Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ―
In Chapter Fourteen of Joe’s Book Club I wrote about the pros and cons of self publishing the book you’ve always dreamed of writing. In that post I gave you a few ideas on the subject and today I have another: Blurb.com.
You can use Blurb to publish the Great American Novel but as a photographer I’ve always wanted to publish a coffee table book. Blurb lets you do that without suffering the multiple indignities of receiving enough rejection slips from publishers to wallpaper your bathroom. Blurb lets you create books in many different sizes. in hard cover with a dust jacket or softbound versions. After you’ve created a book and ordered at least one copy for yourself, you can make it available to the public (or not) and even add whatever mark-up you like to make some money on future sales.
There are some downsides to using Blurb. Here’s the good and bad news: The quality of the books Blurb produces is first class, the quality of printing and binding simply cannot be beat. The bad news part is that the process is not cheap. If you add any markup to the books, the price to the end user is not competitive with a commercially produced book. If you’re creating an art book, this may not be a concern. And don’t expect Amazon to distribute your books. People can only purchase them from Blurb. On the other hand I sold several copies of my book How I Photograph Motorsports by casually mentioning it in an automotive writers association’s newsletter. (Click the link and you’ll see what I mean about pricing.) I didn’t make enough money to buy a camera or lens but I was surprised at its modest success. If you want to make a photo book for yourself, have fun, give Blurb a try, Who knows, maybe somebody else might like it too. Heck, send me a copy (see details at bottom of the post) and I’ll review it here.
Book of the Week
The book of the week is The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. If you’re keeping score, this is the twenty-first mystery/thriller in their Pendergast series and its number eight in my “books I’ve read” for 2023. The Pendergast referred to is an FBI agent who is a combination of Amos Burke (TV’s Burke’s Law) and Peter Cushing’s portrayal pf Sherlock Holmes in Hammer Film’s Hound pf the Baskervilles. The closest books to this series are ‘s Charlie Parker mysteries that mesh the sensibilities of Robert B. Parker with Stephen King. You either get this genre or you don’t. If you like Charlie Parker, you’ll love Aloysius Pendergast.
I first encountered Douglas Preston with his book Tyrannosaur Canyon, a science based thriller, then I read Blasphemy about a super computer that may be communicating with God. (This book might offend some religious people.) In Lincoln Child/s blurb on the dust jacket, he suggested that Preston may be “going to hell” for writing it. Then I read The Lost City of the Monkey God, a non-fiction book about searching for ancient ruins in the Amazon jungle that almost cost the author his life. This is truly an amazing story and draws some parallels with another incredible non fiction book, The Lost City of Z by , which was made into an incredible movie of the same name. If you like true stories of explorers at the beginning of the 20th century going into the unexplored jungles of the Amazon, watch this movie/ This film is as beautiful and heartbreaking as any true story can be. As of this writing I have not read any of Lincoln Child’s books.
I have read many of the Pendergast books, not all 21, but this one is the best I’ve read and maybe the best mystery novel I’ve read in a long long time. It is truly a page turner. The title is a call back, of course to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a 1920 German silent horror film. Leng is a diabolical antagonist who occasionally pops up in Pendergast‘s female “ward” Constance’s back story.
Like the other books in this series, the two authors work seamlessly together on the intricate plot. And what a plot it is: The story revolves around three plot lines: The first concerns Pendergast‘s female “ward” who time travels back to 1800’s—yes, time travel—to right a wrong (no spoilers,) the second is about a murder on a North Dakota Indian reservation in the present day, and the third concerns a homicide at New York City’s Museum of Natural History —a call back to Preston & Child’s first Pendergast novel. All the subplots come crashing together in the middle of the book. Amazing, how the authors pulled this off. The book’s ending is….NO SPOILERS
I literally could not put this book down would pick it up whenever I had a spare ten minutes, I loved it and if this genre appeals to you, you will love it too.