Most book bloggers are surprised to find that publishers actually want to send them books for review. At first this is a novel idea and seems to reduce the book-buying budget – free books! But after a few months it begins to pall. You feel a sense of obligation to review books you didn’t really go out of your way to acquire, and worse, when you really dislike a book you’ve been sent for free you don’t enjoy writing bad things about it.
Then there’s the problem of disposal – I am not someone who like to collect books, other than a select few which seemed life-changing at the time – fortunately Britain has a vast network of charity shops who are happy to receive books, even those “uncorrected proofs”.
However, I seem to have reached a fairly happy equilibrium where most of the review requests I receive are broadly in line with my reading tastes. So, all I ask is that publishers wanting me to review their books first browse my site for a few minutes and get an idea of whether their book would be of interest to me.
Broadly, I like “literary fiction” (while despising the term!), history of the 20th century, literary biography, current affairs and serious travel writing. I am particularly interested in European fiction in translation (to English of course). And I like to support that brave band of independent publishers, some of whom are listed to the left of these paragraphs.
What I definitely don’t want is anything at all about vampires, ghosts, mysticism, astrology, ancient wisdom, secret societies that govern the earth etc, etc.
Like many book bloggers I don’t usually write reviews of books I don’t like, mainly because life is too short to even finish reading them. So, if I review your book, the chances are you’ll be pleased with the result. And I will also copy it to Amazon UK where my reviews appear with a little badge saying TOP 50 REVIEWER
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