For Love of Books: Elisa Rolle

This is the second interview in my For Love of Books series where I interview book reviewers - the people who give readers their opinions on books and help them make informed choices on their book selections. Reviewing is not an easy task as many of us have found out. Each reviewer is just one opinion among hundreds of thousands or more. Reviewers tell you their truth about which books are good, bad or downright ugly and it's always a matter of opinion. The opinions can vary from one end of the spectrum to the other, and each reader should weigh that opinion with others before he or she makes a purchase decision on a book.

Having said that, today we have with us Elisa Rolle on the blog. Elisa has been reviewing for two and a half years and she is certainly one of the most prolific reviewers on amazon.com and on her Livejournal blog.

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Hi Elisa and welcome to the blog. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed as part of this series where I introduce the reviewers who do all the work on behalf of the readers.

Can you tell us something about yourself? You can give us as little or as much information as you want. All I know about you is that you live in Italy, that you blog as Rosa is for Romance, and you live near Rome.

LOL, first correction, I don't live near Rome, but you are not the first to ask me so, I believe sometime, I don't know when, this info trespassed Italian border and now it is out there. Or maybe Italy, in comparison to other countries, is so small, that from your perspective, I live near Rome, and from mine not. I live in Padua, near Venice, that it in the North East of the country (instead Rome is in the centre).

And yes I have two different blog, Elisa - My Reviews and Ramblings that is my main "international" blog, and focused on LGBT reviews and related matters, and Rosa is for Romance, that is my Italian Romance blog, mostly devoted to the history of Romance. I realized after naming it that people believe my name is Rosa, since in English "is for" has a different meaning of what I believed. "Rosa" in Italian has two meanings, as for the color pink, and as for the flower rose, and in Italian the Romance genre is named "rosa" since in the beginning the cover of a very famous Italian romance publisher was pink. The two blogs have a pretty different life and readership, and they "meet" only when I post the "in the memory" post for the romance authors of the day, and some other announcements, on LJ; but if you ask me which is more "me", well, the LiveJournal is where you can find the real "me".

I was always a voracious reader, the classical child with few real friends, that preferred to spend her time with a book in hand. I discovered the romance genre when I was more or less 12/13 years old, and continued to read it for 10 years. When I graduated from College (Economics) and went to work in another city far from my family, I had very little time to read and so I stopped for many years. Then I started again when I came back home, and had to "empty" my native home of all the books I amassed in the years, the choice was me or my books in the house, there was not enough space for both. So I started to browse thousands (really thousands) of books, to decide what give away and what take with me (books as The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss or Defy Not the Heart by Johanna Lindsey that were my first taste of romance, I couldn't give them away).

The books I decided not to "save", I sold on ebay; first experience on ebay for me, I didn't know there was a market for that type of books. For years I was scorned by "intellectual" readers for my choice of books, and I was really convinced to be a strange woman, maybe with some hidden naughty nature... Anyway, I put my books on ebay with a ridiculous price, few cents, and they went so high in the bid that I was in awe: a single book reached more than 100 euro! I realized that the books I amassed for years were rare goods, and the Italian translation of some romances were sought-after. More, people started to contact me to know who I was and why I had all that books, and above all, why I was selling them! Didn't I know that they were TREASURES? I realized that in Italy there were a dear need to "talk" about romance.

And so I started my first blog, that led to the two I have now, but sadly I also realized that Italy was not ready for Gay Romance, and so, my LiveJournal has very few readers in the Italian country... and truth be told, I start to be tired to "fight", I lost too many friends for this reason, I prefer to do what I do without any real "high" purpose. If people from Italy want to read my reviews and buy the books I recommend, good; and I can assure you, even if they don't comment so much, the Gay Romance genre has its followers also in Italy.

I believe that where you live in Italy there are only two Romance publishers - one is Harlequin Italia, a subsidiary of Harlequin Canada and the other is a very old style publisher. If the choices are so limited with only Harlequin and historical romances available, how did you get hooked on M/M romances?

You are right, only two romance publishers and with only a limited choice of titles, and this is exactly the reason why I found the M/M romances. But let's start from the beginning. I was in a Yahoo group whose purpose was to "discover" untranslated authors to propose to Italian publishers; ambitious scope and totally unreached ;-) But the "task" of the members of that group was to read in English new authors and genres and to compile a file after that. One of the girls (we were all women), said that Menage by Emma Holly was an interesting book, but she was not very fond of the M/M relationship on it. I offered to read the book (we were very diligent, every book was to be read at least by two to have an objective opinion) and my impression was exactly at the opposite, I loved the M/M relationship and not so much the M/F. After that another girl read Crossing the Lines by Stephanie Vaughan and again I offered to be the second opinion, loved that book and started to buy all the books from the same publisher, Loose Id, with a LGBT content. Not long after that the Yahoo group died of natural death due to the impossibility to conciliate all the different opinions inside it, and I remained with a passion for a genre that in Italy was almost unknown.

I believe you said in another interview several months ago that the Romance publishers in Italy don't have websites (or maybe only one does) and that the distribution systems are not sophisticated - most people have to get their books from the corner store or shops and there are no bookstores. So with all of these impediments how do the Italian readers manage to find the books they want? Do you import all of the books you read other than those that can be found online?

Yes, exactly. There is an Italian online bookseller, IBS, that is a window of Amazon; you can find almost all the books sold by Amazon on it, but if you order from IBS, you pay the Italian Shipping Cost, that are way cheaper than order directly from Amazon. Plus 70% of the time, if you order from an International bookseller, Italian Customs block the package, and you have to pay a fee to have it back, or worst, the Italian Customs send back the package without even telling you (it happened to me more than one time). So I avoid, if possible, to buy from International booksellers, and the availability of ebooks is a real good thing for me, and for all Italian readers.

How did you get into reviewing in the first place? How long have you been writing reviews?

As I said before, I started to "review" books in English to find new genres for the Italian market, and got hooked by the M/M genre. When the Yahoo group I was in died, and the Romance blog I was in showed some reserve to post the reviews of M/M romance, I decided I would be better alone. I opened my LJ, and started to post the reviews there; I really had no real purpose if not to chat with people with similar taste, a thing it seemed impossible to find in Italy. My first review, A Red Tainted Silence by Carolyn Gray is dated November 24, 2006.

For someone whose first language is not English you do a pretty good job of articulating your views in your reviews. How did you learn to speak English so well?

Really? I'm always embarrassed by my English, and when people said that I manage to also "write" in English with an Italian "accent", I always wonder if they are not really saying that I'm very bad. I'm totally self-taught, really. I only studied English in High School, but in Italy this means that you have an hour per week with 30 other students, so you can understand that the level of lessons I received was not very good. My first job was with an American firm and they sent me to a refresher course in Chicago and I was so scared: I didn't understand most of the things they said to me at that time. Then I started to travel abroad (I love to travel), and I learned the basic, how to order food and do the fuel, mostly. But when I started to read in English (for that famous Yahoo group), I was really still at the basic level, and so I started with the Microsoft Reader format, since I listened to the "metallic" voice of the laptop while I ran the words with the eyes.

If you read my first reviews, you will realize that, they are so childish and short not since I didn't like the book, but since I was not able to write the review in English! But I read and read, and wrote and wrote, and today, well, at least I'm able to write a review of more than a paragraph ;-)

When you review a book what, in your view, are the important elements to include in the review that would be helpful to the reader who is trying to make up his/her mind. Why?

The characters and what they left to me. I don't focus so much on the story, since you can read the blurb if you want (that I don't post either, I give the link to the publisher website, if you want you can read it there). But the feelings and the emotions I still have at the end of the book, those are important for me. And this is the reason why I always try to write the review soon after I finish a book, since I'm still fresh and open to them.

Elisa, you are one of the few reviewers who does not rate the books you review on your blog. The readers on my blog are really zoned in on ratings and we have many "discussions" about the smallest difference in ratings because most of them use our ratings to help them make a "buy" decision . Can you tell us first why you don't rate and second, how is it that your readers are "nicer" and don't ask that you to rate the books? :)

I don't rate books since I always hated constraints. To rate a book you have to analyze it, to be really good in compare all the positive and negative side, and I'm not that good... really, it's not self-deprecation, it's me who is admitting that I have not the skill to do so.

And as I said before, in my reviews I give you my "feelings" but I'm a person totally different from you, what I love, maybe since it touched something in me, you maybe find sugary and unrealistic. I can give you an example: I recently read and review By Degrees by J.B. McDonald. I love that book since the main hero has a problem with "touching" people, he can't suffer the contact, especially with strangers; I'm like him, if I have to sit in a public place I always choose a seat not near other people, and if it's impossible, I prefer to stand. So that book touched something in me, but to you probably it would say nothing, wouldn't it? How can I rate if five stars? for me it's, but for you?

Why my readers are nice? Well, because if they aren't they are not allowed in my sand box! Joke apart, I don't know why, I have never imposed "rules", it's not in my nature, but people who frequent my LJ seem to have realized that it's not the place to be snarky, and they respect me and my choices. I didn't ask, but they do it anyway.

You have been reading M/M for only about 2 1/2 years. What is your secret to reading all of the books that you review? I'm so envious because as I said in the introduction you are probably the most prolific reviewer that I know. I have been reading M/M since I first read The Charioteer and The Catch Trap at least a decade ago and more recently Bareback in 2003 but I'm only an OK reader in terms of speed. You, however, seem to be in the zone. I just checked and you have over 600 reviews posted on amazon and probably 3 times as many on your blog. How do you manage to find the time to do that many reviews and still have a life?

I don't have a life? LOL. I live with my mother that is the typical Italian mother; she is retired and she manages the home all by herself. So when I come back home from work, I have all my free time for me, no need to worry about diner or chores. And during the week I don't go out, and so I spend almost all my time working on the blog and reading. I was always a fast reader, since I was very young; my mother didn't believe me when I said that I read a book by day, and she also tried to test me, she sometime took a book I just finished and opened it random, reading some line and asking me what happened next, and I always answered in the right way.

Another thing, and this is one of my major fault, is that I don't think too much on what I do, and this converts in me writing reviews without spell-checking (and so explained all the typos), or jutting down a post that then I would really want to take down, but I can't since the damage is already done.

What do you do for fun when you're not writing reviews?

I like to watch movies, to plan my travels (most of the fun is to plan a travel more than do it ;-) ) and read, really reading is still the most fun thing for me.

Tell us something about Elisa that very few people know?

I'm so careless and open that there are very few things people don't know about me, but one thing I can say to you: I was kissed, real kissed, for the first time when I was 25. It was not a choice, mind you, I'm not prude or anything, I'm atheist, so it was not even a religious choice. It's only that when I was a teen, my father was ill, he had cancer and fought for three years, and so most of my teen years were spent clinging to him; again mind you, my father didn't absolutely want it, but I simply adored him, and in my mind there was not space for anyone than him in that moment. Then when I was 19 he left me, and I was so crushed that I threw myself in my studies, and didn't think to anything else. It was only after college, when I went to live alone, and I was really alone, that I started to realize that something was missing, and so...

I would like to thank Elisa for joining me on the blog to talk about book reviews and give us a hint of how she reads and reviews as many books as she does. Elisa has been most gracious and open and has given us a glimpse of her life in Padua, Italy and the differences between her life style and our own lives in North America and other parts of the world. I never realized how lucky I am to live in Canada with full access to bricks and mortar bookstores which carry most of the print books around today.

I encourage you to visit Elisa's Livejournal which I have linked in this interview. Ciao Elisa!

And that's a wrap!

Elisa Rolle's Contact Information

Livejournal:elisa-rolle.livejournal.com
My Blog: rosaromance.splinder.com
My Library: www.librarything.com/catalog/elisa.rolle
My Space: www.myspace.com/elisarolle