Author: Tiffani Burnett-Velez
Publication Date: April 3 2015
Publisher: Booktrope
Book Links: Goodreads || Amazon || B&N
Syrian-American, Lydia Fadoul, has spent a year waiting for her fiancé to return from war in Iraq, only to discover that he is broken by trauma and the devastating effects of PTSD.
Just when he finally agrees to seek help, he takes his own life and leaves behind a story of murder, betrayal, and mystery.
In her second, contemporary fiction novel since Budapest, Tiffani Burnett-Velez weaves a fast-paced literary tale about the rumors we believe and the prejudices we create in order to protect our hearts from the truth.
Top Ten Bookish Pet Peeves
By Tiffani Burnett-Velez
I love books – reading them, writing them, and talking about them. But there are some things about all three of those items that irritate me. Here they are in no particular order.
-
Poor Battery Life on My Ereader: I love ebooks and ereaders. I especially love my Nook tablet, but I hate the short battery life, and I know this is a Kindle issue as well. It starts warning me, after about an hour of reading, that I need to find a place to plug in or the story will be lost to the wind. This is particularly irritating when I am outdoors, a place I love to read.
-
Books that everyone reads just because the Today Show tells them to. I’ve done this a couple of times, and it’s always disappointing.
-
Books that try to be more important than they are. Look, I love that some books teach me about a culture or give me insight into a particular situation that I will never experience in real life, but nothing will make me slam a book shut faster than when I feel lectured. I want the character and plot to talk to me, not the professor who wrote the book.
-
Expensive ebooks. Hey publishers, I’m a writer who’s had a couple of successful ebooks, and I like royalties as much as the next guy. But I know, for a fact, that ebooks cost you next to nothing to produce, and readers are your bread and butter. So , no ebook should be over $5. I realize that’s a controversial opinion with some writers, but I’m all for affordable reading. If libraries can lend for free, ebooks can be significantly cheaper than hardcopy books, and the entire publishing industry will not come crashing to the ground.
-
Cliché’d writing. I hate it when a great plot gets stifled by American idioms and clichés. I want to hear the writer’s unique version of things, not the masses’.
-
Proselytizing in literature. Hate this completely. I want to see your religion, not be converted to it.
-
When readers are snobs and intimidate those who have trouble reading in a traditional way. Writing is my day job now, but tutoring has been for years as well, and I have worked a lot with of kids with special needs, and some of them have been intimidated away from reading, because they haven’t been allowed to hear the story in a different way. Listening to an audiobook is reading, and book snobs should embrace this for the good of readers everywhere.
-
When people judge genre fiction as not being “real literature”. Judge the book based on its merits, not the genre it’s been placed in.
-
When nonfiction books repeat the same topic just to fill space.
-
Fifty Shades of Grey. Sorry. Hate it. It’s a huge pet peeve that it even got published, and not because of the erotica, but because of the terrible writing.
Poor Battery Life on My Ereader: I love ebooks and ereaders. I especially love my Nook tablet, but I hate the short battery life, and I know this is a Kindle issue as well. It starts warning me, after about an hour of reading, that I need to find a place to plug in or the story will be lost to the wind. This is particularly irritating when I am outdoors, a place I love to read.
Books that everyone reads just because the Today Show tells them to. I’ve done this a couple of times, and it’s always disappointing.
Books that try to be more important than they are. Look, I love that some books teach me about a culture or give me insight into a particular situation that I will never experience in real life, but nothing will make me slam a book shut faster than when I feel lectured. I want the character and plot to talk to me, not the professor who wrote the book.
Expensive ebooks. Hey publishers, I’m a writer who’s had a couple of successful ebooks, and I like royalties as much as the next guy. But I know, for a fact, that ebooks cost you next to nothing to produce, and readers are your bread and butter. So , no ebook should be over $5. I realize that’s a controversial opinion with some writers, but I’m all for affordable reading. If libraries can lend for free, ebooks can be significantly cheaper than hardcopy books, and the entire publishing industry will not come crashing to the ground.
Cliché’d writing. I hate it when a great plot gets stifled by American idioms and clichés. I want to hear the writer’s unique version of things, not the masses’.
Proselytizing in literature. Hate this completely. I want to see your religion, not be converted to it.
When readers are snobs and intimidate those who have trouble reading in a traditional way. Writing is my day job now, but tutoring has been for years as well, and I have worked a lot with of kids with special needs, and some of them have been intimidated away from reading, because they haven’t been allowed to hear the story in a different way. Listening to an audiobook is reading, and book snobs should embrace this for the good of readers everywhere.
When people judge genre fiction as not being “real literature”. Judge the book based on its merits, not the genre it’s been placed in.
When nonfiction books repeat the same topic just to fill space.
Fifty Shades of Grey. Sorry. Hate it. It’s a huge pet peeve that it even got published, and not because of the erotica, but because of the terrible writing.
Author Bio
Her second contemporary novel, All This Time, will be released by Booktrope in 2015, and the second, A Berlin Story, in her bestselling WWII novella series, Embers of War, is an Amazon Historical German Fiction Bestseller.
She has studied English Literature at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania and holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Ashford University. She is currently completing her MFA in Creative Writing.
Author Links
Website || Twitter || Goodreads
This tour was organized by Good Tales Book Tours.
COMMENTS