A Geeky Book Soap Opera.

A couple weeks ago I read what I thought was an interesting article in the New York Times about how many newspapers are shortening their book sections or cutting literary editor positions because readers are starting to get their reviews from other places, such as a book blog. This trend reflects a broader problem for the newspaper industry as most of us are email, blackberry and internet dependent these days.

Although I’m a loyal, faithful advocate and reader of the New York Times Book Section, I freely admit that I get very few of my book recommendations from professional book reviewers. I tend to read the books that my peers are reading because we have similar tastes and life experiences. In addition, I have found perfect strangers through the Bloggosphere with similar tastes in music, television and movies, so it makes perfect sense for me to reach out to them for a recommendation before I turn to the New York Times book section.

And sometimes, after a hard week of work, a girl likes to read an amusing piece of Chick-Lit and I don’t find many favorable reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle Pink Pages.

However, I have nothing but the utmost respect (and envy) for those who are paid to write professional reviews of book.

About a week after the NYT article came out, this jerk at the LA Times, wrote a scathing retort accusing book bloggers of trying to usurp the role of Book Reviewer. He didn’t just stop there. He went on to question the formal training of a prolific book blogger by revealing his background in the auto parts industry, suggesting that perhaps a former auto parts employee couldn’t possibly be qualified to write about books. (The auto parts turned book blogger addresses the LA Times article here.)

This literary snobbery offends me greatly. Would the LA Times reviewer have called out a blogger who works as a practicing attorney? How about an accountant? A medical doctor? Are we to assume that only highly educated academics can truly enjoy a piece of literature and write eloquently about it?

Let's take this a step further, should we start screening potential readers before they purchase a book to ensure that they are smart and sophisticated enough to read it?

One of my biggest problems with professional book reviews (and it would seem that others share this opinion) is that many reviewers try to impress us with their research on the author and their knowledge about a genre or a body of work, and yet, they are unable to tell me if the BOOK IS GOOD!!!

I understand, being a former journalism major, that it’s not the reviewer’s role to form an opinion about the book, but to inform the reader that the book is out there, if it’s well-written, and what the plotline is. They are supposed to be impartial and not sway the reader.

Yet this is why I turn to the bloggers. I like that I can receive an honest opinion about a book by someone who is my age and my gender and who has similar taste in books. I WANT to hear someone say, “READ IT” or “Don’t bother.” Sure, some blogs are really poorly written and slapdash, but, hey, we aren’t claiming a byline on a major metropolitan newspaper so what’s the big deal?

As I book blogger and a reader of book blogs, I can honestly say that for the most part, we have no intent or desire to put the literary editing field out of business.

I respect reviewers and I look to them for news, for advice, and even for modeling how to write a good book review. So, they should really lighten up … and realize that their readers are also potential book bloggers. And they shouldn’t piss us off.

Because we will blog about them next.

Tinky Winky says ...

See Ya Lata, Hata!

RIP, Jerry Falwell.

Review: A Long Way Down

Now, I love Nick Hornby. LOVED loved loved About a Boy (the movie too, but the book was just lovely). I really truly enjoyed How to be Good, and I even liked Fever Pitch even though I didn't know what he was talking about half the time.

This book, A Long Way Down ... sigh, don't waste your time. Here's the gist: Four simply miserable souls end up on New Year's Eve at the top of a very tall apartment building in London with the same thought: to kill themselves.

One thing leads to another and they all agreed to wait 6 weeks, give life a try and come back on Valentine's Day. On V-day, they decide that life, while still sucking hardcore, is not that bad, so they give it another 90 days.

And it went ON and ON and ON. No one killed themselves. No one really was happy about NOT killing themselves, they all hated each other, and in turn, I hated every single one of them. Jump already!!!!

Ugh. Please someone ... I need a good book!

I'm so into this!

Here's what I did: I listed nine of my used paperbacks and immediately received credit to order three books for free.

THEN, within about an hour, five people requested my books for five more credits....that's five more books I can order! I just pay $1.50 to ship.

So easy.

As Suze Orman always says, don't ever buy a book new when you can swap them for practically free!

T minus 29 days.

Yes, I am officially less than one month out from being an official “ball and chain.” On June 9, I shall be a “missus” … only, I’m not changing my name and I shall remain a “miz”.

Wedding planning has been surprisingly stress-free. More annoying than anything else. Fiancé and I have given up some much needed sleep and/or weekend time to meet with vendors, but I think at this point, we are in pretty good shape.

Flowers? Check. Cake? Check. Food? Check. DJ informed of my dislike for “I will Survive” or “YWCA”? Check Check. Booze? Oh, hell yes.

As excited as we are to finally be man and wife (even though it feels like we have been married for years), I think we are slightly more excited to go on our honeymoon.

We leave on June 13 for almost three weeks in Europe. We begin our journey in Positano, where I intend to do nothing but drink Bellini’s and act a damn fool in love. Then we drive up through Tuscany where we will stay in Siena for almost a week. After that, we drive all the way up to Venice for the token canal tour before hopping on a boat to Croatia.

Because we are both swamped with wedding and work errands and duties, we have done little to no research on our trip. Any suggestions on day trips, restaurants, ANYTHING?

Oh, and of course, I am in a book slump and will need honeymoon reading. Please send reviews and recommendations.

What would you do?

When I moved to San Francisco and started my first job out of college, a woman about 5 or 6 years older than me (so she was probably 29 or 30 years old) named Jessica was assigned to train me in my position.

Jessica was totally cool and interesting and she had a fantastic haircut and wore really awesome clothes. We immediately became “work friends”. One of the benefits of a work friend is that you spend 40 plus hours a week together and with that comes a very intimate knowledge of the other’s personal life.

She soon let me know that about a year before we met, Jessica’s boyfriend was in a motorcycle accident which left him as a paraplegic. After a lot of soul searching, Jessica made the very difficult decision to stay with him through his rehabilitation because she loved him and wanted a future with him. She learned how to take care of him, and even learned how to have sex with him again. However, about a year after the accident, he broke up with her stating that he never intended to marry her or spend the rest of his life with her before the accident occurred.

As you might imagine, she was devastated. She soon quit and we didn’t keep in touch. I do think about her quite often, and wondered how I would make the same decision, if I were forced to.

This very long winded introduction is necessary to explain why I was so excited to read “The Dive from Clausen’s Pier” by Ann Packer. Carrie Bell is 23 years old, living in Madison, Wisconsin and unhappily engaged to her high school boyfriend, Mike. Carrie is contemplating leaving Mike when he takes a dive off of Clausen’s Pier into shallow water and ends up paralyzed.

To stay or not to stay, was the question Carrie asked herself. Faced with the most challenging and emotional experience in her life, Carrie chose a path that surprised her friends and Mike by fleeing Madison in the middle of the night, moving to New York City and immediately falling in love with an older, extremely unavailable man.

I thought this book was excellent. Or rather, I thought the main characters were fascinating. I read a lot of reviews and understand that quite a bit of people thought that Carrie was very selfish and one dimensional, but I couldn’t disagree more. I can’t think of anything more selfLESS than Carrie admitting her own limitations, in acknowledging that she just didn’t love Mike enough to stay and to take an incredibly unpopular road all alone.

What I really liked about this book is that I couldn’t predict anything that Carrie was going to do. I won’t give away the ending, but it definitely was quite different than what I expected. I liked that Carrie was not perfect, that she made a lot of people very angry, that she behaved irrationally, that she hurt the person who loved her most. I loved that she was courageous and made a lot of bad decisions because she didn’t want to make the “right” decision that was terribly wrong for her.

There were a few plot points I had a hard time with. For instance, Carrie lived in New York without working, going to school, eating out with friends, on about $3000, which is totally impossible. It shouldn’t have really bothered me, but I hate it when authors get lazy. And the character of Kilroy, the emotionally stunted older man Carrie falls for, was just slightly too formulaic for me.

I give this book a hearty thumbs up for anyone who is in the mood for a surprising read.