Category: Self-Publishing Book Review of the Week

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review by Midwest Book Review:

TaNellie

Richmond Lafayette Holton

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781478714354

Reviewed by Michel Violante

“TaNellie” by Richmond Lafayette Holton takes place at the end of the Depression in Cleveland, Ohio. TaNellie is a well-educated, polite and sophisticated black pimp, and all his working girls are white. He protected and treated all of his girls well, didn’t abuse them, let them keep their tips and didn’t even force them to stay with him, but he also set some important rules. TaNellie builds a relationship with everyone in Cleveland’s under world thanks to his charm and good heart.

The reader is then taken into the past to learn about how TaNellie got to be born in Cleveland. It is here that the author creates an unbelievable plot by people connecting with each other through the twists and turns of life.

Holton’s story is like nothing I have read before. He presents a well written storyline filled with unexpected and thought provoking twists in this complex piece. The characters are well developed, colorful, and interesting. Cleveland set in the late 30’s and 40’s gave the story the perfect canvas. Although Holton takes the reader back in time more than once, the plot flowed perfectly throughout.

I must admit that when I picked up this book I thought I was going to read another typical mob story. I was wrong; instead I found a complex, colorful, thought provoking, and well written novel that entertained me and surprised me from the beginning to the end. Holton also presented the reader with a refreshing view of an era in American history that is usually presented through a clichéd lens. The crafting of the book was also of great quality: well written, professionally edited, a pleasure to read.
I truly enjoyed “TaNellie” by Richmond Lafayette Holton and recommend it to anyone who likes different depictions of topics that have been overdone by Hollywood. “TaNellie” was definitely a great read and a novel with a twist!

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review by Midwest Book Review:

Twenty-Eight Snow Angels

Diane Dettmann

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781432777043

When hit with loss, it can be so hard to simply continue living. “Twenty-Eight Snow Angels” is a memoir of loss from Diane Dettman as she tells her own story of being hit with the worst life can throw at her, losing love, and finding worth once more. Dedicated and uplifting, Dettmann hopes others will take her inspiration to find their own way through life. “Twenty-Eight Snow Angels” is written with much care and dedication, highly recommended.

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review by Midwest Book Review:

Direction Memo

Paul M. Caspersen

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781432780722

Estate planning is a vitally necessary process to insure that property, wealth, and possessions are distributed in accordance with your instructions when you are no longer here to express or enforce them. Drawing upon his many years of experience and expertise as an estate planner, Paul M. Caspersen has published “Direction Memo: How to Write a Letter of Instructions for Your Estate Plan”, a 284-page compendium of superbly organized and presented information and instruction on creating an effect plan for the disposal of any estate of any size or cumulative value. Thoroughly ‘user friendly’, “Direction Memo” covers every aspect of estate planning from life insurance, to jewelry, to retirement plans or nursing home care for surviving spouses. It should be of special note that one of the primary values of sound estate planning is to lift the burden from family members of having to deal with these issues on top of the grief arising from the loss of a loved one. “Direction Memo” is strongly recommended for both personal and community library reference collections.

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review by Midwest Book Review:

Along the Chisholm Trail and Other Poems

George RhoadesHowlett

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781432784997

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson

George Rhoades’ “Along the Chisholm Trail and Other Poems” is a rather interesting collection of poems, divided into two very distinctive and extremely different parts.

Part One deals with the cowboy life, and life along the Chisholm Trail. The author’s voice here is very distinctive, and the poems encompass all facets of such life, which is definitely epic. As the author put it so well himself:

“No wonder the cowboys rode
Into the hearts and imagination
Of the world, and shaped forever
The endurin’ character of this nation.”

The range of emotions expressed in the poems in Part One is very wide, and the author dealt with the subjects with a lot of dignity and respect. It would have been quite easy to depict cowboys as somewhat cartoonish, but that did not happen even in the most light-hearted of the poems in this collection. While this way of life is not familiar to me in the slightest, I greatly enjoyed reading about it.

Part Two is less homogenous, and much more contemporary, and deals with all kinds of ruminations on life, many of which are truly thought provoking. Some are sad, some are wistful, some downright hilarious, and of all of them my favorite happened to be one of the shortest poems in this book. “At Wal-Mart” has barely thirty-something words, yet it perfectly captures so much of what one sees there. While I laughed out loud at first after reading it, I felt compelled to re-read it later, and discovered that it was actually quite serious.

George Rhoades’ “Along the Chisholm Trail and Other Poems” was quite a departure from what I usually read, but I am glad I took the time to read it. It opened my eyes to a world that was completely new to me, and also reminded me of many everyday things to cherish and remember.

Book reviews are a great way for self-publishing authors to gain exposure. After all, how can someone buy your book if he or she doesn’t know it exists? Paired with other elements of your book promotion strategy, requesting reviews is a great way to get people talking about what you’ve written.

When we read good reviews, we definitely like to share them. It gives the author a few (permanent) moments of fame and allows us to let the community know about a great book. Here’s this week’s book review by Midwest Book Review:

Carbavoid

Cindy Fleck Howlett

Publisher: Outskirts Press

ISBN: 9781432769017

A body is a finely tuned machine, and it takes fuel to keep it running well. “Carbavoid: The Fuel for the Future” is a health guide for optimizing one’s diet with good wisdom on how to deal with a diet well and how to use one’s diet with efficiency. With a focus on preventing diabetes and when it’s appropriate to be paranoid of sugar and fat, “Carbavoid” is a sage and much recommended read for those pursuing greater health.