Ways for Authors to Up Review Efforts in 2017

Title: How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically
Subtitle: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career
Series: The multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Authors' Web site: http://howtodoitfrugally.com
Genre: Nonfiction/Writing/Careers
ISBN: 978-1-5369-4837-0
Publisher: HowToDoItFrugally Press
Cover by Chaz DeSimone

A review of How to get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Reviewed by Magdalena Ball, originally for The Compulsive Reader

How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically

Reading Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s books is always a pleasurable experience. It’s not just because of her warm, intimate and accessible prose. Howard-Johnson is something of an industry expert, and she manages to make the most complex processes seem simple fun. Her How to do it Frugally series provides pretty much everything you need to know about all aspects of marketing your books without spending a fortune. The latest in the series, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically, is no exception. This is a very thorough compendium that goes from importance of obtaining reviews through to building lists, writing query letters, using Amazon, how to deal with (and still use) negative reviews, and a whole lot more. How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is the most comprehensive book on getting book reviews I’ve ever come across. In her usual warm and easy-to-follow manner, Howard-Johnson outlines everything you need to know to maximise your book’s chances.

Some of the information is a tidy and helpful distillation of commonsense, such as “review trippers,” or how to deal with things like passed deadlines, book bigotry (or publisher bias), what an ARC is, and how to get e-book reviews, even from reviewers who only take hard copies. Other chapters are really innovative, such as creating an early series of contact lists and working them, even (ideally) before the book is written, and “magic bullets” (or bullet points) to ensuring that you get more positive responses to your review queries than negative ones. The latter point is crucial. I often think about what makes me accept a book for review – even when I have an already massive stack, and what makes me reject it immediately, and Howard-Johnson’s “legitimate hacks” are spot on. They really get to the crux of what a reviewer is looking for, not only in the approach or query, but in the way the book is packaged and presented. Howard-Johnson’s chapters on making use of Amazon are also particularly valuable, as this information is both key to sales, and not readily known or easy to find out.

The overall focus of the book is around getting reviews, but How to get Great Reviews Ethically and Frugally does more than simply focus on the review. It really parcels up the entire promotional process around a book and presents it in a handy format for new, and more experienced authors. There are chapters around book tours, quality control, what to do with the reviews you get, and even how you send your book, and I completely concur that parceling a book up nicely, and not stamping it all over with “Review copy” (including on the inner page where a reviewer might be trying to read, which has happened to me), makes a difference in terms of the reviewer’s personal experience with the book and how much value they assign to it.

Frugality is Howard-Johnson’s stock-in-trade, and since none of her suggestions involve a large outlay, I’d say that picking up a copy of this book is about the most frugal and valuable thing a new author can do in order to generate inexpensive and highly credible publicity. The book is easy to read, and rich with Howard-Johnson’s own considerable experience. Above all, I think the point that she makes about treating the acquiring of reviews, not as an ancillary activity, but an integral part of the promotional campaign and one that cannot be skimped on, is key. If you have a new book out, or are contemplating having a book out, you need this guide. How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is an excellent resource that both beginning and seasoned authors can return to again and again.

MORE ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader Web site and edits its newsletter (http://compulsivereader.com). She is an author in her own right including a book on becoming a professional reviewer titled The Art of Assessment (http://bit.ly/ArtAssessment), and the author of several books of poetry and novels.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG
The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Book Publicist Lauds How-To Book on Getting Reviews

Title: How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically
Subtitle: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career

Series: HowToDoItFrugally multi award-winning series of book for writers

ISBN 978 1 5369 4837 0

Pages: 336
Author’s Web Site: http://howtodoitfrugally.com

Cover Design, Chaz DeSimone, http://DeSimoneDesign.com

Available on Amazon, e-book or paper.

 5.0 out of 5 stars

A Book Every Author Should Read

By R. Scott Lorenz, publicist, originally for Amazon

As a book publicist I can attest to the fact that getting thoughtful reviews is an important part of a book marketing promotion. Potential buyers of a book will often turn to the reviews to find credible comments about the book they are possibly going to buy.

In addition, members of the media will read the Amazon reviews to see what people are saying about a book before they book the author on a radio or TV interview. Nobody wants to take a chance on a book that the public does not like.

The advice Carolyn offers is important and useful. If you are an author buy this book! You'll find tips and techniques that'll help you obtain reviews
as the title says... both Frugally and Ethically.

MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes both the first and second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically is the newest book in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers.

Howard-Johnson has also published quick-read booklets for writers including Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers and Great First Impression Book Proposals, both available as e-booklets and in paper.

MORE ON THE NEW BOOK REVIEW

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Kristin Johnson Awards Science Poetry Book Five Stars

Unmaking Atoms
By Magdalena Ball

Genre: Poetry/ Poetry: Science

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Ginninderra Press (January 11, 2017)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1760412821

ISBN-13: 978-1760412821

Author's Web site:  

Buy the book

Rated: Five stars

Reviewed by Kristin Johnson, reviewer, author and consultant

Magdalena Ball, the author of eight collections of poetry (several in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson) as well as two novels and a nonfiction book, The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything, is a multifaceted author, but her specialty is verse, especially scientific, astronomical and physics-themed poems, with threads of anthropology, zoology and biology.

 

From a cursory review of the titles, you might not think the verse offerings and prose poems (there is at least one, a prose/verse hybrid) have anything to do with protons, neutrons and electrons. Titles such as “Pranayama,” “Gargantua Redacted,” “Woman with her hair loose,” “Most of Everything is Nothing,” and the intriguing “Shallots and Garlic” (based on an Indonesian/Malaysian folktale) all seem on the surface to be more literary than scientific.

 

Look deeper. Look with the wonder that physicists have when they observe the atom. Like atoms, words combine to make different elements, different states of energy (passion, anger, fear, celebration, grief). So it is with Unmaking Atoms.

 

How, exactly, can one unmake atoms? Through nuclear fission. How, exactly, can one unmake the illusions of our human lives? Through poetry fission.

 

In the first poem of the collection, “The Last Report of the Day,” Ball introduces a recurring theme that hovers throughout the collection like cosmic radiation: the death of a parent, specifically a mother. She references a renowned woman poet in the opening line.

“I saw you, Adrienne Rich.

In my dream we were

walking like old friends

conspicuously cool

our maps drawn

before we took up pens

eyes searching for something

deeper than the wrinkles on our skin.

I felt your hand, crooked with arthritis

brush mine

in the depths of my consciousness”

 

How do the longing for an absent mother and a famous poet as a mother-figure in this passage relate to atoms? Or this verse in the next poem, “Charitable Crumb”:

 

“mother, father, siblings, lovers

the loss that kept coming

like water

suspended over blue-grey stones.”

 

Loss, specifically the loss of a mother, is the atom at the heart of this collection, split and reassembled in myriad ways with a dizzying elegance and versatility. Although the poetry examines birds, exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, “loamy” soil (a favorite word in the collection), paintings as the subject of several ekphrastic poems (poetry that is in response to a work of art), yellow jacquard sofas, the sense of loss and wistfulness, of losing oneself in nature, science, literature and art, create the atomic chain reaction and the “Atomic Mess” that, in essence, is death. Those who have lost a mother will probably be saying, “She gets me, she understands,” when they read “Yellow Jacquard.”

 

However, matter cannot be created or destroyed, and this collection unmakes, and then reassembles, the words and images as well as emotions including the sense of joy that permeates Ball’s lyricism. That joy manifests in a “laugh that shakes the floor,” the line and curve that brings wholeness, a light “softer than the cut of love.”

 

The reader encounters surprises, such as anger and yearning for the same person/subject within the space of a few lines:

“your feathers rise

poison in your beak

brightens the plumage

rainbow body, earth to water

water to wind

all I know: the taste in

my mouth says find you

find you find you”

 

The “you” in the poem has “poison in your beak,” and yet Ball’s narrator yearns for the subject. A subtle commentary that what we love is not always sentimental or full of hearts and flowers, and that loss is painful.

 

We often create meaning, and different elements, by unmaking and reassembling aspects and details of our lives, misconceptions and words said and unsaid. This is the power of Ball’s poetry, especially in this collection.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Kristin Johnson is a prize-winning/prize finalist writer, blogger, ghostwriting/creative writing consultant, screenwriter, and editor. A graduate of the Master of Professional Writing Program from the University of Southern California, she has published/collaborated

on six books and has ghostwritten several books (and scripts) for clients that acknowledge her contribution. The Internet etiquette self-help book AIN'T "U" GOT NO MANNERS (A Vegas Publisher) is her latest book.
Visit http://www.augnm.com/ and http://www.kristinjohnson.net.
She is on Facebook at facebook.com/AuthorKJ, facebook.com/augnm. 

Find her on Twitter @AuthorKJ.

MORE ABOUT THIS BLOG

 The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Christian Futuristic Sci-Fi Book Applauded

Release date: February 7, 2016

$15.95

6x9 Trade paperback
242 pages

Science Fiction (FIC028000) / Christian Futuristic Fiction (FIC0402020)

Print ISBN 978-1-939844-29-3
eBook ISBN 978-1-939844-30-9

Order through Ingram, Follett, or from the publisher

$4.99 EBook available in all formats

THE REMNANT

by William Michael Davidson

One nation, without God...

Colton Pierce apprehends Abberants—those who display symptoms of faith—and quarantines them on a remote island to ensure public safety.  Years prior, the government released a genetically-engineered super flu that destroyed the genes believed to be the biological source of spiritual experience in an effort to rid the world of terrorism. As an extractor with the Center for Theological Control, Colton is dedicated to the cause, his only distraction a new CTC employee, Selma.

But Colton's steadfast commitment is challenged when he learns his own son has been targeted for extraction. An underground militia, the Remnant, contacts him, and he discovers the purpose of Selma’s interest. The Remnant agrees to help Colton save his son in exchange for his assistance with their plan to free the Aberrants on the island.

Colton is faced with the most important decision of his life. Does he remain faithful to the CTC? Or trust Selma and the Remnant and give up everything to save his son?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

William Michael Davidson lives in Long Beach, California with his wife and two daughters. A believer that "good living produces good writing," Davidson writes early in the morning so he can get outside, exercise, spend time with people, and experience as much as possible. A writer of speculative fiction, he enjoys stories that deal with humanity's inherent need for redemption.

https://www.facebook.com/WilliamMichaelDavidson/

https://twitter.com/realwmdavidson

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER 

L. Diane Wolfe is the publisher of Dancing Lemur Press, L.L.C. Inquiries may be sent to:

inquiries@dancinglemurpressllc.com

www.dancinglemurpress.com

She is also known as  Spunk On A Stick author. She is a professional speaker. Learn more about her at: 

http://spunkonastick.net/
http://dancinglemurpress.com/
http://circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com

ABOUT THE NEW BOOK REVIEW

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Sarah Dillard Has TWO Mouse Scouts Books!

Mouse Scout Series
Including Mouse Scouts and Mouse Scouts Make a Difference

By Sarah Dillard

Hardcover Paper Books

ISBN: 978-0-385-756-3-7 and 978-0-385-75599-3

Published by Knopf

Fiction – Children

                                Lessons in Creativity and Doing Good!

Mouse Scouts Ideal Annual Gift for Kids

Reviewed by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, columnist and reviewer for MyShelf.Com and author of multi award-winning fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry,
and the HowToDoIt Series of books for writers

If you are not a grade school teacher, you may not have thought of using trash as a teaching tool. If you are not an artist with a penchant for collage or sculpture (or your name isn’t Bill Nye the Science Guy), you may not have thought about turning castoff straws into musical instruments, siphons, or hoses.

Violet, Tigerlily, and their scouting pals from Sarah Dillard’s Mouse Scouts are back in Mouse Scouts Make a Difference to help parents, kids, and teachers with fun new ideas for ways to make a difference in the world.

This second little book includes ideas for repurposing bottle caps, fast-food containers, water bottles, old mouse pads from Mom’s computer, and—if you’re a mouse—mousetraps used as rowing machines!

This is makes a lovely giftbook for children with parents who want their children to think creatively, compassionately, and universally.  It is also a book that may encourage parents and children everywhere to take scouting more seriously. In fact, make the two of them the beginnings of a Mouse Scouts library.

MORE ABOUT THE  REVIEWER

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a mother, grandmother and former teacher.  She is the author of multi award-winning fiction and poetry and the HowToDoItFrugally Series of books—one series for writers and one for retailers. Learn more at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com or tweet with her @FrugalBookPromo

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The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

A New Year Gift for Authors, Reviewers--and Readers--from The New Book Review!

You're right! This isn't exactly a review. It's better. I'm sharing an except from my new How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically with all my reviewer visitors and subscribers and author visitor subscribers. Perhaps it will even encourage the many readers who drop by for great reading ideas to write reviews of book you read. The authors who make books possible will love you for it! 

Off-The-Wall –Alternatives for Authors and Reviewers

Making Your Reviews Into Workhorses

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Excerpted (and adapted) from Carolyn’s new How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career.

Authors rarely get the most from        their reviews. Surprised? I think it’s because the idea of extending a review’s value doesn’t occur to them. Reviewers have the same problem because these days so many reviews these are written by superfan readers. They aren’t professionals, so they have no idea how to distribute content beyond posting their review on Amazon.

Reviewers can get more mileage from reviews by getting them reprinted in more venues than just online bookstores. Authors can do it for them, too.  And, no, it isn’t stealing or plagiarism if you get permission from the reviewer first. In fact, it can benefit the reviewer.

When you distribute reviews beyond their original placement, it’s like getting a little marketing bonus for your book. Here’s how authors can do that:

§       If your reviewer doesn’t normally write reviews (these reviewers are often called reader reviewers), suggest she send her review or the link to her review to her friends as a recommendation.

§  

     If your reader reviewer lives in a town with a small daily or weekly newspaper, suggest she send her review to one of the reporters or editors. She may realize the thrill of being published the first time.

§  

      Ask professional reviewers—the ones who review for journals—to post her review on Amazon.com, BN.com, and other online booksellers that have reader-review features. I have never had a reviewer decline my suggestion. It is ethical for a reviewer to do it or to give you permission to reuse the review as long as she holds the copyright for the review. (Most reviewers do not sign copyright-limiting agreements with the medium who hires them.) Get more information on Amazon’s often misrepresented review policies in Chapter Eleven of my new How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically under “Managing Your Amazon Reviews.” 

§       After you have permission from the reviewer to reprint the review—whether she is a pro or amateur--post it on your blog, on your Web site, and in your newsletter.

§  

     Once you have permission to use reviews, send copies of the best ones to bookstore buyers and event directors as part of your campaign to do book signings, to speak, or do workshops in their stores. Go to (midwestbookreview.com/links/bookstor.htm) for a starter list of bookstores.

§       Use quotations from the reviews to give credibility to selected media releases and queries.

§       Send quotations (blurbs) from the reviews you get to librarians, especially the ones in your home town or cities you plan to visit during book tours. Include order information. Try Midwest for a list of libraries (http://midwestbookreview.com/links/library.htm).

§       Use snippets from positive reviews as blurbs in everything from your stationery to your blog.

§  

      If your reviewer doesn’t respond to your request to post the review on Amazon, excerpt blurbs from them and post them on your Amazon buy page using Amazon’s Author Connect or Author Central features. They will appear on your Amazon sales page. Yes, that’s ethical, too!

§  

      Include the crème de la crème of your reviews on the Praise Page of your media kit and inside the front cover of the next edition (perhaps a mass market edition like the pocket paperbacks sold in grocery stores?). See my multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter (bit.ly/FrugalBookPromo) for the complete—and I do mean complete—lowdown on media kits.

      Hint: Occasionally authors get reviews on Amazon that, shall we say…don’t thrill them. Reviews like that can be minimized by asking others for reviews. As new reviews are added, the old ones tend to get buried in the lineup of reviews. We can also (pleasantly!) refute a position a reviewer takes using the comment feature—or thank them for bringing something to our attention. We can also dispute their validity with Amazon, though that rarely works.

You can use some of these suggestions as part of your keeping-in-communication-with-reviewers effort after her review has been published.

There is more on how Amazon can help authors early in their review-getting process. in my multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books, How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career. As long as it’s nearly impossible to do without Amazon and still have a successful book campaign, we might was well get them to return the loyalty we show them in as many ways as possible.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson brings her experience as a publicist, journalist, marketer, and retailer to the advice she gives in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers and the many classes she taught for nearly a decade as instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program. The books in her HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers have won multiple awards. That series includes both the first and second editions of The Frugal Book Promoter and The Frugal Editor won awards from USA Book News, Readers’ Views Literary Award, the marketing award from Next Generation Indie Books and others including the coveted Irwin award. Her next book in the HowToDoItFrugally series for writers will be How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.

The author loves to travel. She has visited eighty-nine countries and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom; Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia; and Charles University, Prague. She admits to carrying a pen and journal wherever she goes. Her Web site is www.howtodoitfrugally.com. 

MORE ON THE NEW BOOK REVIEW

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.

Jan Peregrine Reviews Puts American Class in Perspective

White Trash
Subtitle: The 400-Year, Untold History of Class In America

Author: Nancy Isenberg

Author's Web site: www.nancyisenberg.com

Genre: Non-fiction

ISBN: 878-0-670-78597-1

Available on Amazon

Reviewed by Jan Peregrine originally for her Books on Facebook

Jan Peregrine's Books on Facebook

4.5 stars

Odds are very good that if you're an American too, then we're both members of the white trash class that has existed infamously, and mostly invisibly, since British settlers and their dependents planted their boots (or ill-covered feet) on the shores of the New World. I just finished reading Nancy Isenberg's book White Trash: the 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg who lives in Virginia as well as Louisiana. It's opened my eyes in many ways.

First we must understand that England colonized America with her criminals, vagrants, orphans, and misfits she didn't want simply filling up space, being an economic drain on society. Such people were considered a nuisance and irredeemable, which made them perfect for shipping off to a mysterious, untamed land of 'savages' like America. Scores of them died on the way.

Some wealthy men also sailed to this waste land with the intention of dominating the land as they dominated the poor wretches who worked their fields and kept their homes. We naturally inherited the British class system, Isenberg argues, and the poor became useful to the rich as laborers and breeders whose progeny inherited their parents' lower-class status and roles in society. The vision for America was never about creating the American Dream for everybody, not 'the' land of opportunity where social mobility rewarded those who worked hard for it.

And American politicians have continued to propogate this myth and others, including how the poor are to blame for their inferiority because of 'black' blood or their vulgar temperament and immorality. They may label white trash with many different names, but they're always present, especially in the South.

Isenberg takes us from the earliest days in the 1500s through the Founding Fathers, President Andrew Jackson's 'common man' image, other southern presidents, Civil War, the Confederacy, Reconstruction, the push for eugenics or sterilizing poor, white women, the Great Depression, and all the way up to the present day. Trump was mentioned once, for certain. Isenberg states that many celebrities like him owe their success to their rich, well-connected parents.

I suspect she alluded to Trump when she observed that if we allow elections to become a three-ring circus, don't be surprised if the dancing bear wins.

Reading this huge book was very engrossing. I wish I could write pages about what I found insightful and even entertaining. It may be American history, but it didn't seem dry and boring to me. Indeed it was memorable in the way America was portrayed through the angry eyes of one who represents the interests of the waste people, the white trash, the ones called rednecks today.

White trash have reinvented themselves in recent decades, triggered probably by Tammy Faye Baker's rise to stardom as an unrepentant, white trash princess and Bill Clinton making rednecks or 'Bubba' more accepted in polite society.

Highly recommended for those who wish to understand the turbulent forces behind Trump's terrifying rise on the waves of the disenfranchised masses.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jan Peregrine was a Top Reviewer on epiinions.com for 14 years and now posts book reviews in Jan Peregrine's Books. They can be seen is on Facebook and  goodreads.com. Her novels are on Amazon  or Audible.

MORE ABOUT THE NEW BOOK REVIEW

The New Book Review is blogged by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. It is a free service offered to those who want to encourage the reading of books they love. That includes authors who want to share their favorite reviews, reviewers who'd like to see their reviews get more exposure, and readers who want to shout out praise of books they've read. Please see submission guidelines on the left of this page. Reviews and essays are indexed by genre, reviewer names, and review sites. Writers will find the search engine handy for gleaning the names of small publishers. Find other writer-related blogs at Sharing with Writers and The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.