Readers make writers

A recent addition to our web posts is Russell Blake.

Cover design, quality of self published books and how to encourage children to read have been recent posts

http://russellblake.com/a-thought-on-literacy/

Worth a read

Allrighters

Reading progress ...

Kiss me First completed. First 75% hard going but sufficient hooks to get me to the end. Liked the ideas in the plot and last 25% went by pretty quickly. Too long. Three Amazon stars.

The Gift of Rain. Started and Completed in three days. First part a little slow. If I had not read his second book first I may have given up. Very different than Garden of Evening Mists, despite a comment saying the contrary on Amazon. A tough book to read given background of lead up to and occupation of Malaya by the Japanese. Marshal Arts background with all the spiritual thinking interesting. Four Amazon stars.

Preceded by Sir Harold Atcherley - Prisoner of Japan and Ronald Searle's book of drawings and brief commentary. Both pretty grim reading. Reinforced my thinking and preference for non fiction over fiction war books. Two books for lifetime bookshelf.

Started - A small death in Lisbon ... The WW2 time frame writing is more evocative than the 19xx  We read on ...

Reading Gary Smailes draft book about writing on Bubblecow. Refers to Interesting Goodread's post about only 38% of people reading to the end of books.

Allrighters

January and February 2014 Reading

Our current Reading Box in 2014 is quite full.  

Reading of books in italics has been completed in 2014.

  The idea behind this post is to spark off possible reading choices of F Fiction or NF Non Fiction books by you the reader in a similar way to books we have found on other's web sites.

  Benchmarks for the History Books have been listed to private a reference point for readers of this post and what opposition new books being read have to contend with before being placed on our books to keep bookshelves .

  1.0  Modern History

 Recent and old benchmarks:- 

  F - Books read in 2012 and 2013

 The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, Never Forget by Angela Petch, The Garden of the Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng. A Half a Forgotten Song by Katherine Webb, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink - a translation, Winter by Len Deighton and The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

NF - A sample of the many books we have as non-fiction good reads.  

Nab End and Beyond by William Woodruff, Evidence in Camera by Constance Babbington Smith, Defeat into Victory by William Slim, War Diaries 1939 to 1945 by Alan Brooke, Wild Swans by Jung Chang and Under Fire Oliver North. These for a start to set a high bar.

Current Reading

 •NF The Sky Wept Fire: My Life as a Chechen Freedom Fighter by Mikail Eldin. Carry over from 2013. Reading this to gain a better understanding of events and wars in Chechnya. Reading on …

 •NF A History of the World - by Andrew Marr. Writing a history of the world is a ridiculous thing to do ... How about that for an opening line! A present. – Like the captions … Picture of Hitler – ‘He told the world just what he intended to do: the world refused to  believe him.’ Also in category 2.0 below Reading on …

 •F The Yellow Birds. Kevin Powers – Read like an autobiography. On completion not sure about the book. We think it may become memorable. The difficulties and horrors of carrying out a war in close contact with civilians or fighters posing as civilians. Completed.

 •NF The Railwayman - by Eric Lomax. We have had this book for a long time unread but read as film released before we saw the film. Completed. May be added to our benchmarks. Very interesting and educational book leading us to order Sir Richard Atcherley Prisoner of Japan and Ronald Searle's book of sketches as Patti looked at during the film.

 •NF John Betjeman On Trains – Jonathan Glancy. Not a fan of the latter but enough of Betjeman to make it very readable.

 •F The Gift of Rain – by Tan Twan Eng – Yet to start. High hopes given The Garden of the Evening Mists.

 2.0 Pre 1900 History

   F Benchmarks

• F Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett, Robert Harris Pompeii and his series about Cicero – a tutorial in politics.

 F Current Reading

•F The Last Kingdom (The Warrior Chronicles, Book 1) by Bernard Cornwell. – Started, but not carrying us away reading on …

 •F Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon – Started, but not carrying us away reading on …

 3.0 Other

 •F Assassin - by Tom Cain. Read book in 24 hours did little for us.

 •F The Abomination (The Carnivia Trilogy) by Jonathan Holt. Read book in 24 hours did little for us.

 •F Kiss me First by Lottie Maggoch – Not the easiest of reads but we are hooked into finding out how the book ends.

 •F Life after Life – Kate Atkinson – Purchased yesterday. Comes highly recommended, but so have many other books we have not liked.

 •F A small Death In Lisbon– Robert Wilson – Yet to make other than a token start … recommended with Winter by Len Deighton

 4.0 Books being read to help Allrighters’ Writing – We Hope!

 •F - A Little, Aloud: An anthology of prose and poetry for reading aloud to someone you care for by Angela Macmillan – A real gem.

 •F - A Little, Aloud, for Children - by Michael Morpurgo – Another real gem.

 •F - This Isn't The Sort Of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You - by Jon McGregor. Short stories on the strange side but he has us hooked! Been reading this on and off for months.

 •F - Zoo Time- by Howard Jacobson. Densely written but to us very funny. Hard to read more than a few pages at a time.

 •NF - Sieze the Day Shirley Billing – Carried over from 2013. This will help us in the completion of a non fiction book about our Ocean Sailing.

 •NF - Writers' & Artists' Guide to How to Write – Harry Bingham. As some say it is as good as Stephen King’s On Writing we will persevere. John Braine’s book Writing a Novel is another of our benchmarks.

 •NF –Self Editing for Fiction Writers 1993 – Renni Browne and Dave King. Came highly recommended. Booked has been highlighted by a previous reader. Looks promising as we are reading about areas Iwe have already been pulled up on.

Somehow we also need to find time to write and self edit!

Good reading. Please provide recommendations of further reading as comments.

The Allrighters'

awriterofhistory post

My thanks to Mary Tod for publishing a post from the Allrighters

http://awriterofhistory.com/2014/02/04/a-reader-of-history-douglas-burcham/

Douglas

Our Reviews on Amazon

While adding the Allrighters' best books of the year details to the list of the 140 plus reviews we have made since this time last year we realise why our overall rating at one time up under 30,000 has dropped to over 4,000,000. The Amazon system derives a rating from people looking at each of your reviews and then either liking it or not. Some readers of our reviews appear not to like what we have said about some of the books particularly Daffodils, Bring up the Bodies and Harry Bingham's book on writing.  Statistically I think there is a bit of a problem as only 32 or 25% of the number of reviews have registered comments. Also the adverse comments are those where we have made low star ratings so people are expressing a view that the book is better in their eyes than in our view. This seems to cross check against our belief that the Amazon system is weighted towards better rather than less highly rated books where people either do not read them in the first place or remain silent.

We have re-read the reviews which have been disliked and find no reason to change what has been stated. They are personal views anyway and the great thing about books is that not everyone likes or dislikes particular books. Life would be dull is they did.

Three people who commented have made some useful points about the reviews and these have resulted in additions or further comments which we were happy to give.

Books in the 24 hour read category have rarely raised interest and ratings above three stars. Perhaps we have become as bored with these books as we did when we stopped reading them in the 1990s and turned to factual books for more depth.

We will continue to review undaunted.

The Allrighters'

The Railwayman by Eric Lomax

The Allrighters are likely to read another 60 books or so in 2014. Reviews of all these books will be posted on Amazon.uk under the Alexander Kreator from Norfolk name. 

Where a book is given a five star rating it will be given a review on this blog as well.

The Railwayman by Eric Lomax - First published in 1995

Cover 3.0. I had the pre-film book cover. I would have included a larger picture of an actual engine used on the line.

I had been recommended to read this book and had this copy in my reading pile for over a year. The film release caused me to start reading the book.

I knew the ingredients would not be very pleasant and might prove to be harrowing. The actual book is to me very well written and gripped me as a reader through to the end. The description of the necessary ingredients to become a steam engine fanatic are a delight. Ditto the details of his background in radio. Both these factors caused him problems when captured by the Japanese. I knew something of the WW2 railway of death from a relation of my sister in law who survived who to me in my innocence always seemed withdrawn and unwell when I met him. Poor man I now know the likely reason why.

Eric Lomax as the main person in the book describes his life succinctly leaving enough for one’s imagination to go much further. His descriptions of his treatment and the conditions in the camps, hospitals and prisons painted a grim picture. No wonder he then suffered all his life when he returned home nearly a completely broken man physically and worse mentally only to face other tragedies. The book could have been written much more deeply and as a result it would have been much longer and maybe had less impact. Its relative shortness to me was a bonus.

If the book had been fiction I would not have accepted the facts and emotions of the ending as at all probable. The ending in the spirit of forgiveness gives one hope for the future.

The flow and speed of the book were well in line with Allrighters’ ideal expectations.

There were a few surprises including at least some apparently normal activity by the Japanese.  Eric Lomax must have been a very strong personality.

I am happier reading non fiction war books than fiction war books and this read was no exception. One cannot say one enjoys a book describing the horrors of war but from an interest and educational standpoint the book will remain in my mind and may well prove to be the best or one of the best reads of 2014.

I may read the book again after seeing the film.

A five star rating is consistent with other books I have rated at this level.

Alexander

Our reading and book reviews.

Following on from Stephen King’s advice to us as new writers to read as much and as widely as possible we have since we started writing in 2010, read more than ten times as much as we have written. We have also submitted reviews to Amazon under the Alexander Kreator of Norfolk name. We think reading is as essential a component of authorship as the act of creative writing. Similar to a marriage of husband and wife working together to produce books, like children, with a background of co-operation, differences and disagreements.

Our reviews have helped consideration of each book both after starting and on completion. Some authors have taken exception to our initial reviews being given soon after the books have been started. As potential readers can now see and read starting chapters on Kindle and even in hard copy we believe the importance of getting a good reader attracting start to a book cannot be stressed too much. Most of our initial star ratings on Amazon tend to start low and then improve.

Our 2013 fiction book reviews have been based on the following factors.

1. Cover design rating out of 5.0. After studying cover design ever since we started writing in 2010 and being interested in the subject for life beforehand we have reached a view of what the Allrighters’ book covers will be. The essentials of a house style being as Ywnwab! with a double colour banding, a photo or picture spanning the whole front spine and back cover, title plus Allrighters text on front cover and on front and back covers text extracts from the book. We believe covers which give no clue as to the story or are not unusual often undersell a hard working writer’s efforts. To us your book must be stand out on Waterstones front table from the pretty cover norms.
2. Ingredients and volume and whether well mixed and then well cooked. We have read several books with excellent ingredients let down by poor mixing and cooking. Many books we read have been far too long.
3. Characters. We have probably been a little soft in this area and will harden up in 2014. In discussions with other readers and writers many have put reading about interesting characters at the top of their criteria for judging a book.
4. Flow and speed. The Allrighters’ have a preference for books which flow well and at a reasonable rate of knots. Why books flow well is still being examined and we think this represents one of the keys to improving our own writing.
5. Grip on the reader. Some writers grab hold of their readers and get them turning the pages. Finding these secret keys is crucial to improving our own writing.
6. Surprises. A few of these create memorable books.
7. Depth of reading from 24 hour, cannot put down easy reads, to the other extreme of books which are written so densely a page or a few pages a day are all that can be absorbed. We like both and those in between.
8. Ending. We do like a satisfactory and realistic ending to the books we read. The cop out of they all lived happily ever after scores nil! We have in mind writing more alternative endings ourselves to many books we have read. This has been great fun so far. Copyright issues to be considered on any publication.
9. Interest, education, enjoyment and above all memories of the whole, part or particular scenes in books we have read. Many books read years ago still drift back in the memory. (Await details in a future post about lifetime good reads and why.)
10. Would we read again? Along with memories another acid test. For two main reasons. The book is worth reading again to repeat the good experience or enjoyment or we often believe the content has more to reveal knowing the end.

The Allrighters. 

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