Just ran across digital review copies published by Open Road so I went looking for info about them because I had completely missed mention of them in the past. Here is what I found at NPR. Turns out they are doing something that, as a reader, is important to me. They are publishing electronic editions (on several different platforms) of books, many of them 20th century classics, that were originally published before ebooks were written into contracts. This is bringing thousands of terrific books back into print. Looks like they were concentrating on the "big authors" to begin with. The book I downloaded to read in the Bluefire app on my iPhone is Sarah Zettel's 1997 novel, Fool's War.
I would really like to see all the wonderful genre midlist books, the great books that weren't bestsellers but had strong followings, back in libraries. I would love to see all the out of print books by members of SFWA, Sisters in Crime, HWA, MWA, RWA, and the other genre writers' organizations, available in ebook format for library users. As a reader, it is frustrating to find a terrific book in a series and then be unable to find other in the series. Orania Papazoglou's smart Patience MacKenna series illustrates this for me, checking WorldCat Sweet, Savage Death is not in any Colorado Libraries but three libraries (all more than 200 miles away from where I live) have Once and Alway Murder. Unfortunately it was the last one published in the series so isn't going to find many readers who would be willing to not start at the beginning.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Double Crossed by Ally Carter
This entertaining novella featuring characters from the Carter's best selling Gallagher Girls series and her Heist Society series is a quick, compelling read. It is a great way to introduce readers to her books. Right now it is also free. I downloaded it from NetGalley and it was perfect to read on my iPhone when waiting in line or waiting in the car. The cover calls it a Spies and Thieves story which hopefully portends more stories about the conjunction between her series characters.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley
Amaranth flees her husband, a cult leader who has 49 other wives. She takes her two teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, along. They have never known any life outside their strange religion and the compound that housed it. They have no concept of the 21st century world. It reminded me somewhat of Linda Crew's historical YA novel, Brides of Eden, where the cult uses motion as prayer and perverts sexuality. Amity & Sorrow gets off to a great start with a car wreck, when Amaranth after driving for four days, fearful her husband will find them. Her two daughters were tied together at the wrist, the why slowly unfolds as the reader finds out what led to her fleeing with her daughters.Mainstream Fiction * General Fiction
Reading Plan and Book of the Week - Horror - The Tomb by F. Paul Wilson
Horror is one of my least favorite genres and if I were not reading according to a reading plan, I would probably never read horror. It is important to me to be a well rounded and well read reader's advisor so I do follow a reading plan.
The reason I don't usually like horror is because I experience books with all my senses and very frequently horror novels or stories stink! Not the writing, not the characters, not the plot; it is the smells described that really get to me as well as the freaked out feelings. When I read Stephen King's Christine, I had to drive with all my windows open in the dead of a Colorado mountain winter with temps in the negative numbers because of the horrible corpse smell in the book. Also, I am susceptible to nightmares.
I had avoided the Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson because I was scared to read them. I didn't even read the YA prequels but now I want to. The purpose of horror is to scare the reader. It gets the heart pumping in fear. Because the aural import of books to my brain doesn't affect me as much or as intensively as reading, I've found audio books the best way for me to read horror.
In The Tomb, first in the Repairman Jack series, Jack who fixes things, sometimes with fatal results, is introduced. He lives completely off grid in the "John Twelve Hawks" sense of the phrase; fake IDs, no bank accounts, no credit cards, no written contracts. His ex-girlfriend Gia asks him to look into the disappearance of one of her elderly great-aunts-in-law. While not the type of case he usually takes on he agrees because he still loves Gia and her young daughter, Vicky. The same day he is contacted by an Indian diplomat who wants him to recover a necklace stolen from his elderly grandmother who is in the hospital dying. Jack explains it's not the type of case he works on, the man offers him a princely sum just to attempt it and a matching sum if he can do it before midnight.
Jack, for all his ruthlessness, strength, daring, and street smarts is amazingly a character who seems real and more than the sum of his parts and is even vulnerable, in a manly way. Wilson made me really care about the characters and I was not happy to finish the book because I wanted to spend more time with them.
While this was horrifying with plenty of carrion stench and monsters both human and demonic, everything meshed and made for a great story with meaning rather than shock for shock value. The look into how actions a hundred and fifty years in the past in India impacted the present in New York added interesting facets and depth to the story.
I'm glad I follow a reading plan because it made me read a book I would not have ever otherwise picked up and made me think about what a genre I ordinarily avoid could offer to readers.
The Tomb has been recently published in audio format. I'm looking forward to reading more books in the series.
The reason I don't usually like horror is because I experience books with all my senses and very frequently horror novels or stories stink! Not the writing, not the characters, not the plot; it is the smells described that really get to me as well as the freaked out feelings. When I read Stephen King's Christine, I had to drive with all my windows open in the dead of a Colorado mountain winter with temps in the negative numbers because of the horrible corpse smell in the book. Also, I am susceptible to nightmares.
I had avoided the Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson because I was scared to read them. I didn't even read the YA prequels but now I want to. The purpose of horror is to scare the reader. It gets the heart pumping in fear. Because the aural import of books to my brain doesn't affect me as much or as intensively as reading, I've found audio books the best way for me to read horror.
In The Tomb, first in the Repairman Jack series, Jack who fixes things, sometimes with fatal results, is introduced. He lives completely off grid in the "John Twelve Hawks" sense of the phrase; fake IDs, no bank accounts, no credit cards, no written contracts. His ex-girlfriend Gia asks him to look into the disappearance of one of her elderly great-aunts-in-law. While not the type of case he usually takes on he agrees because he still loves Gia and her young daughter, Vicky. The same day he is contacted by an Indian diplomat who wants him to recover a necklace stolen from his elderly grandmother who is in the hospital dying. Jack explains it's not the type of case he works on, the man offers him a princely sum just to attempt it and a matching sum if he can do it before midnight.
Jack, for all his ruthlessness, strength, daring, and street smarts is amazingly a character who seems real and more than the sum of his parts and is even vulnerable, in a manly way. Wilson made me really care about the characters and I was not happy to finish the book because I wanted to spend more time with them.
While this was horrifying with plenty of carrion stench and monsters both human and demonic, everything meshed and made for a great story with meaning rather than shock for shock value. The look into how actions a hundred and fifty years in the past in India impacted the present in New York added interesting facets and depth to the story.
I'm glad I follow a reading plan because it made me read a book I would not have ever otherwise picked up and made me think about what a genre I ordinarily avoid could offer to readers.
The Tomb has been recently published in audio format. I'm looking forward to reading more books in the series.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Reading on Vacation
Usually when I go on vacation to a tropical paradise like Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, I take 14 to 20 books because that is about what I can read in seven days when I'm away from the internet and not writing reviews, just reading for pleasure.
This vacation isn't a week away from the world. It is a week spent with very important people with whom I want to spend lots of time, my daughter, her husband, and their daughter, my delightful Hazel.
Hazel is 2 years and 10 months old. Like her cousins, Jack, Mark, and Patrick, she adores books. It makes my heart happy to hear her saying "Grandma, read to me." She likes to hear books over and over again.
Today we took in a very nice ocean themed story time at Ormond Beach Library. Back at the house we read books Hazel picked out; Chamelia by Ethan Long, Brownie & Pearl Take a Dip by Cynthia Rylant, I'm a Big Sister by Joanna Cole, Leap Back Home to Me by Lauren Thompson, Which Is Round? Which Is Bigger? by Mineko Mamada, Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman, and last but not least, Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?
My personal reading on this trip is far less then usual. I did finish Rose Harbor in Bloom by Debbie Macomber to review in Booklist and am now reading Shallow Pond by Alissa Grosso.
This vacation isn't a week away from the world. It is a week spent with very important people with whom I want to spend lots of time, my daughter, her husband, and their daughter, my delightful Hazel.
Hazel is 2 years and 10 months old. Like her cousins, Jack, Mark, and Patrick, she adores books. It makes my heart happy to hear her saying "Grandma, read to me." She likes to hear books over and over again.
Today we took in a very nice ocean themed story time at Ormond Beach Library. Back at the house we read books Hazel picked out; Chamelia by Ethan Long, Brownie & Pearl Take a Dip by Cynthia Rylant, I'm a Big Sister by Joanna Cole, Leap Back Home to Me by Lauren Thompson, Which Is Round? Which Is Bigger? by Mineko Mamada, Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman, and last but not least, Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?
My personal reading on this trip is far less then usual. I did finish Rose Harbor in Bloom by Debbie Macomber to review in Booklist and am now reading Shallow Pond by Alissa Grosso.
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