our official position on book reviewing

USK does not see itself as a source of perfectly objective information when it comes to books. In fact, USK only represents the opinions of its blog staff! Our official position at the United States of Kudera is that we try to keep it positive when we are writing about books. This is partly because one of our opinions is that it is so difficult to sell anything these days, and in particular it is so difficult to sell books not "written" by Sarah Palin or given an Oprah endorsement. We do receive a few books for free here or there, but we have not received anything directly from Oprah or Sarah Palin.

In general, we do like books written by our friends and acquaintances, and we like you, and we will like you even more if you try to write a book (preferably a novel, but we're down with short stories and poetry as well). If Sarah and Winfrey ever write a novel, we might take a look at it, and if we read and like it, then we could let that be known at http://kudera.blogspot.com/.

In an age when the cable "news" can be hard to differentiate from infomercials and corporate advertising, it is good to know that the FTC is keeping its eye on the dangerous world of paid bloggers receiving their books for free!

It reminds me of seeing a known book reviewer (like a "known criminal" yes, but what I meant was, "a book reviewer I know") on his moving day, and he had about 300 books he was hoping someone would take off his hands. Dangerous hands those were no doubt... of course, this was before he became a blogger.

Who says the pen is weaker than the sword? Yah!