The latest indie book reviews from Self-Publishing Review
They Had Me at Meow is the tale of Rosie Sorenson – a writer for the L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle – who cared for a veritable herd of stray cats in Northern California. Her deep love for these […]
If you submit your book for review at SPR, you should understand that means the possibility of having the first page of your book critiqued in this column.
Don’t misunderstand: “critique” does not (only) mean “to criticize.” I make no promises that some work won’t be criticized, but for the purposes of this column, “critique” means exactly what Webster says it means: “A critical review or commentary.”
As the first post in this column, before I get started on the page you see copied below, allow me to explain what this is:
This column’s purpose is to offer critiques of […]
George LaCas spent years playing pool in the Deep South as he wrote The Legend of Jimmy Gollihue, and it shows. The novel, about a young pool shark in the not-too-distant past who takes his game on the road to prove himself to the bewitching young woman he loves, reads like something straight out of local legend.
One of my pet literature peeves is the technique (or lack of technique) of plunging straight into a worst-case scenario without giving the reader a chance to get their bearings. LaCas avoids this problem admirably, coaching the reader through the intricacies of […]
Then, as I usually do when I want to find out about something about which I know very little or nothing, I would have gone home and solicited the wisdom of Wikipedia, which […]
The basic mood from more progressive thinkers is that DRM is a flawed principle. Proponents of DRM say that it helps curb duplication of material, which can lead to lost sales. Opponents, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, say that it doesn’t achieve this and actually limits artists from reaching consumers. The main argument against DRM is that it is impossible to maintain […]
In a sense Brian Spaeth has tried to write the worst novel ever written. He probably won’t like that description, but PTSA is a “bad” novel in the same way that Spinal Tap […]
Virginia author Rebecca Rock has entered the fray with Daywalker, a novel about Jesse, a half-vampire raised by humans after the death of his parents. Now grown up, Jesse lives a double life – one part as a temperamental engineering student who lives with a pack of werewolves, and the other as a member of an elite psychic military team headed by his foster father.
Daywalker is something […]
Montana has always fascinated me for strange reasons. Partly because there’s an alien quality to its physical beauty, as if a piece of Mars or Saturn had been towed in by some alien spacecraft millions of years ago. Once it was dropped off, the shipping manifest got lost and the aliens forgot about it. So there it sits. Another part of Montana’s appeal is the people who live there. For one, there aren’t many of them. It’s what’s called “sparsely populated.” For two, some of the people who do live there are…how shall I put it?…different from the rest of […]