The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves

Years ago, I reviewed the first series of the television series Vera. I had quite a few nice things to say about it, and I've kept up with the show over the years and gotten a few other people to watch it too. It's remained a very good show, and I love the fact that the characters have really grown over the years it's been going. You can see the effects of the things that came before. Especially with Vera, she's almost a different person than she was in the first series, but in a very good way.

So since I'd caught up with the show and there was a year before new episodes, I thought I'd pick up the first book in the series. Which I ran into a snag with because it's oddly hard to get in the U.S., but I found a used copy eventually. What's upsetting is that I like to buy series of books together to get matching covers and it looks like that will be really difficult with this one, but that's an aside.

Anyway, it took me a while after I bought it to finally get around to reading it and it was not at all what I expected. Vera doesn't even show up until about a third of the way through the book. I'd waited so long to read it that I'd forgotten entirely about what happened in the episode (a few things came back as I read but not many) and so that was good, I could get caught up in the mystery. As somebody that reads a lot of mysteries, a few plot points were predictable but it was still put together in a way that made it a good story. When I reviewed the show I mentioned that it doesn't fall into the trope of treating the important clue in a way that marks it as the important clue (either by giving it too much or too little screen time). The book does hit that trope a couple times, but I'm not sure how it could have changed that given the format.

There are a few things that I think are interesting, especially as somebody who came in from watching the show first. Vera's character doesn't have much to recommend her in the book really, though she's very interesting and good at her job, the author goes almost out of her way to talk about how unattractive the detective is (which gets old honestly) and how other characters are a bit repulsed by her. I think if I didn't have Brenda Blethyn's portrayal so firmly in my head that might have changed the way I viewed her.

The book actually focuses on the women who are affected by the murder case, by using their points of view to explore some of the same events and so you get multiple ways of describing the same characters. That works really well, even if there were some characters I wasn't as interested in, and a few things that still felt a bit underdeveloped or out of left field.

I was intrigued that DS Joe Ashworth is barely a character here, when he's so important in the series, but maybe that happens in later books. Or maybe he was beefed up for the show, I'm not complaining.

Either way, the book is good, and worth a read. It'll get you through the waiting for the new series of Vera. I can't wait to read the second one.

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

I actually picked up this classic novel because I was reading a review of The Whispers, a new TV show inspired by a short story in this collection and they made the story out to seem pretty good. The library had a copy in stock, so I walked over and grabbed it. Now, I'm not entirely new to Bradbury, but for somebody who loves sci-fi and fantasy, I've actually not read an excessive amount of his written work. I've seen tons of adaptations of it, but the source material? Not as much. I have to say, I'm not sure The Illustrated Man was the right place for me to start. The bookend story of the Illustrated Man himself was fascinating, I got right into the book because it was so compelling at even just the few pages that it took up. But it's really just a bookend, sadly, there's not much more to it than a few pages.

Some of the stories were quite good, most of them more than a little depressing to be honest. Not a lot of happy endings, but then I'm not sure Bradbury really did all that many purely happy endings. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, just maybe that colored my view because I wasn't in the mood for realistic endings.

Obviously some of the stories are better than others, but none stuck out to me as particularly bad. Quite a few of them are quite dated though, and the entire book very obviously exists in it's own time and place, and a time and place that doesn't exist anymore. The Cold War is very evident, as are the racial tensions of that era. Sometimes Bradbury's take on the hot topics seems almost simplistic, but you have to remember when he was writing them. In "The Other Foot," Mars has been colonized with black people who escaped Earth to escape racism and persecution. Then, decades later, a rocket from Earth approaches with their first white visitor. There's a lot about this story that just doesn't work in today's climate and with today's problems, and actually the play on "reverse racism" coming from a modern author would be kind of insulting and possibly offensive. But The Illustrated Man was published in 1951, before the Civil Rights movement was national news, and from that perspective thinking of a white writer telling this story becomes an entirely different experience.

There's a lot of stuff that doesn't hold up to the science we know today, and the vision of space travel is pretty quaint. In "The Long Rain" a group of astronauts crash land on the wrong spot on Venus, and go mad from the constant pouring rain on the planet. They briefly mention the native aliens, who live in the oceans and almost never come on land. Actually, humanoid aliens populate most of the planets in this book, and it's kind of nice to think back on a time when we believed that must be true. As a bonus, I read "The Long Rain" right before I went camping during a storm that lasted about 12 hours, the timing was not lost on me as I started getting fed up with the sound of the rain on the tent and mumbling about just wanting to be dry again.

Another thing Bradbury does well is not shying away from making children terrifying, like in The Veldt and in Zero Hour, the story that The Whispers was inspired by. Zero Hour is a lot more cynical than the show seems to be, possibly because of the length. You expand a few pages into a series and I guess you have to add more sinister plotting and conspiracies or something. Zero Hour is almost phenomenally compact. Most of the stories are, they tell what they need to tell and move on. "Kaleidoscope" is especially well done, it tells the story of that moment in time, but in a full way that makes it feel like part of a larger whole. You get a sense of past, present, and future, even though you're experiencing only maybe ten minutes in a life. And the story starts and ends almost in the middle of moments, it's just very well structured.

All in all, The Illustrated Man is a good book, but it has all the highs and lows of classic science fiction. If you like reading classic books and can put yourself in the context that they were written and published in, you'll probably enjoy it. But if you have trouble with that suspension of disbelief, then when the advanced Martian society decides to finally conquer Earth, you'll probably not really be taken in.

The Sweetest Kisses Series by Grace Burrowes

Okay, so I know my taste in books is probably pretty darn eclectic. But I do sometimes enjoy a good romance novel because in the end I really love to read love stories. I can be specific in my tastes about them (I like happy endings, hence the romance novels. I can't stand love triangles, I don't like stories that have any kind of cheating, etc).

I discovered Grace Burrowes kind of accidentally when I found a freebie deal on a book of hers in her Wyndam series of regency romances. I enjoyed the series enough that I've got an alert set up on BookBub for any deals on her books, and that's how I ended up picking up A Kiss for Luck, a novella that starts off her "Sweetest Kisses" series of contemporary romances. As of this writing, it's still free to download.

In the end, I didn't actually like A Kiss For Luck all that much. It was okay, I guess, but as a novella it just moved too fast. See, in filmmaking one thing that bothers me is when filmmakers don't understand that a short film is it's own art form, it's not the same structure, style, and storytelling technique as a feature but crammed into a shorter run time. It's different. Novellas are the same way, and short stories. You shouldn't go through the exact same structure but faster just because your page count is shorter.

A Kiss For Luck does that. It goes through every familiar story beat that romance novels always go through, but at such a pace that I felt like none of it really gelled and became genuine. I did feel like the characters cared for each other, but the typical romance novel "no, we can't really be falling for each other" stuff didn't work because it didn't have time to be set up or steep before it was gone again. Plus I think all the action took place over like a few days, or at least it felt that way. The characters aren't bad, neither is the setting, but I think it's actually NOT the right way to intro a new reader to the Sweetest Kisses series, because it didn't actually make me want to read more.



What made me want to read more was that the novella ends with the first chapter of A Single Kiss, the first book in the series. And the first chapter of A Single Kiss is very good. It completely pulled me in, and I bought the e-book right then. The actual novels are the love stories of three brothers, all of which are lawyers, who run a law firm together and have different specialties. They all appear in A Kiss For Luck, but oddly none of the characters from A Kiss For Luck are ever mentioned in any of the trilogy itself, which makes it feel even more disconnected and unnecessary.

A Single Kiss is about Trent Knightly, who practices family law, and Hannah Stark, who has recently passed the bar exam and is looking to go into corporate law. She gets hired into family law, which is the last place she wants to be, but she takes the job because she has to provide for her daughter. Trent, incidentally, is also a single parent, having dealt with a particularly nasty divorce years before the story starts.

There's just something about Hannah and Trent, and their daughters, that just kept me reading long after I should have stopped and gone to bed. The story was a bit convenient and full of coincidences at times, but what romance novel isn't? The characters were really just fantastic, I cared about them, I wanted them to get what they wanted most. So I didn't care that everything was wrapped up so neatly in the end.

The second book, The First Kiss, deals with the youngest Knightly brother, James, and the once widowed-once divorced Vera Waltham. Vera also happens to have a young daughter, who happens to know Trent and Hannah's two girls. I actually don't mind this, it just is part of why these books start to get a little old a little quickly, because they went beyond being a bit formulaic and straight into feeling a bit like rehashes of each other. I don't know how to describe it, on paper the books seem completely different, but there's so many trappings in common that I just don't know.

The other problem I had with this particular book is that the "why we can't be together" stuff was just...tired. The whole thing with James having his little black book but being tired of sleeping with any woman that asked him just came across a bit overdone. Of course, his past romances have to be forgiven because he was emotionally wounded or something, and her past marriages are basically explained away into almost not existing. It was just felt like the old the rake and the virgin thing that I'm not into, despite how popular it is with romance readers. At the least, the threats to Vera and her daughter felt real and the parts where they were dealing with that were much more interesting than James' inner angst, so I did still at least enjoy reading it.

The big problem came with Kiss Me Hello, the last book in the series, which is about MacKenzie Knightly, the oldest and most serious brother, and Sidonie Lindstrom, a foster mom to a sometimes troublesome, sometimes troubled, teenager.

There was a lot about this book I liked. I liked Mac's character for the most part, I loved the focus on horses and how therapeutic riding can make a difference in a kid's life. I liked Sid for the most part, and I thought her backstory was particularly interesting.

But the entire plot of the book hinged on Mac being a complete and total idiot. Not even slightly idiotic, not making one small mistake and forgetting about it. No, he intentionally and willfully spends the entire book not telling Sid he's a lawyer, that his brothers are lawyers, and that they all own a law firm, because she keeps saying "I hate lawyers." Sure, she has reason to be mad at lawyers, most people do. But there are something like fifteen points where it would have been easy for any one of them to have said "I know you've had a bad experience, but I actually have knowledge, expertise, and the ability to help you solve this problem you have because I am a lawyer." Instead they find ways to try to fix things WHILE keeping everything under wraps. It just gets more annoying every step of the way. Sid's stance on lawyers is partially from an honest place, and partially just childish, and a good conversation could have solved it on page 20, considering everything else about her character. It wasn't the right plot device and it felt off the entire time.

The other problem that really rears it's ugly head in this book is one that's common to all of Burrowes' writing, that she's more than a little bit fond of the "Babies Ever After" ending. And I won't spoil the book, but the ending was so unrealistic that it actually made me mad. I thought for a second it was going to be a book about people making a non-traditional family and exploring the fact that family is made of more than genetics. And it tried, but it punted at the last second anyway, though it still scored a point or two I guess.

There's another novella, Kiss and Tell, which focuses on a completely different set of characters, but between my lukewarm feelings about the first novella, my bitterness at the ending of the third book, and the kind of weird cover, I haven't bothered to pick it up.

Overall, I would say I absolutely recommend A Single Kiss, and if you just need to know what happens for the other two Knightly brothers, then the other two books aren't awful, but if they start to annoy you then it's safe to put them away.

Book Review: The Power of Habit

I'll be honest, I probably would have never picked up this book if it hadn't been a selection for my occasional book club. I didn't really expect it to impart anything I hadn't already read or been exposed to in one way or another. So perhaps my low expectations are to blame, but the fact is I didn't really like it at all. The problem with it basically was that it was clearly something that should have been a science book written by a science writer, instead written by a business reporter. Now, it could have been a fascinating business book too, if it had tried to be a business book. But it didn't, it tried to be a science book and it failed. Maybe I've just read too many amazing science books and my standards are too high.

There's one glaring problem with the book that I just couldn't let go of: the author never offers a clear definition for what he considers a "habit." How can you write an entire book about something, trying to make it scientific, without defining the term? Especially when it's a term that is used in different ways in everyday life. Whenever I thought I had figured out what he meant by "habit" he would go and do something like try to make a case for sleepwalking and parasomnias being "habits." Hint: they're not, even a little. And if you're wondering why not, read Dreamland by David K. Randall.

The author also had a habit of bouncing back and forth between three or four different topics within each chapter, telling part of a story A then derailing to story B then back to story A then a bit of story C before back to story A. This is a structure that can work, but it just really got confusing and frequently led to repetitive sections that reminded me of how irritating it is to sit through a "previously on" teaser when you're binge watching a TV series. And often the topics were only tangentially connected, sometimes the connection was so difficult to find I honestly would have no idea why I'd suddenly spent five pages reading about something else only to go back to the original topic.

So why did I actually read this entire book if it irritated me so much and it was so inconsistent? Because buried in the difficult structure and lack of scientific rigor were some really interesting stories and a couple points that I'd heard before but didn't mind hearing again. In the introduction, the author talks about an Army major who had discovered a way to curb riots in Iraq by removing food vendors from some public areas. A later chapter talks about how changing safety habits in a corporation actually revolutionized the entire company, including increasing profits. They were all fascinating stories, and I would have happily just read a set of essays or stories. It was only the analysis of the topics where it all fell apart, especially whenever the author slipped into weird self-help book language (and he seemed to be more than a little fixated on obesity and diet despite that not being something that came up in a way that suggested he did a significant amount of research on the topic, especially since several things he said could be proven untrue by reading other books about food and eating habits).

The one good thing that came out of reading this book was that while I was getting irritated at it, I was reminded of some things I already knew and ended up buying a FitBit to change some of my own habits. So even if I didn't learn anything new, the reminder did end up being useful.

But anyway, I can't really recommend this book. If you're interested in any of the topics covered in it, other authors have looked at most of them more effectively in other books.

Cities at Sea by Martin Simons

I picked up Cities at Sea by Martin Simons because I was very intrigued by the synopsis. It felt like a utopian version of the dystopia in Waterworld.

Like many books I've read recently, my problems with Cities at Sea can be summed up very quickly: great idea, in need of either more writing skill or a stronger editor. The characters, the setting, the politics of the cities, the science, it all was a solid foundation. But none of it came together.

The writing was very dry, and very technical when it didn't need to be. It felt almost like a science text, spending so much time explaining the hows of the cities themselves, the climate of their world, and the process of giving people gills. Instead, I think most readers would agree they want to know about the people and the conflicts. The characters themselves are all very flat, they don't come apart as individuals and they're constantly simply saying what they're thinking/feeling plainly and without much emotion. When a romance develops, it doesn't resonate or really do anything.

A lot of time is spent on details that frankly just don't matter, and not enough time is devoted to things that are more intriguing and interesting. The summary of the book implies action that either doesn't take place, or is more of an afterthought, and those were some of the things that really should have taken center stage.

All in all, the book felt like a first draft, where a writer was trying to get down the whats and hows of the plot, and tackle the worldbuilding challenge, but then they didn't go back and actually make it readable and interesting. I can't really recommend it.

I was given a free preview copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This book no longer appears to be available for purchase.

Quick Review: P.S. You're Invited by Erica Domesek

I'm a big fan of DIY stuff, and crafting in general. But I think that this book taught me something else about myself: I'm kind of a DIY snob apparently. Most of the projects in this book were SO simple that they didn't even feel like what I would call crafting. And for the most part, they were the types of projects and things I've been seeing around since I was in Girl Scouts. The projects also mostly LOOKED handmade, and not in the best way. So what I learned is that I much prefer DIY guides and blogs that are about people without a ton of money making something really creative and fun, or that's meant to look store bought and luxurious for a fraction of the price. But this book really came across as people who have a ton of money and time trying to get in on the DIY "movement" because it's hip.

Overall, if these were all things I'd found on Pinterest for free, I might have been intrigued by a few, and rolled my eyes at a couple but general not cared. But $14 for the ebook version and $19 for the hardcover? If you're looking for a DIY book or to get into crafting, then you absolutely can do better with your money. In fact, just go to Pinterest, you'll find about twenty great free blogs with much better instructions and more fun projects.

I received a free preview copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Roundup and Preview: Winged Reviews!

Next week Winged Reviews will be hosting the first stop of author Paula Weston's UK blog tour for the second book in the Rephaim Series: Haze!

I was so thrilled to be able to participate, this is my first time being part of a blog tour, and it couldn't have been on a better book series. Read my reviews of the two books, Shadows and Haze before the 14th!

While you're waiting, catch up on my previews reviews:
The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clark
The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

The Percy Jackson Series
The Lightning Thief
The Sea of Monsters
The Titan's Curse
The Battle of the Labyrinth
The Last Olympian

Enjoy, and tell me what you think!

Winged Reviews: The Last Olympian

My newest review is up at Winged Reviews, see why The Last Olympian is my favorite of the Camp Half Blood books!

The Last Unicorn Screening Tour

Last week on August 12th I was lucky enough to attend one of the screenings of the amazing new Last Unicorn Screening Tour. When they announced the tour last year, I was hoping that they would bring it to D.C. since most events like this come my way eventually. And they didn't disappoint, one of their first stops was The AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The tour is really fantastic for people who are fans of the movie, and I would suggest to anyone who is a fan of fantasy or animation as well. Or even 1980's movies, since it was shown as part of a retro 80's lineup at AFI. They're actually showing a brand new digital print of the film, so it's clearer and more gorgeous than has been seen on screens since 1982 when it premiered. I actually asked my mom and she told me that we didn't go see it in the theater when it came out, so this was my first time seeing it on the big screen. It was very beautiful, and like all good films there are a lot of things that you'll probably discover that you'd never noticed before.

The best part though is that the author, Peter S. Beagle, was there to do a Q&A session after the show as well as sign items and meet fans both before and after the film. I've actually met Beagle before, several years ago at Dragoncon in Atlanta, Georgia. I bought a new copy of his first book, A Fine and Private Place, and spoke to him for a while about why I loved it and how it reminded me of some very specific good memories. Meeting him was one of my favorite experiences at that convention, because he really took the time to talk and came across as a very genuine and charming person. But I had been under the assumption that I had been lucky to come to his table when there wasn't a line, and that's why I got the personal attention.

I learned last week that this wasn't the case, it's actually that Beagle is always wonderful to his fans. He will take the time to talk to you, learn a bit about you, tell you a story, and make you feel like the most important person in the entire line. This time we talked about screenwriting, and he gave me the best piece of advice about the film industry I've ever heard: "Just be patient. If you're patient, you'll outlive the bastards." It's my new motto.

Photo from lastunicorntour.com

The Q&A was also wonderful, he spoke about several other books he had written and his experiences throughout the years as an author. I hadn't realized how many different types of writing he had done, or how often his works have been adapted to other formats. I really enjoyed him telling a story about why he wrote "Come Lady Death." Apparently, he was in a writing workshop with someone who hated fantasy in all it's forms. When another woman wrote a fantasy story, this other member of the group ripped into it simply because of it's genre. So Beagle went home and wrote the best fantasy story that he could to submit for the next week. He said that the other gentleman grumpily told him it was a well written story, but that he hated it anyway. "He also taught me that I could write a story in a day and a half if I was angry enough."

I've had some similar experiences in writing workshops, so I definitely appreciated the sentiment.

There was also a raffle and giveaways of I think five or six items, mostly copies of Beagle's books. I didn't win anything but I was okay with that because the bulk of what was given away I already owned (and I had several in my bag at that very moment to get signed later).

The tour is going to be in Southern California next, and some of the shows are sold out but you can still get tickets to a few at the tour's website. I spoke briefly with Connor Cochran of Conlan Press and he said that they hope to return to many of the cities where they've brought the tour because often people have found out about the screenings too late to get tickets, and they've been sold out in quite a few cities. So keep your eyes peeled, they may come to your city and if you missed it they might come back and give you a second chance. It's well worth it. Just make sure you give yourself plenty of time for the autograph line, so that everybody gets their one on one time (including you!)

Battle of the Labyrinth at Winged Reviews!

My latest review of the Percy Jackson series is up at Winged Reviews, just in time for the new movie this week! Read the review of Battle of the Labyrinth here, or check out Sea of Monsters before you see the movie!

The Body of Evidence Series by Christopher Golden #1-3

I ended up picking up Body Bags, the first book in this series, because I had insomnia and for some reason it was on my mom's bookshelf in the guest room at home. I knew Christopher Golden because of his work with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, and so it seemed worth a shot.

The series focuses on Jenna Blake, a college freshman who wanted to become a doctor but is squeamish around blood. Her dad convinces her to take on a job with the medical examiner and she finds her niche. She also, naturally, finds an excessive amount of conspiracies and danger. Because if she didn't, what would the books be about?

The first book was originally released in 1999, well before I started reading them. And while it doesn't seem the series was exactly finished, there are no new books being published in it. I was actually quite surprised that the books started before CSI began airing (it began in fall of 2000, over a year later) because it has a lot of the same ideas, and a lot of the same flaws. In fact, I could sum up this review simply by saying that if you like CSI and young adult books, you should probably give the series a shot.

But I'd feel like I need to warn you that if you have any problems with the logic or science of CSI, the you probably should stay away. I give the tv show a pass because I enjoy the characters and the acting is quite good, but I can't watch the spin-off series because I wasn't already invested before they started to go off the rails with their concept of reality. Body of Evidence suffers the same kind of problems. I know a little too much about forensics and police work to believe half of what happens, because even though Golden gets a lot right, he also is perfectly happy to jettison believability in favor of drama and plot.

Don't get me wrong, this is how a writer probably should be. But at the same time, the characters really weren't grabbing me enough to make me willing to suspend my disbelief that much. Jenna has the same exact crisis of conscience in every book, just with slightly different flavors. And don't get me started on the love interests, because the romance in this book is so bad that I wish it didn't exist. Seriously, we could have had a young adult series where the heroine doesn't really care about guys and might date sometimes if she meets somebody but it's not really a big part of the story. Instead, we just keep circling around her crush on a guy fifteen years older than her (is it fifteen? I've repressed the details because it got so boring and slightly gross).

Of the three books, Thief of Hearts is the best because Golden takes the most chances and goes probably as far as he can with the characters. It has the feel of a finale, rather than just being the second book in the series, and that actually makes Soul Survivor suffer greatly by comparison. The characters mostly slip back into where they were before, and they shouldn't. The events of Soul Survivor should have forever changed them, and the way that it haunts them feels inauthentic rather than deeply moving.

The other problem I have is that the author is constantly being FAR too detailed in his descriptions for my taste, almost always about inconsequential details. It feels like it's written only for people who live in Boston so they can say, "I know that place! I know where that is! I've heard of that store! I listen to that radio station!" To people outside of Boston, they're just extra nonsense words, and when they don't actually contribute to the plot (which is most of the time) then it just makes reading the book a little more difficult than it should be. But maybe I'm spoiled because in screenwriting, you don't even mention a character's hair color unless you have to. Describing more than the basics about a location is a huge no-no, and so I'm always going to like sparse over detail unless that detail actually means something.

In the end, this sounds like I hate the books completely, but I do have the fourth one and I plan to read it. I would say anybody who likes this kind of story should definitely check out Body Bags and Thief of Hearts, they're pretty strong (if you ignore the romantic tension). But if you find yourself struggling through Soul Survivor, I don't think I can say it's worth finishing unless you're the type of person who always finishes books. Maybe the fourth book will change my mind.

New at Winged Reviews: The Titan's Curse!

My latest review is up at Winged Reviews, check out what I thought of The Titan's Curse, by Rick Riordan!

Winged Reviews: The Sea of Monsters!

Be sure to check out my latest review on Winged Reviews, The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan!

At Winged Reviews: The Lightning Thief!

My first review is up at Winged Reviews, check out my views on The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan!

Winged Reviews!

Hello!

So, I'm thrilled to announce that I'm now working with my good friend Daphne as a full time reviewer at her website, Winged Reviews!

Winged Reviews is a blog focused on young adult fiction, which is one of my favorite genres. My first set of reviews is going to be of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. But you can read my intro post right now!

You might wonder what this means for this blog, and really the impact will be minimal. I've not been keeping to my schedule for the last few weeks because of a lot of stuff going on at home, but this month should mark a return to form:
Tuesdays: Opinion column
Wednesdays: Television review (either series or episodes, depending on what I'm watching at the time)
Thursdays: Movie review (classic films and new releases)

The only difference is I may not post a new book review every month like the previous schedule, I may direct you back to Winged Reviews for those or if I've read a book that doesn't fit there I might review it here. It'll be a bonus instead of a scheduled feature. That part I'm just going to play by ear until I find the right pattern.

But for now, you should be over at Winged Reviews checking it out!

E-Books are real books, and they're okay

Today, I was reading a book and in the text, they referenced something they had said on a previous page. It had taken me a while to get back into reading this book, so I clicked on the page number and it took me back to the page in question so I could reread that part.

Then they referenced an additional audio file to supplement part of the book available on their website, and I clicked on that. I called up the audio file and played it right then and there, before returning to my book.

My mom has a crafting book with embedded videos that display the steps that people might have trouble with. When I have trouble reading a book because my eyes are tired, I can just increase the font size, change the contrast, or adjust the brightness.

On top of all of that, most of the books I have bought lately were ones that were on one day only sales, or temporary specials. The ability of a publisher or author to incrementally adjust the price of their books, and see the response that price adjustment brings them in sales and profits, is changing the entire face of publishing and probably for the better for consumers in the long run (if it helps authors, I don't know yet). The Nook Free Friday books are often books by authors who are releasing something new, so they give away an older book or the first in the series and it works like a free sample at the grocery store.

I've written about this before, but it seems like it bears repeating since it's been almost a year that I've had my Nook. Now I can get books from the library without leaving my house, including audiobooks.

It intrigues me that since the printing press, we haven't really revolutionized how we process the written word. We've changed the sales process, we've definitely changed what's popular and what gets printed. But we haven't really had something quite as revolutionary. And e-books are actually fundamentally changing how we process stories AND how we sell them.

Are there drawbacks? Absolutely. Mostly because publishers are trying to cling to old models for profits and hurting authors in the process instead of embracing the change fully. But I'm really tired of book snobs.

People complain if you read the book after the movie, if you have an e-reader instead of buying hardcovers, if you have the wrong edition, if your paperback spine has cracks in it, and on and on. If you read too slowly, if you read too quickly, if you like to read the end first, if you like to read in order without spoiling yourself. Everybody wants to say "this is the way to read" "this is the way to enjoy books." Like there's only one way and only one thing.

That's stupid. Enjoy stories. That's all that's needed. Enjoy stories at your pace, in your way, and embrace yourself and your life with storytelling. And if anybody gives you grief about it know this: they aren't as good a reader as you if they insult others for being different.

Book Review: Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

I've really been meaning to read the Percy Jackson books for years. Two years ago, I actually ended up trying to pass some time in a hotel room while I was on a business trip and the first movie happened to be on. Now, I really didn't have any expectations for the movie, the reviews of it weren't that good and the people I knew who liked the books weren't particularly thrilled by it either. But there was nothing else on and I was rather bored and homesick, so I watched it and I actually thought it was quite pretty. It was enough to make me more certain I wanted to read the books anyway, but I still didn't get around to it.

Then they recently released the first trailers for the second film, The Sea of Monsters. And it reminded me that I wanted to read the books so I finally got it together to read them. Plus I really wanted something fun, simple, and quick. I expected to only read the first one but I ended up reading all five over one weekend.

I really enjoyed these books, even though it might have been easier to read them if I hadn't seen the first movie at all. Because it's a bit hard to remind yourself that Percy is only 12 in the first book, and not 16 like he is in the movie (I don't know what age he actually is, he looks 16). So some of his actions and behaviors are bit dumb unless you remember that he's 12.

The books take a very modern sensibility towards the mythology they include, and so don't except to get some sort of really good education on Greek myths. But it's understandable, in the story itself, how and why that is. Olympus changes as the world changes, that's part of the point, and the gods and monsters adapt to the world they live in. So I really liked the way things were done, because I enjoy the Greek myths but I feel like not a lot of people want to really take any liberties with them anymore.

But my favorite thing about these books was that all of the characters, both the good guys and the bad guys, had complex motivations. Except perhaps Kronos, even the villains were partially right about what was wrong with the world they reside in, it's just that their choices to deal with those motivations are wrong. And Percy, Annabeth, and Grover are often conflicted and confused, and sometimes they make the right choices for the wrong reasons or the wrong choices for the right reasons. In the end, the war is between two sides that both have very valid points to make and that's the kind of complexity that most young adult books don't bother with.

There are a few things that are very "middle school reader" about them, notably Percy's inability to deal with girls and how that's written into the story. But as much as I might roll my eyes at his obliviousness, he's never really maliciously stupid about anything, he's just young and written that way. Normally I'm the first to say that "he's just a 14-year-old boy" is no excuse for a character being stupid and being badly written, because a main character in any fiction shouldn't be held to the same standards as a real person, otherwise why bother reading about them? I don't forgive some of Harry Potter for this, and I hold Legend of Korra on a much lower level because of the way they handled it. But Percy never crossed over into being poorly written, just being a little bit complicated. I especially thought the way they handled the portion with Calypso was really well done.

I also liked that this was, in a sense, a series about how parents actually aren't always right. Sometimes parents are jerks, and sometimes they mean well but they still do stupid things that aren't good for their children. Sometimes they're just doing the best they can. I can see how some parents would be bothered by the idea, but I think it's good to teach kids that their parents don't always have all the answers, and they're not always right, and sometimes they're still thinking of things in the past instead of the future. But even thought family is complicated, it's family.

Overall, a very good series and I'm looking forward to the new series being finished so I can pick those up.

Crosspost: The solution to Too Many books

I'm crossposting this from another blog of mine:

So, in response to ameliaearharts post, “Is there wizardry on how to never have overstuffed shelves?”

Sadly, no, it’s not wizardry. It’s the thing that pains readers the most in the entire world and the problem they find the hardest to solve: just not having so many books.

You actually have to force yourself to the realization that you have the shelf space you have, and if you want your shelves to look good and to treat your books well, that’s the space you can use and you just can only have what will fit. I rebelled against that idea for DECADES, since I was a kid I would just box up books and store them all over the place. Boxes under my bed, in my closet, in the attic, whatever. Just to make room for more books.

The thing was though that I wouldn’t read them for months, sometimes years, and in some cases they stayed in the attic until my mom said “you’re not reading these donate them to kids that will.” When I was 25, so obviously they’d been up there a while. And so finally what dawned on me was that there were some books I will always want to have, and will always want in case I’m going to randomly want to read them. There are books I own because my friends wrote them or gave them to me.

But at the end of the day, if I’ve got a book that I’ve not read, or that I won’t pick up again, or that I’m keeping for any reason other than I love it and want to read it over again, then that book deserves a different home than one where it’s getting ignored. At that point, I’m treating that book no better than a decoration, no matter what my good intentions are.

Now, I couldn’t really do this when I was living in dorms or moving every year because it actually was quite true that I didn’t _know_ what space I had. And because I wasn’t ready to actually face the whole thing yet. But when I got married and my husband built my bookshelf, I looked at it and realized that I had enough shelves to house over 60 square feet of books, and that even when you add in his books (which were few, we actually had a lot of duplicates that I sold when we got married) I had more books than any one person could really enjoy, and I told myself that I was doing the world a disservice by not letting someone read this book. The book deserved to fill it’s purpose in life, which is to be read and cherished. And while I might have enjoyed the book (if I had read it, seven years in a bookstore means I had a LOT of books I picked up and never got around to reading) maybe I didn’t love it the way someone else would.

And since I’m not having kids, keeping all of my books from when I was a kid felt like denying things I loved in my childhood from other children who should experience the things that made my life good. I kept my favorites, but for the most part I reread them one more time and either donated or sold them. Because unless I’m going to read them again, another child should get to experience it. I see it a bit like Indiana Jones and his “it belongs in a museum” thing.

Now, obviously I’m not saying if you keep books that’s bad. Like I said, I have over 900. I can’t remember what the last count was when I finally finished cataloging them a few weeks ago. I’m also a sucker for wanting complete matched collections, so I have every Star Wars book from before New Jedi Order, for example. I’ve got almost every graphic novel Crossgen published (I’m missing a couple because I didn’t start collecting until they were out of print). I adore books and I have a LOT of them.

But I also made it a point to have a very specific space for them, a large one, and I decided that at least for now, my books have to fit in that space. If I add too many and I’ve got a shelf double-rowed or a stack sitting somewhere, then I need to sort my collection again to find things I may be ready to part with.

I also massively curtailed my spending on books. At least until I got an e-reader, but that’s another story. But I stopped buying just anything that caught my eye and started getting stuff from the library first, then buying it if I truly loved it and wanted to own it. I got pickier about what I wanted to own versus what I just wanted to read. And I told myself that my worth as a reader wasn’t measured by how many books I owned but how many books I’ve read, and how much I enjoyed them. It definitely helps that my county has a fantastic library system, so that wouldn’t have worked when I was a kid in a small town. But it helps now.

So far this has worked for me. It was hard, it was really hard. But it was one of the last steps in what’s now been about seven years of me really changing my perceptions of the things I own and my living space so that I could live a less cluttered life, because let me tell you I was on a one way train to hoarding when I got married. And the struggle to get away from that has been about dealing with a lot of stuff, both mental and physical, and so I don’t say any of this lightly or like I think people can just turn around and magically figure it all out.

What I can say though is that those changes have all made me happier, and helped me financially, so that’s why I’m always willing to talk about it when it comes up, in the hopes that maybe somebody else will be helped by listening. I’ve not regretted a single book I’ve let go of, because I waited until I was ready to do it and let them go in the right way for the right reasons. Being able to walk into my guest room and just scan the shelves for something to read next, without having to sort through and move things just to see what I own, it’s huge. And on top of that, now I actually know what I own (I used to buy extra copies of things because I’d forget I had it) AND I usually know exactly where it is when I want it. I can pinpoint the shelf, about where it is on the shelf, and what’s next to it on either side within a few volumes (maybe not exactly next to it).

I haven’t had to do a big “take everything down and put it back” reorganization in years. Instead, every few months when I’ve got a handful of new books, I’ll work them into the shelves while going over them and deciding what maybe can go this time.

It’s not always perfect, but it’s working so far.

But seriously, ebooks have brought all of it back, so I also am just channeling a lot of my old habits right into my Nook, so I am a bit of a hypocrite here. I just can’t apply the same principles to digital stuff, I’m not at that point mentally yet I think.

Book Review: Yesterday's News by Kajsa Ingemarsson

I actually got this book randomly because it popped up on the Nook blog and yes I know I'm linking to the Kindle version. Maybe you didn't realize, but I link to these products through an Amazon Associates link so that maybe one day somebody will click on one and buy something and then I'll get a little bit of money to help me run this little blog. As far as I know, B&N doesn't do something like that, so even though I have a Nook, I link to Amazon. Besides, I actually get Kindle books too, I just read them on my computer. Anyway, my point was that this wasn't a book I sought out for any particular reason, it just kind of landed on my radar unexpectedly. The review said it was one of the most popular books in Sweden, and it was on sale for only $1.99 so I figured why not?

First off, I'm starting to think that books should come with warnings the way that fanfiction does. I thought I would read a happy, fun, happy ending-filled "chick lit" book (yes I hate the term chick lit as much as you do but what else am I going to call it?) and instead, well...I got kind of that and then got completely blindsided by an intensely tragic part in the middle that hit me on the wrong kind of day. But at least the tragedy in the middle is well written and more or less has a bearing on the overall plot, so that's something.

But in the end, I wasn't particularly pleased with Yesterday's News. It wasn't a terrible book by any stretch of the imagination, but there was so much that just wasn't all that great either. The central plot is that Agnes, who is the head waitress at a posh restaurant and good at her job, gets fired when she refuses to submit to the sexual harassment of her lecherous boss. When she calls her rock musician boyfriend to complain about it, he dumps her for another musician, all in the same day.

Eventually, Agnes gets a chance to help a friend open a new restaurant and she pins all her hopes and dreams on it's possible success. Mixed up in there is also the possibility of a review by the leading restaurant critic, and also a new neighbor that she doesn't particularly get along with because he's too boring, or something, I couldn't ever figure out what her real problem with him was.

Listen, I think we can all get from the beginning to the end of this story without a lot of trouble. We all know exactly where it's going to end up and the plot twist isn't even remotely surprising. What is surprising is the route the book takes to get there, which was a bit meandering, stopped off in a slightly preachy section with a subplot, and took a detour right through the "apologizing for the abusive ex while you're getting back together with him because he's totally changed" village.

And that was my problem with the story overall. If you plotted Agnes' growth and character development based on strength/empowerment and weakness/being manipulated then it'd be all over the map. It's not an arc or an orchestrated roller coaster ride, it's an uneven bouncy ball on cobblestone. And then, at the end of the story rather than resolving the questions that the author has set up, especially those about Agnes and her ability to not only survive by herself but also to stand up to being abused and manipulated, the author just...stops.

Listen, the book is absolutely worth the $1.99 I paid for it. And if you like this kind of story (I was reminded of No Reservations, the movie with Catherine Zeta Jones, on a lot of different levels, and that's a compliment) then it's probably well worth the money for the regular priced ebook as well, and the few hours of your time it takes to read it. I'm not saying it's a terrible book, I just really think that if they adapt it to a movie there's going to be a lot of scene rearranging and a few characters are going to get dumped so that the structure works better and we can be a little more forgiving when the main character reverses direction entirely 2/3 of the way through the book before getting back on the right track in the last ten pages.

Heat Wave by Richard Castle

If you read my review of season one of Castle, then it's no surprise to you that I recently picked up the tie-in book, Heat Wave. I've found the writing on the show to be some of the best I've seen on television in a long time, and a great evolution of the police procedural format for a more modern and connected era. When I heard that they actually are releasing the books written by Richard Castle in the series, I put the first one on reserve at my library immediately. First, I have to commend them for the sheer dedication to the fiction that they show with this book. Everything from the front cover to the dedication is exactly as seen on the show. The author quotes are, of course, from the member of Castle's mystery writer's poker club.

The author photo and bio are the same as the show, and in the end there are only one or two tiny nods to the idea that it isn't written by THE Richard Castle. I assumed that the real writer of the books would be an open secret, that the ghost writer would of course be generally known and have been long since found out by the Castle fandom. But it turns out that isn't the case. There are great theories, and I've read at least one blog article that breaks down their idea so convincingly that I'm pretty sure they are right. But at the end of the day, everybody seems almost happy not knowing, and that's actually also a little refreshing.

In the universe of the show, Castle is a NYT Best Selling Author multiple times over. Heat Wave sold so many copies he instantly was signed for a three book deal and the movie rights were picked up. While the show pokes a bit of fun at Castle's books being pulp novels and a bit cheesy, Castle himself is such a devoted fan of the art of the story and the written word that you imagine that he's actually a much better author than he's given credit for, and that it's just that he writes genre fiction so he gets insulted by the literary crowd.

At least, that's what I thought until I read Heat Wave. There's no mistake at all that this is a cheesy pulp novel. And if that's what you're looking for, then that's great. The mystery itself is pretty solid, and the twists and turns are worthy of the show itself. Since the novel is a barely disguised rip-off of the real people/tv show characters (on purpose) it does fit well into that universe in a lot of ways. The characters based on Ryan and Esposito, for example, are just as funny and just as charming.

It's Detective Heat and Jameson Rook where I run into trouble. Because everything else about the novel is so close to the show's characters, those two get a little hard to believe. Rook is so clearly Castle bragging about himself and acting conceited, which is a character trait that is balanced out in the show and he has largely grown out of so it's hard to read. It's almost like I'm getting embarrassed for the fictional writer who fictionally wrote this fictional version of his fictional self.

But Detective Heat is not really Detective Beckett at all. I get that she's not exactly supposed to be, she's not just inspired by Beckett, she's Castle's daydream of what he wants Beckett to be. And in Season One, that's going to be a very different girl than season five, which I'm watching now. First, because he had so much less information to work with, and second because he hadn't actually grown as much as a character. So Nikki Heat is just very stereotypical and not as much fun as Beckett.

I think that if I had read this book when I was in between seasons one and two, then I may have liked it a lot more. But I think as readers we're supposed to be picturing the characters, that's the reason for staying so in universe with it. And in universe, I just don't know that this book is everything that it should be or that the characters are as well crafted as Castle would write them. I'm hoping that as the books advance, the characters will grow in similar ways as they did in the show, and that this disconnect I feel between the two is just because I've gotten so much further than when the book was "written."