A tiny speck of immortality

Earlier this year, at my local public library, I was looking for the novel “Ancillary Justice” by Ann Leckie. Unfortunately, they didn’t have it. But there on the “L” shelf I spotted “Country of Origin” by Don Lee. I remembered reviewing this book when it came out in 2005, so I picked it up and – hey! A tiny speck of immortality.

I’m sharing this to show that I have been reviewing books for a long time. Over the past 20 years, I’ve written and published about 300 reviews covering somewhere north of 320 books. And I’ve done numerous author interviews on top of that.

The reason for this self-hype is that I will give a presentation called “Anatomy of a Book Review” at the twelfth annual Japan Writers Conference in Otaru, Hokkaido, on Oct. 14. The conference is a free event that would be well worth paying for.

There will be nearly 40 presentations this year, covering an array of writing topics. You can read descriptions of them (listed alphabetically by presenters’ first names) here.

And you can find some of my more recent reviews, and many by my colleagues, at The Japan News’ Bound to Please page.