The following excerpts are from an article written in 2008 by Alan Caruba, a charter member of the National Book Critics Circle:
I have been reviewing books since the 1960s and am a founding member of the National Book Critics Circle. For years I have also been a judge for the Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards.
There are too many books being published.
I know that may sound like apostasy, but you don’t get an average of 150 books a month. I do ....
Then there are the novels. I am convinced that the current generation of retirees, tired of playing golf or some other pastime, have decided to sit down at their computer and write that great novel they have had running around in their head for years. And it’s not just retirees. It’s everyone who can belly up to the keyboard.
There is no way to describe the volume of novels being published these days. I received one today by an author who has written “over sixty thriller and supernatural novels.” It defies logic that anyone could produce anything of merit in that quantity. Even the best American novelists such as Steinbeck and Hemingway ran out of ideas and energy, writing some stinkers to pay the rent.
Every month, over at Bookviews.com, I post a report about new books. It averages about 70 titles, fiction and non-fiction. That’s nearly 850 books a year and I guarantee you they are the best of the lot of the approximately 1,800 I receive.
I recommend you visit. It will astound you.
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/...oo_Many_Books/
All of which make me feel very special, because this is what he wrote in part about, Falling Star:
It is rare when a novelist makes his debut with as powerful a novel as Philip Chen’s Falling Star ($15.25, available from Amazon.com, softcover and on Kindle). It begins in 1967 and concludes in the Oval Office in 1993. In between Chen introduces you to an array of characters, all of whom have unique talents, ....
This novel stands out for the way you are introduced not just to the characters, but the physical reality in which they live, the sights and even the smells. Slowly and then with increasing intensity, the mysteries are unraveled, the enemies identified, as life and death often hangs in the balance .... Chen brings an authenticity to the novel that provides a heart-pounding reality that forces you to ask “What if?” If you read just one novel in 2011, make it Falling Star.
http://bookviewsbyalancaruba.blogspot.com/