Books, books, books

There is a stack of books on my desk, bookcases behind me, a Kindle and an iPad with more TBR. Where to start? How about the books I'm being paid to read for Kirkus? And then the books I've promised friends or acquaintances I'd read, such as Karyn Hall's The Power of Validation or Jason Trask's I'm Not Muhammad? Most of the books that arrive in the mail from publishers go back out to reviewers for the Internet Review of Books, unless I can't find a willing reader--Taliban: The Unknown Enemy, anyone? That one's been sitting in my office for months, serving no other purpose than to hold down the stack of papers I haven't looked at in just as long.

But this isn't a complaint, not really. After wife and family, books are my first love. If there is too much on my TBR list, so be it. May I die many years from now with a book in my lap. The trouble is, that Taliban book deserves a review while there are still any Taliban left, and the pages may be yellow before I get to it.

Now, come on. Who wouldn't want to read a book about the Taliban?

The Internet Review of Books

This is an unhappy day, because my good friend Gary Presley and I have decided to stop publishing the Internet Review of Books effective October 1. Our staff once numbered six, but with the recent resignation of our fiction editor, we are now just two people: Gary for the blogging and me for the editing. We could continue--we're not overwhelmed--but as with others who left before us, we believe it's time to move on.

Our enterprise began in the mind of Carter Jefferson, who noted the shrinking outlets for book reviews in the press. With his leadership we launched our website in October 2007; four years and roughly 1,000 reviews later, I believe we have accomplished a lot. Granted, we never made any money, but we have earned a solid reputation as an outlet for honest, professional reviewers. We made a point to be open to self-published and small-press publications that looked worthy.

So don't stop reading the Internet Review of Books. We'll continue publishing high-quality reviews through the summer.

Check out the new IRB

Today the Internet Review of Books relaunched as a daily blog instead of as a monthly website. Our dear friends and founders Carter Jefferson and Ruth Douillette needed time and space to do other things in their lives, so they've moved on. Now Julie McGuire, Gary Presley, and I are pleased to issue the IRB daily, generally publishing a single review every day. We'll tend to alternate between fiction and non-fiction that have been published within the last six months, with occasional interviews for variety.

Julie McGuire is a dedicated reader and reviewer of novels, and she'll continue as our intrepid Fiction Editor. Gary will manage the blog, doing lots of essential work to keep us rolling. I used to manage the website but now am the new Non-Fiction Editor.

So please stop by our blog, and be sure to follow it. You'll be eligible to win a $25 Amazon gift certificate that we'll be giving out on November 15.

Writing book reviews

I'm working my way through Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders, about the century-long clash between Christendom and Islam that lasted into the 16th century. My assignment is to review it for the February issue of the Internet Review of Books, so I need to finish soon, even though it's not a speedy read. When I come across a passage that might be worth referring to, I write the page number and the first few words of a sentence on a piece of paper. When I've finished reading the book, I'll open a Word file and start writing notes--initial impressions, then perhaps quotes or ideas from the list I've compiled. That's generally enough to get me started on writing the review.

That sounds straightforward enough, but what do others do? If you write book reviews, how do you approach the task?

Getting ready for Mazatlán

We're preparing to leave for a month-long RV trip to Mazatlán on January 1. Today we drove with our friends to the Mexican side of the Santa Teresa border entry to get visas. We're confident we'll be safe because our friends are going with us and have made the trip a number of times. In fact, they've lived in Mexico. So we were all mildly surprised when a woman in line for a visa warned us what not to do when we're on the road: don't pick up anyone, don't talk to strangers, don't leave the vehicle unattended, and at gas stations just pay for your gas and leave. Some of that is common sense; we don't intend to pick up anyone, for example. On the other hand, we aren't going to live in fear. The highway from the U.S. border to Mazatlan is apparently a straight shot, so we aren't worried about getting lost.

Last night our friends called an RV park in Mazatlán and were told we'd have no trouble staying at their park. Skittishness of tourists is one reason they gave, but they said the overall economy is the main problem. In any case it has security, has wi-fi, and is right by the beach. That way I'll be able to get sand in my toes, drink cerveza, maintain the Internet Review of Books website, and write blog entries accompanied by lots of photos.

Mexico is a beautiful country wracked in places by violence. Mazatlan itself is said to be safe for tourists; as with any big city, there doubtless are neighborhoods where strangers shouldn't go. But our friends, who've been there, tell us we'll get everywhere we want to go by bus or taxi.

Writing reviews for The Internet Review of Books

These are the reviews I've written for the Internet Review of Books dating back to October 2007. If you decide to purchase any of these through links on the review pages, the Internet Review of Books will earn a few pennies. In any case, please enjoy the reviews.

Contract with the Earth, by Newt Gingrich

American Lion, by Jon Meacham

Bananas, by Peter Chapman

Beyond Terror and Martyrdom, by Gilles Kepel

Blue Covenant, by Maude Barlow

Come to Think of It, by Daniel Schorr

Destiny Disrupted, by Tamim Ansary

Home Girl, by Judith Matloff

Independents Day, by Lou Dobbs

Simplexity, by Jeffrey Kluger

The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby

The Book that Changed My Life, by Roxanne J. Coady & Joy Johannessen

The First Day of the Blitz, by Peter Stansky

The Gamble, by Thomas E. Ricks

Three Generations, No Imbeciles, by Paul A. Lombardo

Old computers in the family

Right: Our XT, sometime in the '80s

It's a peaceful morning here in my son's Austin home, where I currently have the second floor all to myself in a comfy chair by a window. Nancy and Jeff are in separate rooms downstairs, doing separate tasks on their laptops—we seem to be a family of six: three people and three laptops. We—Nancy, Jeff, and I—all enjoy each other's company, but we also enjoy our electronic company. Last night, Nancy and I tried to remember each computer we've ever owned, going back to the 1980s, and we couldn't. We started with a Timex T-1000, on which I taught myself enough BASIC programming to display "Hi Mom" on the TV screen we used as a monitor. There were the Commodore 64, the RadioShack TRS-80 (known irreverently as the Trash 80), and the IBM PC Junior, which was the first computer we could actually do anything productive with. I wrote my first freelance articles and my first novel on it. There was a plug-in cartridge with Lotus 1-2-3 that Nancy used to manage our finances.

We've had various XTs, at least one 386, a bottom-of-the-line Pentium 60, and...and...we lost track of them all. As we lay in bed the night of Valentine's Day I reminded her of the monitor we once had that caught fire when we plugged it in. After all this romantic pillow talk we fell asleep, visions of gigabytes dancing in our heads.

Gasp! My "family of six" reference neglects our two cats, who didn't come along on this trip. I apologize to both of you, George and Gracie. You mean more to us than any electronic gizmo.

By the way, this morning I uploaded the February issue of The Internet Review of Books. If you love good books, you will love this website. Please check it out.

In the tar pit

For the last couple of days I've been stuck in the tar pit of email, making numerous minor updates to the archives for The Internet Review of Books, commenting on some of my friends' blog posts, and beginning to organize two projects for the El Paso Writer's League. It's all fine and fun writing-related stuff, but it might be nice to do some new writing of my own instead of just writing about writing.

My next book review will be on American Lion, by Jon Meacham, for the February IRB issue. I'm little over halfway through the book, so I'd better get to it. I am reading it on Kindle, which works out well.

December Internet Review of Books is out!

Yesterday the Internet Review of Books published its third issue! This is a monthly collaborative effort among Carter Jefferson, Ruth Douillette, Gary Presley, Jane Elioseff, and me. It's a lot of work and a lot of satisfaction. My main responsibility is maintaining the website, but I also write monthly reviews.

Of book sales and book reviews

Is it my hard but intermittent promotional work finally paying off? The last time I'd checked, my novel's Amazon ranking hadn't budged much from the million-one, million-two mark, a fairly pathetic sales ranking that had lasted for months and required no small rationalization on my part. And I checked tonight to find my ranking at 165,000. Lordamercy, someone bought When Pigs Fly online. Bless you!



Most of my sales have come from signings and (can you believe it?) a restaurant and a gift shop. Last Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours at Coas Bookstore in Las Cruces, where foot traffic is greatly enhanced by the farmer's market in the pedestrial mall. My table by the front door was a great venue for people watching: tall, short, fat, skinny, plenty of exposed skin with tattoos—ankles, arms, necks, faces, on the exposed breasts of low-cut blouses; a Chinese woman with a handbag from "The Forbidden City"; a handsome African couple; children; retirees with canes; browsers carrying huge bags of popcorn with an aroma that triggered my salivary glands. Anyone who looked in my direction got a free smile, which they usually returned. Most kept moving, eye contact or not, smile or not. Women were more likely to stop and chat than men, and they were slightly more likely to buy. In the past, it's seemed that if someone picked up a copy, flipped through it and we conversed about it, I got a sale. Today was different—I had a nice chat with a woman and her husband for about ten minutes before she finally walked off, saying, "Well, I don't have any money." On the other hand, there was the woman who said, "Oh, it's funny? I'll buy it." A man stopped by to tell me that one of the vendors outside had a winged pig built out of a propane tank, but I never got to see it.

Thanks to the inspiration of Carter Jefferson and no small amount of work by him, Ruth Douillette, Gary Presley and Yours Truly, The Internet Review of Books has launched. We plan to publish a wide range of thoughtful reviews to help you, dear reader, find books worth your valuable time. We're rather pleased with what we've done in this first issue, and we plan to get bigger and better from month to month.

By the way, we four are all members of the Internet Writing Workshop, a terrific online place for writers of all skill levels. If you're a writer, check it out.