Book Reviews

I know. Kind of a boring-ish topic for a Sunday Morning Coffee chat. I’ll keep it brief. Tell you what, I’ll intersperse it with random pictures from a stock photo site. Having your own graphic designer in the house means you don’t really pay attention to stock photos. I’ve just discovered them. Oh look! Here’s one now!

Nice teeth. Like the tongue curl, too.

And another one! Cute little doggie. I shall name him Pete.

And what about this guy?

He’s Great Uncle Edward. Always flossing with inappropriate items in inappropriate places. But, hey! It’s Great Uncle Edward. Gotta love ‘em.

Pretty!

Okay. I’m back…book reviews…

 Authors need them (more positive the better) and so do readers, to know it it’s the kind of book they want to buy.

So what makes a good review? Is it really useful to tell the whole plot in a review? No, not really. Unless you’re a kid who didn’t read the book and you need to know the plot the next day for a pop quiz in English. Oh right, that’s what cliffs notes are for.

Got the cliffs notes pic from their website.Don’t you love the 24-hour-a-day downloads?  How many desperate students have downloaded these at two in the morning?

Here are penguins doing a happy dance.  They probably aren’t, but I like thinking so.

A one-sentence isn’t too helpful, even if  “This is the best book, ever!” is that one sentence. That would make an author happy. But for a prospective reader, wouldn’t you want to know why?

For me, the most helpful review is one that talks about the characters, the pacing, the languaging. The tone would be nice, too. If the book is “dark,” I may not want to read it. Or I may.

Do I write good reviews? Sometimes. But not always. I don’t review everything I’ve read, only those books that stick with me, ones I want to read again. And then I try to talk about why. Very rarely, I may review something that didn’t work for me. I’ve a hard time bashing another author’s work. I know how hard it is to get to a finished product.

Browsing through stock photos are fun. I’m liking it. They’re so random. And useful for all sorts of things. Like…book covers or advertising or… to look through and get ideas. Or …just to look through.

Here’s a site for free pics…http://morguefile.com/archive#/?sort=pop&photo_lib=morgueFile

Look! I caught these fish! Or…DID I???

Water Buffalo!

And here’s a little something that I actually did NOT find on  Morgue Files. I’m putting swag art together for future swag. Book marks, post cards, etc. I didn’t know what swag was, either, until I saw a table of it once upon a time. Now I know. I can swagger about town handing out my swag…when I make it.

Have a great week, peeps!