Praise

What people are saying about Janice Harayda’s One-Minute Book Reviews and her comic novels The Accidental Bride and Manhattan on the Rocks …

From the April 2011 issue of New Jersey Monthly: One-Minute Book Reviews is one of New Jersey’s “best blogs“: “Harayda’s review blog has made her a star in the literary world.”

From the blog for Powell’s Books: “Arguably the second-best online literary award after the TOB’s Rooster [co-sponsored by Powell’s] is the 2008 Delete Key Awards for ‘the year’s worst writing in books,’ awarded by the One-Minute Book Reviews blog.”
www.powells.com/blog/?author=20

From Critical Mass, the blog of the National Book Critics Circle: “I stumbled on One Minute Book Reviews, a fun new book blog by former NBCC board member Janice Harayda. Among other things, she has this fascinating post where she uncovers the fact that Mitch Albom actually writes at a third grade level …” From a Nov. 22 post by Rebecca Skloot on Critical Mass, the blog for the National Book Critics Circle, on Nov. 22, 2006. http://bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com

From Miss Snark, the literary agent: “I actually loved Janice Harayda’s The Accidental Bride. I forgot how funny she was until I found her blog.” From a Nov. 26 post by Miss Snark on Miss Snark, a pseudonymous literary agent who answers questions from writers and others on her blog. www.missnark.blogspot.com

From BookInfo.net: “… I recently came across an absolutely fantastic post from “One Minute Book Reviews” (thanks to Critical Mass for pointing me to this excellent site). The blog’s author, Janice Harayda, was prompted by the inane prose of Mitch Albom’s For One More Day to run a selection through Microsoft Word’s Readability Statistics, an optional part of the spelling and grammar check. With a false-start selection that judged Mr. Albom’s prose at a grade level of 2.8, she eventually determined that he writes at a third-grade level—3.4, to be precise. Her curiosity led her to check a comparable section from different authors, yeilding the following results:

Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck Grade 12.0
Alex Kuczynski Beauty Junkies Grade 10.3
James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson Grade 8.6
Stephen King Lisey’s Story Grade 8.3
Danielle Steel Toxic Bachelors Grade 4.8
Emily Arnold McCully An Outlaw Thanksgiving, a picture book for 4-to-8 year olds by a Caldecott Medalist Grade 4.3
Mitch Albom For One More Day Grade 3.4

I will leave you to peruse Harayda’s blog article yourself for her smart questions about these results, and also for an additional pay-off which I will hint at only by giving you the post’s title: “Does Mitch Albom Think He’s Jesus?”

From BookInfo.Net, Nov. 28, 2006 www.bookinfo.net

From Out.com: “The folks at MediaBistro.com’s Galleycat Daily Feed recently ran a song parody contest. One of our favorite entries, a salute to former Luv Guv Jim McGreevey, came from Janice Harayda, who writes the One-Minute Book Reviews blog. Here, with apologies to Cole Porter, are some choice bits: “You’re the top!/You’re a Turnpike rest stop./You’re the top!/You’re an NJ state cop./You’re the platinum in a recording by Bon Jovi./You’re a Springsteen CD/A Rutgers QB. You’re a Princeton c.v./You’re the Nets./You’re the Pulaski Skyway/You’re a sunset on Cape May./I’m a washed-up pol, a complete mess, a flop,/But if, honey, I’m the bottom you’re the top!” From Out.com, Jan. 19, 2006. www.out.com/gossip.asp?id=2214

From Gawker.com: “Doing their utmost, as usual, to defy the stereotype that book publishing types are cape-wearing drama nerds, Galleycat solicited Ben Greenman-style show-tune parodies of works of literature. Today, the results are in, and while some of them are as sad and clunky as the filler numbers in Dreamgirls, there are some high points. We especially liked this Cole Porter by way of One Minute Book Reviewer Janice Harayda take on our favorite Gay American: ‘You’re the top! You’re a Turnpike rest stop …’ Ha, man, if Cole Porter could only know that someone was imputing a dirty gay meaning into those innocent words.” From Gawker.com, Jan. 19, 2006

From the Daysitter blog for Conde Nast’s Cookie magazine, March 12, 2007, www.cookie.com: “I know, I know. If you’re a parent, you sometimes don’t have time to read more than the ingredients listed on a breakfast cereal box. But let’s just say you have a whole minute. How do you make those seconds really count?

The answer is this nifty new site, One-Minute Book Reviews, brainchild of writer, critic and voracious reader Janice Harayda … One-Minute Book Reviews explores just about every kind of book, a something-for-everyone cornucopia of delights. Yes, says Harayda, you can read the reviews in a minute or less. The site features new releases but also goes back to the classics, and embraces titles other books sections ignore like self-help and poetry.

“Harayda not only aims help you find pleasing reading matter, but also to guide you away from the clunkers, with ‘Books I Didn’t Finish.’ Here, Harayda tells readers where she stopped reading a particular book and why, listing the best and worst lines, and giving readers suggestions for a better book to read … Witty, smart, and blisteringly honest, One-Minute Book Reviews can give you hours of reading pleasure.”

One-Minute Book Reviews was named one of the “Top 50 Book Review Blogs” by the Guide to Online Schools in February 2011.

One-Minute Book Reviews was one of the top 10 Blogs of the Day in the category of “growing blogs” on WordPress.com for Nov. 23 and 26 and on other days in 2006. A link to its first ranking in the top 10:

http://botd.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/growing-blogs-213/

One-Minute Book Reviews was one of the top ten book review sites in the world on Google as of Nov. 2, 2008: www.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Reviews_and_Criticism/.

One-Minute Book Reviews has on multiple occasions had one of the 100 posts of the day  WordPress, most recently on Feb. 12, 2009, botd.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/top-posts-1021/.

Best of the Web ranks One-Minute Book Reviews among the best book review sites on the Web blogs.botw.org/Arts/Literature/Book_Reviews/.

Janice Harayda was named one of “25 Women Bloggers to Watch in 2008” by the site Virtual Woman’s Day virtualwomansday.blogspot.com/2008/01/women-bloggers-to-watch-in-2008.html.

From Valkay on Stumble Upon: “This is one of the best book review sites out there. Janice maintains strict, old-school-journalism impartiality: she does not accept free reviewer copies, and reads whatever she wants. So she has no conflicts of interest with anyone and can review with bracing honesty. She updates the site constantly with new reviews of mostly literary and contemporary fiction and nonfiction and children’s books (not so much emphasis on genre fiction). She includes amusing and creative features like the Delete Key Awards for her picks of the year’s worst books, and Backscratching in Our Time, which blows the whistle on famous authors who exchange glowing blurbs with each other. She also keeps you up on happenings in the book world from coverage of major awards like the Pulitzer to more minor awards like the Bad Sex Scene writing awards given in the U.K. The title and premise of her blog is that you get a succinct review or article that you can read in one-minute.”

From My Life Scoop, produced by Six Apart and Federated Media: mylifescoop.com/featured-blogs/2009/11/one-minute-book-reviews.html “As book review sections vanish from newspapers, it can be tough to decide what to read next (especially if you don’t feel like relying on Amazon customer recommendations). One-Minute Book Reviews, ‘for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation,’ is written by former Glamour book columnist and Cleveland Plain Dealer book critic Janice Harayda.

“The site consists of ‘brief reviews of new and classic fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for adults and children,’ and since it’s not limited to covering new books, it can alert you to great reads you might have missed a few years ago. We love the children’s book reviews (like beach books for kids ages 7 and up), gift ideas (librarian-approved gift books for a cook, a baker, and a fashionista), Delete Key Awards for bad writing (sorry, Dr. Phil). Each review contains the book’s best and worst lines, and if Harayda couldn’t finish a book, she tells you why.”

Praise for Janice Harayda’s comic novels

The Accidental Bride and Manhattan on the Rocks:

www.janiceharayda.com/mybooks.html