{"id":1619,"date":"2011-12-27T11:24:24","date_gmt":"2011-12-27T18:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/?p=1619"},"modified":"2011-12-27T11:24:55","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T18:24:55","slug":"harriet-klausner-for-the-love-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/2011\/12\/27\/1619\/","title":{"rendered":"Harriet Klausner: For the Love of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h3>\n

By A.J. Llewellyn<\/p>\n

\n
As a writer I am an avid reader but I confess most of the stuff I read is non-fiction, or if it is fiction, it tends to be material related to things I adore, such as Hawaii. I have devoured a wealth of material this year but what I have found more entertaining than the books themselves are some of the Amazon reviews.<\/div>\n
I rarely look at Goodreads as a research option. It is not a very good source of upcoming titles unless the author puts them up themselves. Sometimes clicking one book leads you to another, a fact I love, but for sheer volume of reference material, Amazon is the best. I also like ABE books but that’s another story…<\/div>\n
I have books on my TBB pile and eagerly await their releases both in ebook and paperback format. I tend to roam Amazon for information rather than actual purchases and time and again I run into one reviewer, Harriet Klausner whose name pops up as the #1 Hall of Fame Reviewer.<\/div>\n
How in the heck does she read and review so many books? Does she have unlimited time and funds? Does she get more hours in a day than the rest of us? Does she have no life outside of reviewing?<\/div>\n
Of course, I had to delve a little deeper (I do adore research) and she was once an acquisitions librarian in Pennsylvania. She says in her Amazon bio that she is a speed reader and reads two books a day. It still doesn’t explain the plethora of reviews she posts daily but good for her that she has found a niche and works it.<\/div>\n
I don’t see how she can read two books a day and post so many reviews. She must be reading more. Further research (Google her) shows that Wikipedia posing the questions everyone asks. They also point to a Time magazine article about her where she says she reads 4 to 5 books a day which is a staggering output.<\/div>\n
From forum posts and blogs about this fascinating lady. many question her actual reading of all the books she reviews. Almost all have glowing 4 or 5 star reviews.<\/div>\n
It captivated me…and I was determined to learn more. I checked on a few reviews she did of books I read and loved…and some not so much.<\/div>\n
None of her reviews have much detail. They skim the surface and sometimes skip over real issues addressed in the pages of the books she covers.<\/div>\n
For instance, she reviewed one book I seriously detested (and won’t name here) but she gave it five stars and the kind of gushing prose I’ve come to expect from her. I was offended by the book playing fast and loose with Hawaiian history and Princess Kaiulani in particular, but then since Klausner – who seems to love Hawaii as much as I do – glosses over the details of everything she reads, she must have missed some pertinent facts.<\/div>\n
I have a friend who teaches speed reading and he tells me that a good speed reader ingests 60 to 70% 0f material they read and, he explained, the read down the center of the page, their brain ‘filing in facts’ from left to right. I am over-simplifying what he told me, but it explains why Harriet’s reviews seem so…threadbare.<\/div>\n
Whether she is retaining everything she reads or not, or even merely glancing at the books she critiques, I have to say I am glad that readers and writers have someone like Harriet.<\/div>\n
A reader who writes, reviews and thinks about books…for the love of books<\/em>.<\/div>\n
In this sad year in which more and more book stores are closing and radio DJs are griping about the wasteful expense of keeping libraries open, I wish there were more people like Harriet spreading their love of books – and not giving one star reviews on books authors haven’t yet even written (Hello, Goodreads!!!).<\/div>\n
I wish her a year of good books in 2012 and for all of us the exact same thing.<\/div>\n
Aloha oe,<\/div>\n
A.J.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By A.J. Llewellyn As a writer I am an avid reader but I confess most of the stuff I read is non-fiction, or if it is fiction, it tends to be material related to things I adore, such as Hawaii. I have devoured a wealth of material this year but what I have found more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8,1,3],"tags":[210,209,208],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category-writing-and-poetry","category-celebrities","category-latestnews","category-life","tag-a-j-llewellyn-amazon-reviews","tag-books","tag-harriet-klausner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1621,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajllewellyn.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}