BookBrowse Free Newsletter 09/06/2012

September 6, 2012

Hello,

I'm breaking with our usual tradition of having a very short intro to this newsletter because there's an important topic to address which I think will be of interest to you.

Integrity
Reviews abound on the web these days but it's often difficult to know which to trust, especially when there are businesses who are paid to post glowing reviews, and authors who solicit their friends and family to post 5-star reviews, or even resort to writing them themselves under assumed names. While some recent high-profile articles have made many readers aware of this for the first time, the practice is far from new, which is why, at BookBrowse we have always taken steps to prevent abuse.

BookBrowse's Reviews
You may have noticed that BookBrowse's own featured reviews are generally positive. This is for two reasons. Firstly, we work hard to seek out the best of the best to review in the first place. Despite this, sometimes one of our reviewers is assigned a book that just doesn't quite live up to expectations. In such a case a short review is posted on the book's page at BookBrowse, but the book is rarely, if ever, given full coverage because there are just too many good books out there to make space for the merely mediocre.

Reader Reviews
There are two types of reader reviews on BookBrowse. The first are reviews posted by passing visitors. Each of these is manually checked by BookBrowse for things such as offensive language and plot spoilers. In addition we have various methods for checking reviews that appear suspicious. I'm sure we don't manage to spot every fake reader review, but we've certainly found many over the years and they've been unceremoniously deleted.

Members Recommend Reviews
The second type of reader reviews on BookBrowse are those that you'll find under the heading "Members Recommend" (both in these emails and on BookBrowse). I suggest that these are among the most trustworthy reader reviews to be found on the Internet because the only people who can post reviews in this section are registered BookBrowse members who receive a copy of a particular book to review through our monthly "First Impressions" offers. Members indicate which books they are interested in reading and BookBrowse's algorithms decide who gets assigned a copy. Among the 30-50 members who receive a copy of a particular book it's conceivable, but unlikely, that there might be somebody connected to the book, but the chance of there being enough such people to influence the overall consensus is effectively close to zero.

In short, if you want honest opinions written by experienced writers who value their integrity, you can trust BookBrowse's reviews; and for reader reviews that you can be sure are written by real people, I suggest you visit our "Members Recommend" page!

Davina,
BookBrowse Founder & Editor
info@bookbrowse.com

BookBrowse Membership

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Find out more about membership!

Readers Recommend

Each month we give away books to members to read and review (or discuss). Members who choose to take part tend to receive a free book about every 3-4 months. Here are their opinions on one just published book they have been reading recently:

The Forgetting Tree

by Tatjana Soli

Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: 09/04/2012
Novel, 416 pages

Number of reader reviews: 29
Readers' consensus:

BookBrowse Members Say
"Right within the first 20-30 pages the reader will be drawn irresistibly into an ever-changing orchard of characters from differing backgrounds and cultures facing inexorable desires, devastating losses and dark fears. So many stories within stories ... Tatiana Soli's rich writing style never lets go. Read it and let your mind explore Claire and Forster Baumsarg's challenges and transformations and, then sometimes, even one's own." - Kathrin C. (Corona, CA)

"Vivid in its scent and color and characters, this is a beautiful and magical story." - Barbara O. (Maryland Heights, MO)

"Beautifully written, I enjoyed this book even more than her first novel, The Lotus Eaters." - Catharine L.

"It is an excellent read even though it is 400 pages. The saga of several generations keeps the readers interest. It is well written and exciting. This book would appeal to anyone interested in the genre of sagas and the love of land. I give it 5 stars!" - Margaret M. (Chicago, IL)

"Book clubs would love it. Discussions could evolve around Claire's world of cancer survival, relationships with husband and children and dedication to the family land. On the opposite side, there is the sultry and mysterious side of the world in which Minna is from which is a novel onto itself. I loved the book and look forward to the next one!" - Kathy G. (Alamo, CA)

"The Forgetting Tree creates a beautiful melancholy, made visceral by words and descriptions and the very human-ness of the characters." - Paula K. (Cave Creek, AZ)

Read all the Reviews

Buy at Amazon

Featured Review

Below is part of BookBrowse's review of In the Shadow of the Banyan. Read the review in full here

In the Shadow of the Banyan

by Vaddey Ratner

Hardcover (Jul 2012), 336 pages.

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN 9781451657708

BookBrowse Rating:

Critics' Consensus:

It might be hard to wrap one's mind around the concept of genocide, but it sure is important to do so. After all, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. The massive purge that occurred during a very short window of time - between 1975 and 1979, just after the Cambodian Civil War - had all the signs of a genocide: millions were killed because they looked different or didn't conform to predetermined ideas of what the "ideal Cambodian" should be like. Seven-year-old Raami Ayuravann, the narrator of the moving novel, In the Shadow of the Banyan, belongs to the royal class and is living her life in relative luxury in Phnom Penh, when the Khmer Rouge (see "Beyond the Book") captures the city in 1975.

Raami is forced to dislocate to the countryside along with her family, and under extreme conditions, the family fights to survive together. Forcing everyone to conform to an agrarian lifestyle, the Khmer Rouge displaces millions of Cambodians like Raami's family, moving them to the countryside and having everyone perform hard labor for the most meager of rations. As we follow the novel's narrative, we slowly find out who will eventually remain safe in the "shadow of the banyan tree."

This is Vaddey Rattner's debut novel, a moving tale made all the more affecting because it is not overly manipulative. (Though, the novel does seem to have its share of overwrought metaphors: "He looked up, his eyes brimming with monsoon rains, like the inundated rice paddies surrounding the temple." Of course, these metaphors might be forgiven as the product of a child's overactive imagination.) The novel shines in its narration of folk tales from the Reamker, the Cambodian equivalent of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. Banyan is especially heart-wrenching because of the everyday simplicity of Raami's basic concerns - her insecurity over the limp caused by polio; and her worries for her family's safety. Raami's attempts to cocoon her universe seem ever more pathetic because we know they are destined to fail, shaped as they are by larger events beyond any one person's control. "The problem with being seven," Raami remembers, "is that you're aware of so much, and yet you understand so little." She is aware that the world as she has known it is slowly disintegrating yet she doesn't quite understand why or how.

Reviewed by Poornima Apte

Above is part of BookBrowse's review of In the Shadow of the Banyan. Read the review in full here

Beyond The Book

At BookBrowse, we don't just review books, we go 'beyond the book' to explore interesting aspects relating to the story. In our current issue we reviewed three novels set against the back drop of genocides; and, for the backstory to one of these books, The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian, we explored the Armenian Genocide in particular.

Read the backstory & review in full here

The Armenian Genocide

The word "genocide" was coined in 1943 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish Polish legal scholar, although it didn't enter common usage until the Nuremberg trials (the criminal prosecution of those responsible for the Holocaust). The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Map of modern day Armenia The Armenian Genocide, which many scholars consider the first modern genocide, refers to the systematic extermination of the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire during and shortly after WWI.

The build-up to the Armenian Genocide can be understood by tracing the history of the Ottoman empire. Like all empires, the Ottoman Empire (also known as the Turkish Empire, with its capital at Constantinople - modern day Istanbul) stretched over many countries. At one time the empire embraced Vienna in the north to Mecca in the south. From the sixteenth century to its collapse following World War I, the Ottoman Empire included areas of historic Armenia. During its glory days in the 16th century, minority Christianized Armenians were a peaceful part of the empire. This changed during the nineteenth century however, when nationalism swept through and the Armenian Christians began to be considered second-class citizens and discriminated against.

Above is part of BookBrowse's backstory of The Sandcastle Girls. Read the review and backstory in full here

By Kim Kovacs

Blog: Movies Based on Books

Wondering what films based on books will release in Fall 2012?

BookBrowse has the answer!

Click to go to BookBrowse's blog

for key info on these upcoming movies including trailers of all eight:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Cloud Atlas
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2
Anna Karenina
Life of Pi
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Misï¿½rables
On The Road

Win

A Winter's Night by
Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Publication Date: Aug 2012

Enter the Giveaway

Past Winners

From the Jacket

Set during the first half of the twentieth century, this is the story of the Brunis, a family of farmers from the Italian Padan Plain who have worked the land since time immemorial. And it is a story about the homeless multitudes, travelers, and tinkers, roaming Europe during the hardscrabble nineteen-twenties and thirties. In this expansive novel, reminiscent of Bertolucci's masterpiece 1900 in its scope and subject matter, these two worlds meet when the Brunis open their great barn and offer it as a refuge for those in need of a warm, dry, and safe place to sleep and eat.

The barn becomes font and inspiration for a series of vivid stories involving sundry strangers, the Bruni parents themselves, and their nine children - seven boys and two girls - who will grow into young men and women during World War I and its aftermath. Told in the tradition of country folktales and framed by the devastating years of strife - two world wars and the years of fascism - these stories will delight readers from the first page to the last. Manfredi's A Winter's Night provides a timely reminder that simple values and a sense of solidarity with our fellow human beings remain of vital importance, above all in a world undergoing momentous and rapid change.

Reviews:

"In this novel, Manfredi displays a freshness, a sincerity, and a tangibility in his prose that come not so much from an author's fantasy, but from memory itself." - Gazzetta di Modena

"Manfredi is a masterful novelist who here transforms, once again, stories that have been passed down through generations into a grand epic adventure." - IBS

5 people will each win a paperback copy of

A Winter's Night.

This giveaway is open to residents of the USA & Canada only, unless you are a BookBrowse member, in which case you are eligible to win wherever you might live.

Enter the giveaway here

News

Sep 04 2012:
Authors including Lee Child, Mark Billingham, Joanne Harris, Charlie Higson and Tony Parsons have signed up to a group statement condemning sock puppetry, the practice of writing reviews pseudonymously to praise one's own work and criticize that of others...(more)

Sep 04 2012:
The 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize jury announced its longlist of 13 books and authors today, having read 142 works of fiction submitted by 50 publishers from every region of Canada.
...(more)

Sep 04 2012:
The 2012 Hugo Awards were announced on Saturday at the 70th World Science Fiction Convention. More than fifteen awards were given including the Best Novel sward which went to Jo Walton for (more)

Sep 01 2012:
Experiencing a major rise from E.L. James' "Fifty Shades" trilogy, German media giant Bertelsmann (which owns Random House, the world's largest trade publishing group) enjoyed a dramatic surge in profit in the first half of 2012, posting posted a 31% increase in net...(more)

Aug 30 2012:
The Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have reached a $69 million agreement that will resolve lawsuits brought by 54 attorney generals from 49 states, the District of Columbia and territories, that charged the publishers with fixing e-book prices. Under the proposed...(more)

Aug 29 2012:
As had long been rumored, the American Booksellers Association (which represents nearly 2000 independent bookstores in the USA) announced today that it is partnering with Kobo to give member stores an opportunity to sell e-books and, for the first time, e-reading devices. The agreement replaces...(more)

Aug 23 2012:
British author Nina Bawden, best known for the children's novel Carrie's War, died on August 22 at her home in London. She was...(more)

Aug 21 2012:
June bookstore sales rose 3.8%, to $1.04 billion, compared to June 2011, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales have risen 0.6%...(more)

Read these news stories, and many others, in full.