"Almost" "Reviews" . . .
How short can something be before the "experts" say it's not a review?
My dictionary gives a first definition as: "A new appraisal or evaluation".
There is a special page on this blog used for "normal" Reviews of my books.
This post will give three very short "reviews"… and, I'll add this post to the Review Page :-)
The first "review" arrived as an incident related to me by a prison librarian.
Johnpaul Mahofski placed my book, Notes from An Alien, in his library at the Eastern Correctional Institution in Maryland.
Someone checked it out then, a couple months later, someone else checked it in.
It was in bad shape, the pages and cover wrinkled so badly that Johnpaul decided he had to replace it.
My book had suffered the same treatment that books of the inmates' most popular genre, Urban Fiction, had suffered—being passed around so much they began to fall apart…
The second almost-review happened today.
Once a book is released and promoted on the Web, an author is well-served by having a Google alert set up to see everything being said and done about the book.
Without my interacting with Tamela Quijas, she created a post with images and links to my book, saying: "I've fallen head first into the world of Sci-Fi. I've absolutely LOVED the novels that have passed my desk…The latest Sci-Fi thriller on my reading list is Notes from An Alien…"
Tamela doesn't give any of her own opinions about my book but the layout of the post is "A new appraisal or evaluation".
The last review is still short but much sweeter.
My long-time, never-met-in-person friend Catherine Roberts had received a free copy of Notes from an Alien but was struggling with the language, not being a fluent English reader.
She went ahead and purchased the book and sent me this charming email:
"Yesterday I received your book in the mail, I already read most of it last night and today, I was already a bit familiar with it, since you sent me the whole script over the internet, but I find it much more interesting to read from the book …truely exceptionel good writing a bit complex in a few areas for me that is a norm since I never studied true difficult words in english, I look them up…also I think I reconize quite a few of the people that are mentioned in fictiouse names. I love the book Alex, and you are a absolutely great writer as far as I may state."
No writer could ask for anything more………
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Tagged: book review, Eastern Correctional Institution, Google Alert, Johnpaul Mahofski, Maryland, Notes from An Alien, review, Urban Fiction
