Library Thing

I've been on Library Thing almost since its inception, but I confess to not keeping up with it as well as I would like. Here is a link to my library.

So today, in honor of my committment to 23 Things, I posted five new books and included reviews, which I pulled from my reviews in Library Journal. I found that LJ had posted my review of The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner. Sort of. It may have started out as my review, but several editors later it had been tweaked beyond my recognition, not to mention they ***starred*** the book.

Now, normally when they feel the review is strong enough to warrant a star, my editor will shoot me an email and say should we star this. Usually I'll say yes. Once, I remember, I said no - it was for The Big Bad Wolf by James Patterson. I liked the book, and thought it was one of his stronger books in a number of years, but it was very good for a James Patterson book, not very good (nor star worthy) as compared to other books in the genre. So they didn't star it.

But they starred the Gardiner book, which was good, but if they had asked - and I'm not sure why they didn't - I would have said no star. She's getting a lot of press because she's an American who's been living in London for a number of years, and has been writing and being published in England for quite a while. It took Stephen King writing about how fabulous she is in his Entertainment Weekly column to get her published here, not to mention the blurb from King on the cover, and all the ensuing publicity. It's a good book, but not any better than say the first novel from David Levien, which I also "highly recommended" but was never even asked if it should be starred. It's been my experience that first time authors rarely get starred reviews unless there is some sort of big buzz going on in the publishing community. There wasn't for Levien, but there was - and is - for Gardiner. And there you have it.