bright spot in his world is his teenage granddaughter Sitka, but even his relationship with her is threatened when his drug addicted daughter suddenly comes back to town. Continue reading
Filed under Literature/Fiction
Today I am so excited to have a guest post on author Suanne Laqueur’s website. I talk about my approach to writing a book review. Also, Suanne’s book, which I highly recommend is on sale on Amazon all this week.
Here is the link to my post:
http://www.suannelaqueur.com/guest-post-anatomy-book-review/
Filed under Opinion Posts
I am very excited today to welcome Virtual Author Book Tours to the blog today with a non-fiction memoir entitled Crazy Is Normal. I invite you to read my review, learn a little about the author, Lloyd Lofthouse, look at my interview with the author and visit the other stops on the tour.
My Review:
In his book Crazy is Normal, Lloyd Lofthouse gives the reader a nitty gritty, down and dirty, not so pretty glimpse into the daily life of a high school English teacher. Lloyd kept a daily journal that recorded his year of teaching 9th grade English and journalism at Nogales High School in La Puente, California. He begins the book on a very personal level by describing his struggles in the classroom during his own childhood and takes us through the process in which he decides to step into a classroom.
Filed under Author Interviews, Nonfiction
I am very excited whenever I have the opportunity to receive an advanced reader’s copy of a book from the New York Review of Books Classics collection. All of these stories were originally written in Swedish and this collection of short stories is the first English edition of Tova Jannson’s stories.
My Review:
This collection of short stories is divided into four sections, the first of which is entitled “The Listener” and was originally published in 1971. I found the stories in this part of the collection to have a dream-like, almost surreal quality to them. In the story that is the title to the collection, “The Listener”, a woman who is called Aunt Gerda has always been a great listener to her family. She listens intently to all of their stories and woes and when she is about fifty-five years old her personality starts to change. She seems to forget names and people and starts to spend a lot of time by herself.
Filed under Classics, New York Review of Books, Short Stories, Uncategorized
The Book Binder's Daughter 