I’m not one of those high-profile bloggers who get sent lots of swag in hopes they’ll give it publicity, but I recently got something nice in the mail from someone I sort-of knew in my days as the Books Editor at the Asbury Park Press. Alex Austin, an author who lives in California after growing up on the Jersey Shore, had sent me his second novel, “The Red Album of Asbury Park” (review, author interview), but since it was technically self-published, I couldn’t do much with it, since the Press has a policy against covering self-published books (a useful policy, since while, as Harlan Ellison noted, 90% of everything is crap, it turns out that with self-published books the percentage is more like 99.99%).
Anyway, Austin’s book — about a young musician struggling to make a name for himself in an atmosphere of decay and corruption – turned out to be a happy exception to the rule — evocative of the Jersey Shore around the turn of the decade (’60s to ’70s), well written and not at all predictable in its plot.
I gave the book to the Entertainment Editor and mentioned that it was a good read with lots of interest to local folks, even though not technically appropriate for the Books page, and recently the author was nice enough to send me a copy of his first novel, “The Perfume Factory” (review), which features the same central character at an earlier stage of his life. I’m looking forward to reading it, and I’m quite happy to mention it here.
