I’ve been saying for months that I was planning to revive Alvah’s Books and I think I got my groove back. Two reviews in a week. Not bad. Although I would like to get it to three reviews a week, but I think I’m pushing my luck.

Why did I let Alvah’s Books lapse? Writing book reviews is not an easy task. It’s work. And because I aggressively outreached to so many publishers, I got on many mailing lists and received many books. Too many books. So many books that it would take a lifetime or two to read them. But truth be told, I simply burned myself out on reading tome after tome for Alvah’s Books and for publications that pay.

But I’m back to it for Alvah’s Books, for HAND/EYE Magazine, and now for Kirkus Reviews (well, it will be my first review and it’s a nice publication to have under the belt). But back to Alvah’s Books, the two most recent reviews are up, and you can read my impressions of Jonathan Rabb’s The Second Son and Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke.

What’s on the burner for right now? I’m currently reading Triangle: The Fire that Changed America by David von Drehle. If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve seen my posts about this tragedy. Why am I so intrigued by it? Several reasons ranging from an interest in New York City history specifically my beloved Lower East Side, but also the birth of industry reforms for safety and labor laws. So it’s all related to my obsessions of when the Left actually had some power to make important things happen.

After Triangle, I have a towering pile of books to go through, as well as a long list of ebooks to be read and then decide which one will be lucky to be scrutinized. Now what I learned about reading for review, especially if you’re doing it for the fun of it, is to not to be so strict with yourself. My first year with Alvah’s Books, I was trying to get as many books under my belt and writing what would be upcoming that it suddenly became a chore. Then I got into this habit of reading books that I considered so-so and not bothering to review them, which then moved on to not finishing them at all.

And that goes against my maxim of book reviewing. You simply don’t read and review the good books only. If you have an audience and they’re curious about a certain book, you have to provide them the good, the bad, and the ugly. Of course, the books I’m not wild about you can tell by my lackluster writing, which typically means I didn’t want to write the review in the first place.

In any event, Alvah’s Books was meant to be a fun and interesting exercise in reading and writing book reviews, and I hope to return to that original goal. In the next few weeks, I’ll be making some changes to the site (no, I am not changing the theme or the look. I learned the hard way of screwing around with the design the first time I did that). It will just be more resource stuff and some cleaning out of old posts that no longer matter (like old NYT bestselling lists).

Okay, back to David von Drehle’s Triangle

It’s been a while since I posted anything on Alvah’s Books, and I have a huge stack of books to read and review. Most of these are for pleasure, and some are from publicists have asked me to review the books. As the pile gets taller, I start to feel overwhelmed. Reading and writing a review feels more like schoolwork. However, I’ve been chastising myself for months for not getting back to Alvah’s Books and it’s time that I start reviewing on a regular basis. So that being said, I’ve  reviewed Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny. Please visit Alvah’s Books to read the review.

And since I am in this revival mode, I figure it’s time to develop some sort of editorial calendar. I have four books on the blacklist that need to be read and reviewed (also serves as research). Plus two introductory primers on Marxism (thankfully, they’re very short), one on the Spanish Civil War by Paul Preston, a book on the Rosenberg case, and Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (that will take the longest 500+ pages). After that I’ll focus on some literary fiction before I delve back to any special interests.

I guess better start reading. First on the list: Dorothy Healey Remembers: A Life in American Communist Party, by Dorothy and Maurice Isserman.

I’ve mentioned in passing my two writing gigs, but I thought I would dedicate a whole post to the both of them since the reality is that they take a good amount of my time.

If you’re wondering what is it exactly I do at HAND/EYE Magazine here’s your chance to learn how I spend my days. I am the online editor. So what the hell do I do apart from writing articles for the online version? Well, I edit stories from other freelance writers. I research topics and reach out to artists to potentially feature them. Sometimes I ask them to byline their own stories (and most of the time I have to finesse the language), other times I ask questions and ghost write it for them, but  the majority of the time I conduct an online interview with the artist then write the story. In addition, I ask for images, caption them, fiddle with the size if needed, etc. In addition, I have to come up with an editorial calendar, keep it up to date, schedule the stories, and so on. Basically that’s what takes about 85 percent of my time. I don’t deal with any of the tech issues at all. In other words, I don’t frig around with Drupal (I’ve been told not to touch it since it’s so glitchy. Although I have a feeling I could figure it out because I am a dweeb when it comes to figuring out software).

Ten percent of my time is administrative. I’m in charge of updating the subscription list and to mail out copies of the magazine. It’s a dirty job, Keith did it before me, and now it’s my baby. I’m hoping that when we’ve become a huge media conglomerate, I can give this job to someone else. Actually, it’s not that bad. It’s one of those tasks that’s nice to have so I can rest my brain.

Another five percent is trying to come up with ideas of how to increase our subscriber base. We talk about this, I would say, every couple of weeks, but I think between word-of-mouth and FaceBook, we’ve grown a little (or so it seems to me as I input the names of new subscribers on the spreadsheet).

I haven’t been involved with the print issue. YET. But I know that I might have one article in the next one on Haiti (I think it may be an expanded piece on Franz Zepherin).

For a small publication that prints two issues per year, but publishes online 48 weeks, I can say that we are BUSY. VERY BUSY. Lucky for me, though, I can make my own hours and work from home (or at the “office” if I have the desire to have a change of scenery.) I tend to put in my hours from 9 until 5, but I do take breaks here and there (post office, bank, grocery store, walk the dogs or take 30 minutes to exercise). Tonight is an exception. I’m working on a bunch stuff (this is one of those breaks) and I’ll probably call it quits around 10 pm. Do I work on weekends? Yep, pretty much. I usually write an article or two. This weekend looks like I’ll be writing at least three.

The second job is my book review column Dan’s Papers. It’s pretty straightforward. I read a book, and I review it. So far I’ve reviewed four books, and I have one coming up for Monday. Oops, make that four articles to write this weekend.

So that’s it in a nutshell. I write. A lot.  And now it’s time to work on some photo captions.

As shown by Saturday’s post, Not Finding the Words, I was having one helluva time writing a book review. Actually, I was not having a good day at all.  I realize that there are days that you simply need to take a break and yesterday would have been ideal, but I promised to get the review in.

Sometimes I wonder whether writing will ever get easy. Whether I’ll be able to whip out a 1,000 word article without even blinking an eye. When the words are just spouting like water in a fountain. Honestly, I don’t think so.

Although I’ve been writing book reviews for almost two years you would think I’d be able to jot some coherent thoughts and be done with it. In some ways book reviews are harder to write.  For fiction, you’re looking at the plot, structure, dialogue, character development, style and so on. For non-fiction, it’s how well the material is organized, presented and the analysis.

In this case, I was reviewing an encyclopedia. I have to warn you because I have a bias–I love reference books. Next to collecting software, I hoard reference materials. So it was a no brainer that I would adore this book, but I can’t write, “I love this book, it’s got a ton of information and lots of pretty pictures to look at for hours. You’ll love it, buy it.”  That’s what I wanted to write, but I had to be more eloquent and I could not find the words.  After mulling it over for several hours I finally wrote a coherent review.

You might have thought I was off the hook on Sunday and that I was taking a day off to rest my weary little brain. No, not at all. I had to submit two chapters to the writing groups. One chapter I completed, but the other wasn’t. I’m rewriting the latter one and I’m trying to answer some questions that some readers had, and once again, I’m having trouble. In this case, it isn’t finding the words, but whether I should even bother to include this information because I don’t find it relevant to the story. So what to do?

I’m leaning on the side of ditching the entire scene and moving forward. I think that I answered the question early on in the story, and it doesn’t need to be put out again. Plus, I find the entire scene a little contrived. I guess I answered my question. Ditch it or at least condense it to no more than a couple of sentences.

Onward, I have a lot writing to do this week.

As a writer I read quite a bit. Partly because I write freelance book reviews and I’m also the editor and publisher of Alvah’s Books, but I read to write better. Currently, I have several stacks of books to review for two other review sites and/or publications and for Alvah’s Books; I have to admit that I am a little overwhelmed by all the books I have to read and then sit down to write a review.  I love to read, but recently this great affection has turned a little into a chore. In spite of how I feel, every evening I settle in bed with a stack of books and read a few pages here and there, until I settle on one book to complete.

What am I currently reading? First, let’s start with I recently finished. On the top of the list is Frank Bruni’s Born Round.  For those not familiar with Bruni, he’s the former restaurant reviewer from The New York Times. This is his memoir about his trials and tribulations of eating, gaining weight and losing it.  There are several laugh out loud sections in Bruni’s book, at least I thought so. Review will appear soon on Alvah’s Books.

 Next completed book was Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch. This one should be of interest to laid-off white collar workers who are going through the misery of job counseling and networking and not getting anywhere. Ehrenreich can come across as sharp with her analysis of career coaches who supposedly know the ins and outs of the job search, but she’s not off-base with her observations. I found myself nodding in agreement that a lot of the job search charade is nothing but horse-shit.  Finding a job in today’s market (and this was written in 2005) for a well-educated, middle-aged laid off executive is a crap shoot. It doesn’t amount much to talent or experience, it’s being whereever you need to be at the right time and right place (and if you’re younger and and have a cheaper salary history, even better).

Now to the current reading list. The big book that I’m slogging through is Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream  by Leonard Zeskind. For anyone interested in this topic, Zeskind does a great job of providing a comprehensive history of the white supremacist movement.

I’ve laid off requesting advance copies from publishers because of my back log, but I today I recently purchased the third and final book of Steig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I plunked down the $26.00 and now I have to patiently wait until it gets in my hot little hands. I have a feeling once it arrives, I’ll be pulling a 24 hour read-a-thon.

I could list the other 50 or so books, but the guilt of not getting to them will be too much to bear. Many of those are novels and I’m discovering that I’m getting fussier about fiction than non-fiction. Does that have anything to do that I consider myself a novelist and I’m critical of some the plot devices, character development, dialogue and whatnot? Can’t really say. With the exception of a few novels I’ve read this year, I can’t say that I’ve been wowed by many and perhaps that’s why I’ve been dragging my heels recently. Hopefully that ennui will wear off soon.

Now time to settle in with those nasty white supremacists.