Joel Samberg

Reviewer Joel Samberg: Joel is an author, book editor, journalist, and corporate communications consultant with more than forty years of experience. He has written for Connecticut Magazine, Pittsburgh Magazine, New Jersey Monthly and dozens of others, and his nonfiction books have been on such topics as music, movies, and comedy. He is also the author of the 2019 novel, Blowin' in the Wind. You can learn more about Joel’s books and book editing service:You can learn more about Joel Here and Here.

 Articles by this Author

Author: Camille Laurens,translated by Adriana Hunter

Publisher: Other Press

ISBN: 97801635421019


Author: Nicolas Mathieu,translated by Sam Taylor

Publisher: Other Press

ISBN: 9781635421958


Author:Jeremy Dauber

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

ISBN: 9780393635607


Author: Deanne Burch

Publisher: Authority Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-949642-59-9




Rise and shine! Rise and shine!”

Those iconic words, warbled by the mother of an old warehouse buddy, Tom Wingfield, began my forty-year quest to write and sell a screenplay based on my experience playing The Gentleman Caller in a community theater production of  The Glass Menagerie.

What I didn’t know then, and what I find excruciatingly hard to believe now, is that my heartfelt effort would result in a cease-and-desist letter from a Madison Avenue law firm.


Author:  L. Douglas Keeney

Publishers: Lyons Press: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 978-1-4930-4810-6


Authors: Michael Asimow and Paul Bergman

Publisher: Vandeplas Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-60042-533-2

If I were a prosecutor, and this new book was on trial, I’d be tempted to nitpick in front of the jury. Ultimately, though, that shouldn’t matter much at all because almost all books about movies combine lists that simply must be finite and therefore will inevitably leave something out, and opinions that by definition are subjective, which inevitably will dismay a few people. So nitpicking is no big deal. Absolutely par for the course. 


Author: Joie Davidow

Publisher: Arcade Publishing

ISBN: 9178-1-950691-78-4


Author: A.J. O’Connell

Publisher: Woodhall Press

ISBN: 978-1949116328


Author: Carter Wilson

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks 

ISBN: 978-1-7282-2508-1


Author:  Justine Bateman

Publisher: Akashic Books

ISBN: 978-1-61775-922-2


Author: William Baer

Publisher: Able Muse Press

ISBN: 978-1-77349-033-5


During a Pandemic, Can Rejection Notices Come in Handy?

As a writer, I was sheltering in place long before it became mandatory. It is from my home-office where I work on my books, edit fiction and nonfiction by other people, write magazine articles and reviews of newly published works, and try to develop what I hope might be a brilliant literary idea or two somewhere along the line.


Authors:  Carlin Barnes, MD and Marketa Wills, MD, MBA

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

ISBN: 978-1-5107-4594-0


Recently I came across a book called George, Being George, with recollections by notable people on their encounters with the writer George Plimpton. I’ve never been notable enough to have been asked to contribute, but I do have my own ‘George being George’ story. 

Author: DorothyDinnerstein

Publisher: Other Press 

ISBN: 978-1-63542-094-4






Author:  DominiqueBarbèris, translated by John Cullen

Publisher: Other Press

ISBN: 1635420458




Author: L.Bordetsky-Williams

Publisher: Tailwinds Press

ISBN: 978-1-7328480-4-7


Author: Timothy Miller

Publisher: Seventh Street Press 

ISBN: 978-1645060215




Author: Wayne M. Johnston

Publisher: Black Heron Press

ISBN: 978-1-93636434-3


 As a writer I have always felt compelled to learn about as many people as I can in order to build a mental storehouse of human traits and qualities to write about. In fact, I’ve been studying people closely ever since two cute nurses giggled at me (and my freckles) when I was six years old and left abandoned in a hallway at a hospital on Long Island, for what seemed like eternity before having my tonsils removed. Even then I knew I’d write about them one day. And see—I have!

Author: Tara Lush

Publisher: Crooked Lane 

ISBN: 978-1-64385-618-6


As an author and book editor (as most authors and book editors would agree), it’s important to learn as much about other writers as possible. Through the years, while reading interviews with and biographies of some of our more famous literary icons, it often appeared that each and every one of them had more than a handful of skeletons in their closets. Of course, a little bit of marketing always plays into this equation: writers who write about writers are well aware that if you write about someone whose life is relatively boring, the reader will be relatively bored. 

Author: David Oakley

Publisher: Carmel Saybrook

ISBN: 978-0-578-75726-1


When I reached adulthood, I summarily dismissed my parents’ fear. After all, unlike my grandfather, I accepted jobs that would support my family well, even though they were not my dream jobs. Unlike him, I eagerly accepted help and advice, direction and criticism, from many qualified experts as a way of trying to reach a professional goal or two. 

I was not my grandfather. My parents were crazy. Of that I was convinced.

Author: Ed Hudson

ISBN: 978-1-943106-55-4

            This is a story I think both readers and writers will understand very well. 

Years ago I fell in love with a young woman named Peony—a name at once distinctive, beautiful and poetic, and one I refused to question despite never having met another person so named. 


Author: Cornelius N. Grove

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

ISBN: 978-1-4758-4460-3






Joel Samberg of Bookpleasures.com Talks With  Noted New York Psychoanalyst Gibbs Williams, Author of the New Memoir, Smack in the Middle: My Turbulent Time Treating Heroin Addicts at Odyssey House About Self-Publishing

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