Blog Tour: Zinsky the Obscure

• Paperback: 358 pages • Publisher: Fomite (April 15, 2013)

Thirty-year-old Manhattan bachelor Ariel Zinsky is still recovering from his abusive childhood when he realizes no one — including his few living relatives — is truly interested in his narrative. While they numb themselves with the latest celebrity rehab story or the third-world atrocities replayed without ceasing on cable news, he sets out to write his autobiography as an exercise in his own self-medication, recasting himself as the hero in a coming-of-age story. Fans of A Confederacy of Dunces and The Perks of Being a Wallflower will relate to this tale of overcoming your childhood’s traumas, and the world’s indifference to them.
Warning: this book contains graphic sexual content and violence; it may not be suitable for all readers.


Zinsky the Obscure was chosen by Radio Boston as one of their Good Reads for the Summer!

Ilan Mochari’s novel, Zinsky the Obscure (Fomite Press), has earned rave reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist. Ilan’s short stories have appeared in Keyhole, Stymie and Ruthie’s Club. He is a contributor to Cognoscenti, the online magazine for Boston’s NPR News Station. He has a B.A. in English from Yale University. He used it to wait tables for nine years in the Boston area.
Find out more about Ilan and Zinksy the Obscure at zinskytheobscure.com. You can read a review of Zinsky the Obscure in DigBoston, as well as an interview with the author. Check out the radio interview as well.

My Thoughts:

This is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. I'm not even sure I liked Ariel Zinsky, but I liked this book. It's honest, dark, and at times so very touching. I could not put the book down. The characters and the story were very nicely crafted. Ariel Zinsky is a very lonely man. He's got tons of baggage from his childhood, which shadows his happiness later in life. His emotional growth has been stunted. He knows what he wants, yet he is unable to accomplish his goals simply because he does not know how. I found him very complex and very sympathetic, yet at the same time I also was disgusted and disappointed at his lack of awareness.


Zinsky is a character that will not be easily forgotten, and Mochari is a writer I will keep an eye on!

Blog Tour: Sight Reading

Hardcover: 352 pages 

• Publisher: Harper (May 21, 2013)

 The critically acclaimed author of Russian Winter turns her “sure and suspenseful artistry” (Boston Globe) to the lives of three colleagues and lovers in the world of classical music. On a Boston street one warm spring day, Hazel and Remy spot each other for the first time in years. Although their brief meeting may seem insignificant, behind them lie two decades in which their life paths have crisscrossed, diverged, and ultimately interlaced. Remy, a gifted violinist, is married to the composer Nicholas Elko—once the love of Hazel’s life. It has been twenty years since Remy, an ambitious conservatory student; Nicholas, a wunderkind launching an international career; and his wife, the beautiful and fragile Hazel, first came together, tipping their collective world on its axis. As their story unfolds from 1987 to 2007, from Europe to America, from conservatory life to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, each discovers the surprising ways in which the quest to create something real and true—be it a work of art or one’s own life—can lead to the most personal of revelations. Lyrical and evocative, Sight Reading explores the role of art and beauty in everyday life, while unspooling a transporting story of marriage, family, and the secrets we keep, even from ourselves.

Daphne Kalotay is the author of the novel Russian Winter, which won the Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Award and has been published in twenty languages, and the fiction collection Calamity and Other Stories, which was short-listed for the Story Prize. A MacDowell fellow, Daphne holds a PhD in modern and contemporary literature and an MA in creative writing, both from Boston University, and has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She has taught literature and creative writing at Boston University, Skidmore College, Middlebury College, and Grub Street. Co-president of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Visit her  website and Facebook page.

My Thoughts:
 Okay my review here will probably not do this book much justice! This novel is COMPLEX. It's got threads and threads of emotion and so much ...much. I cannot begin to describe how much this book just was awesome! It sucked me in and took hold of my mind for as long as there were words to read and pages to flip! It's about 352 pages of wonderfully flawed and emotionally powerful characters and story that makes you just delight in reading!

See I have this feeling that there are more in depth and more "wordy" reviews out there, but this
 is what I want you to take from this review...This book was beautifully written and just plain gorgeous. I cannot begin to tell you guys how surprised I was by how much I really enjoyed it! It packs and oomph that you just have to read yourself to experience! I really do recommend it!

Tour Schedule:

Tuesday, May 21st: Conceptual Reception
Wednesday, May 22nd: BookNAround
Monday, May 27th: Must Read Faster
Tuesday, May 28th: Wordsmithonia
Wednesday, May 29th: A Reader of Fictions
Thursday, May 30th: Good Girl Gone Redneck
Monday, June 3rd: Book Club Classics!
Tuesday, June 4th: Between the Covers
Wednesday, June 5th: A Bookish Way of Life
Thursday, June 6th: Tiffany’s Bookshelf
Monday, June 10th: Too Fond
Wednesday, June 12th: My Bookshelf
Thursday, June 13th: Joyfully Retired
Monday, June 17th: I Read a Book Once
Tuesday, June 18th: A Patchwork of Books
Wednesday, June 19th: guiltless reading

TLC Blog Tour: Untold Damage

• Paperback: 312 pages • Publisher: MIDNIGHT INK (April 8, 2013)

Blurb:
Estranged from his wife and daughter, former undercover cop Mark Mallen has spent the last four years in a haze of heroin. When his best friend from the academy, Eric Russ, is murdered, an address found in his pocket points to Mallen as the prime suspect.
As the police turn up the heat and Russ’s survivors ask him to come up with some answers, Mallen sets out to serve justice to the real killer. But first, he’ll have to get clean and face the low-life thugs who want him dead. Surviving drive-by shootings and beat downs, Mallen discovers the motives behind a string of vengeful murders. But turning a life around is hard work for a junkie. Bruised, alone, and written off by nearly everyone, can Mallen keep clean and work his way back into his daughter’s life?

About Robert K. Lewis

Robert K. Lewis (Bay Area, CA) has been a painter, print maker, and a produced screenwriter. He lives with his wife, his guitars, and a trio of moody ghosts. Untold Damage is his first novel.
Find out more about Robert at his website.  You can also follow him on his blog, Twitter, and Facebook.


My Thoughts:
I really enjoyed how brutally honest this book was. Mallen's past is not sugar coated or glossed over, you see him at his worst. His absolute worst. His life has gone down the drain and he's spent about 4 years with a needle in his arm. He doesn't know he WANTS to get clean and be who he used to be. This was my favorite part of this book. The character study of Mallen really drives this novel. Start to finish, I wanted him to get better and get the bad guy! I wanted things to finally work out for him.

I honestly don't think I've had such a connection to a fictional character before!

The story glides by rather quickly and kept me wide eyed and flipping pages. I really think this is a great start to a intriguing series.  I can't wait to see more!


Tour Stops:

Monday, April 8th: Hopelessly Devoted Bibliophile
Tuesday, April 9th: Crime Fiction Lover
Wednesday, April 10th: Booksie’s Blog
Thursday, April 11th: Tales of a Book Addict
Wednesday, April 17th: Ace and Hoser Blook
Monday, April 22nd: Joyfully Retired
Tuesday, April 23rd: Must Read Faster
Wednesday, April 24th: A Bookworm’s World
Thursday, April 25th: she treads softly
Monday, April 29th: Crazy Shenanigans
Tuesday, April 30th: My Two Blessings

TLC Book Tours: The Missing File

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper (March 19, 2013)

Blurb:
In The Missing File, Israeli detective Avraham Avraham must find a teenage boy gone missing from the suburbs of Tel Aviv in this first volume in a fresh new literary crime series by D. A. Mishani.

Crimes in Avraham’s quiet suburb are generally not all that complex. But when a sixteen-year-old boy goes missing and a schoolteacher offers up a baffling complication, Avraham finds himself questioning everything he thought he knew about his life.

Told through alternating points of view, The Missing File is an emotionally wrought, character-driven page-turner with plenty of twists and turns. It’s a mystery that will leave readers questioning the notions of innocence and guilt, and the nebulous nature of truth.

D. A. Mishani is the editor of Israeli fiction and crime literature at Keter Books in Israel and is a literary scholar specializing in the history of detective literature. The Missing File is his first novel and the first in a series featuring the police inspector Avraham Avraham.

Connect with Mishani on Facebook and find him on Goodreads.

 My Thoughts: 
 This book was a slow starter for me. The story moves along at a very slow and deliberate pace, that on occasion seems, for lack of a better word, sluggish. At first this was somewhat off putting, but after a short while it actually helped to develop the feeling of dread and tension, I feel the writer was trying to go for. The characters are not all that they seem. You think you know one, then they do something to flip the switch and surprise you. Avraham starts off somewhat cocky. He thinks he knows what's going on with the case of the "maybe missing boy" but slowly starts to doubt himself as events progress.It's interesting to follow him along on his journey through figuring out this case. Things don't go as he expects them to. People surprise him, and events unravel in unexpected and surprising ways. This was a uniquely written novel, that is paced differently than most crime novels, but in the end the slow pace and deep character building is what makes this book a winner! It had me up well into the night!   

 Tour Schedule:  
Wednesday, March 20th: I Read a Book Once
Thursday, March 21st: I’m Booking It
Friday, March 22nd: Joyfully Retired
Monday, March 25th: Love at First Book
Tuesday, March 26th: Book Dilettante
Thursday, March 28th: she treads softly
Monday, April 1st: The Year in Books
Tuesday, April 2nd: No More Grumpy Bookseller
Wednesday, April 3rd: Crime Fiction Lover
Thursday, April 4th: Must Read Faster
Monday, April 8th: Crazy Shenanigans
Thursday, April 11th: Chaotic Compendiums
Monday, April 15th: Between the Covers
Tuesday, April 16th: JulzReads
Wednesday, April 17th: She’s Got Books on Her Mind
Monday, April 22nd: Book Reviews by Elizabeth White
Tuesday, April 23rd: Kinx’s Book Nook
Thursday, April 25th: Man of La Book