The Trials and Tribulations of an Amateur Book Reviewer

"This is a novel I'm pretty sure you'd enjoy," my friend Ranen wrote to me. "It's very well plotted, and has gentle humor, and great characterizations."

The book did appeal to me. Exit by Belinda Bauer (Atlantic Monthly Press, February 2, 2021) tells the story of "Felix Pink, an older man with a group that helps people who have chosen to die with dignity. But there’s been a mistake, and Felix’s life is about to change forever."

That brief statement appears at the top of Exit's Amazon page, but the book is only available (so far) in hardcover, at least on the US site where I normally download Kindle editions.

I decided to request a review copy.

I enjoy reading, but I also enjoy writing reviews of the books I enjoy reading. Mostly, I review novels with a connection to Israel or Bulgaria, especially books being published in English for the first time. I am an amateur book reviewer. My reviews appear on my blog at the Times of Israel and on my personal blog.

Over the years I have established a connection with several small publishers, and they send me announcements of books about to appear in print. But I get most of the books I read to review by proactively requesting them, usually by emails written to publicists and marketing departments. I saw that Exit was available on NetGalley so I put in a request to review it.

"If you are simply an avid reader, we are happy to allow you access to a title, but in return we ask two things," responded the publisher of Grove Atlantic. "First, that if you have a chance to read the book, you take the time to write a review." The second thing was signing up for the publisher's newsletter. My request for a review copy was approved.

I downloaded a protected PDF from NetGalley and sent it to my tablet.

The other night I opened my tablet, eager to start reading, only to discover that the formatting of the PDF was horrendous. I didn't mind that it was an uncorrected proof, but how can

you

read a 

book if the lines

break like this. And then

paragraphs have no spaces between them.

 

The next morning, I logged into NetGalley directly from my tablet (a time-consuming process because I didn't remember my NetGalley password).

NetGalley has its own reading app, I discovered, and that is the preferred method for reading their review copies. I went to Google Play to download the app to my tablet (a time-consuming process because I didn't remember that password). Eventually the download started and then the screen said "installed successfully". I looked through the apps on my tablet, but I couldn't find the NetGalley Reading Shelf app anywhere!

Maybe I should try downloading the app on my phone, I thought. I returned once again to the NetGalley site (by now I had written down the password). I followed the trail to Google Play and downloaded the NetGalley app, installed it, logged in, and opened Exit.

The formatting was just fine.

So, now I am reading Exit on my phone.

Jodie asked me, "How can you read a book on your phone?"

 The next day, while waiting for my appointment at the dentist, I opened my phone and continued reading Exit.

So far, I am thoroughly enjoying it!