Pirate Web Sites

There is a discussion on Facebook about a site that is offering people's books for download free. We're not talking about older books that have been around and probably run through the bulk of their sales. Authors are finding their books that have just been released on these sites. No one is posting the site, I don't blame them, and I won't either. YOU know if you've been downloading books for free though.

This reminds me of when they started offering downloaded music and people thought they were "clever" because they were getting music free. This isn't right, folks. I know some of us have limited funds and books, even some ebooks, can be expensive, but taking a person's work for free is just plain theft. It's the same thing as me finding out you're not home and forgot to lock your front door, so I go in and clean out your refrigerator because I can. It's the same as your neighbor finding a way to tap into your cable or whatever and getting internet, phone and TV services free while you pay the bill.

If you want to read books and your money is seriously limited, there are things you can do:

1. Ask your local library to order the books.

2. Many authors give away free books all of the time.

   Enter their drawings or whatever they're doing.

3. Borrow books from friends you know who buy them.

4. Many of the book publishers and different groups have

   ways of helping you get some books. Ask them.

5. Join one of the many online groups and see if there is

   someone there who will share with you or give you some

   books free. That doesn't get the author a sale, but

   someone paid for the book at one point.

Please don't take free books from any site "just because you can." Most of these authors don't make that much money to begin with. Don't drive them out of the business just so you can put something over on someone.

Besides, it's just not fair.

Double Exposure by Bridget Birdsall

Publisher:       Sky Pony Press

Double Exposure addresses an issue that is not often seen in novels, people who are intersex. Intersex people are those who are born with the gender characteristics of both male and female. This occurs more often than most people are aware because doctors and parents usually prefer to alter a baby to one sex soon after birth and then keep the situation secret. Bridget Birdsall has chosen as her character Alyx Atlas, a fifteen year old whose parents decided to wait for the procedure until their child was older.

Alyx spends the first fourteen years of his life defined as a boy, but life is not easy. He has just enough questionable characteristics to make other boys wonder about him and he is coming to identify himself as a female. After a vicious beating, Alyx’s mother moves him across country to be with her family and to start Alyx’s life over as a girl. Being a teenager is difficult enough, but Alyx’s life is almost unbearable. Her refuge from everything is basketball. She’s very good at that and uses it as the way to make a life for herself in a new high school and community. As the team moves higher in the standings and seems headed for a state title, Alyx begins to feel good about herself for the first time. Nothing stays secret forever though, especially when a jealous teammate begins digging into Alyx’s past. Learning to cope has a whole different meaning when it’s applied to her situation.

Birdsall’s book is an interesting look into what it feels like to be “different” in society. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have much depth. According to the author and the way the book is listed, it’s meant to be for young adults, but there isn’t anything here to help them if they happen to be intersex or to make a person more emphathetic towards people who are different. The book is a good look into girls’ basketball and how a team works. It also gives a view of what it is to be a child living in a family where everyone is just a little “different.” Alyx could be any teenager though. What she deals with at school and on the basketball team could apply to any teenager. The fact that she feels alienated from her family is certainly not unique. The problem with the book is, if you take away the fact that Alyx is intersex, then this is nothing more than a story about a teenager trying to come into her own sense of identity. Then Alyx spends too much time whining about her family and how everyone is unfair to her to be really sympathetic.

Perhaps Birdsall meant to show that intersex youth are no different than other people. In that case, the book is successful. If you are searching for a book that will help you or someone you know learn how to deal with being intersex, this one won’t help much.

Review by Lynne Pierce

Neither Present Time by Caren Werlinger

Publisher:       Corgyn Publishing

It gets to be boring to review Caren Werlinger’s books after a while. After it’s been said a few times that her writing is magnificent, engrossing, sophisticated and thought provoking, to say it again seems redundant. There is a danger that people might not believe the reviews anymore. So, here is a new word – consistently. Caren Werlinger’s books are consistently magnificent, engrossing, sophisticated and thought provoking.

Neither Present Time is the story of two women who are brought together by a book. Beryl Gray is a university librarian who finds a book with a personal inscription in it and is driven to find out more about the people involved. This leads her to Aggie Bishop and her great-aunt Cory. Beryl and Aggie share the characteristic of being caregivers. Beryl cares for practically everyone she knows and Aggie is trying to care for Aunt Cory. Since Aunt Cory doesn’t think she needs any help, even though her family is trying to institutionalize her and sell away the family home, Aggie’s one case practically equals all of Beryl’s. Neither Beryl nor Aggie has been able to sustain healthy relationships, but in learning Aunt Cory’s story, both women will learn a great deal about themselves. Looking into the past will cause them to examine the present with different eyes and will alter the lives of all three women.

Werlinger tells a good story, but what makes her book more appealing is the complexity of what she presents. There is romance in the book, but romance is in the story not THE story. There are messages and lessons to be learned while her characters do a complex dance weaving together the themes, including moving between different time periods. Werlenger’s talent is shown by the story being real, but not preachy; complex, but easily understood; and peopled by characters the reader probably knows.

Neither Present Time is like all of Werlinger’s books, a good read.

Tangled Roots by Marianne K. Martin

Publisher:                   Bywater Books

A good book has engaging characters and a plot that holds the reader’s interest. An outstanding book takes those attributes and adds a message, teaches a lesson or allows the reader to understand something that may not have been clear to that person before. An author rises to the top of a genre and gains the respect of the people who read those books by developing this ability. Marianne Martin has produced a string of award winning books because she spends her time writing carefully, researching the topic and going over the book to make sure it is in the best form possible before it is released. Martin also isn’t afraid to tackle difficult topics, which is abundantly clear in Tangled Roots, the prequel to her earlier work, Under the Witness Tree.

Tangled Roots is set in a period of US history that was almost as stressful as the civil war it followed.  Many of the characters remember that war and the period of adjustments that followed it. Those changes led to others that will sweep in the Progressive movement, a time when many people, especially women and African Americans, hoped that true justice and political equality would be achieved for everyone. Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching battled with the creation of the NAACP and the eloquence of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. The stifling concept of women as nothing but breeders and homemakers was confronted by the steely determination of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul for women to have greater opportunities. The conflict in the book comes between those who cannot accept the new ideas and those who yearn for them.

The story focuses on Addy Grayson, her granddaughter Anna and Anna’s best friend Nessie, a descendent of the slaves who once worked for the Graysons. Addy survived the Civil War, but questions whether she has the energy to deal with raising her granddaughters and confronting their bigoted father. She is rejuvenated when a younger woman introduces her to new ideas and she finds the ability to finally deal with an old secret. Anna and Nessie begin as two little girls who like to play with each other and share dreams. They don’t recognize the racial divide that both of their families keep throwing in their ways until they are older, but they share the frustration of being told that women can’t have the lives they hope to pursue. They are caught up in the stresses of their time, the expectations of both families and the growing awareness that their childhood love has turned into something much deeper and forbidden. Addy is the pillar they both lean on.

Tangled Roots is a compact novel. It’s hard to believe that Martin deals with so many complex issues in just over 200 pages. She’s able to do so because she chooses her words and her scenes carefully. This isn’t meant to be a history of the period, but a snippet, the events as seen through the eyes of her three main characters. Martin avoids the trap of wandering around addressing issues that were important to the time, but not to her story. Yet there is a richness in the scenes that comes off of the pages and leads the reader to have a beginning understanding of what this period and these women were about. This is the type of book that is not too heavy to bog down people in the many conflicts of the period, but that leads readers to other books and resources to find out what else happened during this time of drama and change, triumph and dreams deferred.

Marianne Martin has written a book that weaves a tapestry of history and romance with the lives of the characters. It will cause the reader to think, but not to feel that she’s been lectured to. Don’t let its size fool you. There is a lot to be absorbed here. An outstanding book has engaging characters, an interesting plot and leads its reader to greater knowledge. Tangled Roots certainly does all of that.

Miss-Match by Erica Lawson and A.C. Henley

Publisher:                   Affinity Press

Miss-Match reads like an experiment that did not work.  It has to be difficult enough to write a book with two authors, but especially unwieldy when one of them is dead and cannot be consulted.  The pace of this book is extremely uneven and, while it’s supposed to be funny, it often feels forced to achieve that.  The company didn’t do this book any favors either.  It’s poorly set up as far as the pages, spacing and so forth, then the editing notes were left in it in places.

Clancy Fitzgerald is twenty-nine, single and the matchmaker she’s been using has run through all of the men she has available.  The matchmaker decides to set Clancy up with a woman, without telling her.  She also doesn’t tell the other woman, Carmen Pratka, that Clancy isn’t expecting a woman.  Carmen immediately realizes that Clancy’s problem has been all along that she’s really a lesbian.  Someone just has to prove it to her and Carmen wants to do that.  What follows is a silly dance between Clancy and Carmen to create a relationship and that gets caught up in the intrigue of a religious group to try and buy up all of the gay and lesbian bars in town to put them out of business.

Erica Lawson is usually a much better author than this and her books are better produced.  Perhaps it was trying to finish someone else’s story that created the problem.  At any rate, leave this one on the shelf and try a different book.

Giraffe People by Jill Malone

Publisher:       Bywater Books

Jill Malone is an award winning author for her previous books, but Giraffe People is probably more readable by the general public.  This is likely to due to the fact that it’s a coming of age story, something that most people can relate to.

Cole Peters is fifteen years old; a difficult age for anyone, but especially the child of a military chaplain.  Cole is trying to figure out who she is, what she wants and where she fits in the general scheme of the universe while dealing with the shifting impermanence of military life.  As she says in the book, “We never get to keep anything.  Never.  Temporary quarters, and temporary friends, and temporary school…”  It’s no wonder that Cole boomerangs all over the place in her emotions and perceptions.  She seems happy playing soccer and dating her boyfriend; then she seems willing to give them up for the rebellious life of a rock and roll band.  Is her admiration for Meghan, an older girl who is preparing for West Point, simply the normal hero worship for a role model or the budding of early lesbian interests?  Cole describes herself and her family by saying, “Nigel and Nate and I have the exact body of our dad: stooped, long-legged, with a narrow chest and flat feet.  We’re like giraffe people.”  Maybe what she’s saying is that it’s very difficult to be normal and different at the same time.

The reader can feel sympathetic towards Cole on a number of issues, mainly because she has so many issues to deal with – teenage, the military lifestyle, a girl in athletics, indefinite sexuality, and her father is a chaplain, bringing in the religious aspect.  What’s left for the poor kid not to have to deal with?  The most interesting one turns out to be the impact on the life of a military child.  This is an area most people never consider, but the constant shifting of areas and the inconstancy of friends and schools is destabilizing more than anything.  It provokes a question of whether or not families with children should be in the military or if they should be stationed in one place for longer periods of time.

Giraffe People is the least esoteric of Malone’s books, but perhaps her most thought provoking because it deals with issues almost anyone can relate to.  The reader can identify with struggles that have been experienced.  It might not be a good idea to give the book to an actual teenager however since it might upset more than help them.