Coulter, Catherine. KnockOut. New York: Putnam, 2009. Hardcover. +417 pages. $26.95
What's this? Another post when I should be studying/grading/doing something probably more productive? This does not speak well of this book that my outrage is so bad I will put off French homework.
Well, maybe not. My French class is pretty bad.
And I should note, to be fair, I was kind of irritated when I started this book because I discovered that instead of managing to buy Whiplash (which apparently comes after KnockOut) on a steep markdown...I'd managed to buy, somehow, two copies of KnockOut. Granted, I did not pay $26.95 for either copy ($6.99, thank you B&N discount bin). Still, one will be going to Half Price Books. Possibly both.
So here is my open letter to Catherine Coulter.
Dear Ms. Coulter,
Please stop watching the X-Files.
Love,
your fans.
Seriously, I've enjoyed Catherine Coulter's FBI thrillers from the beginning. They're typically well-paced, exciting, and, referencing my previous post on Elizabeth Lowell's romantic suspense novel Death Echo, have had just the right amount of romance, given that Coulter started her career as a romance writer. And there has been weird stuff happen in Coulter's books before, but they were typically just things that had no real explanation--weird stuff that could probably be rationalized away, especially in Double Take.
But this has gotten a bit much. Now, one of the recurring characters, Dillon Savich, is flat out telepathic.
Excuse me while I GO BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST THE WALL.
Anyway. The book opens with a bank robbery. Savich, of course, is in the bank and saves the day, killing one of the robbers. Unfortunately, her daughter is also one of the robbers, and the daughter's way over-age boyfriend is the driver, and the daughter eventually escapes from the hospital and is a recurring threat throughout the book as she really, really wants to kill Savich.
Savich, having gone home after a hard day's work, then receives a telepathic call from a scared little girl, Autumn, whose father's family is after her because of her psychic abilities, which they want to add to their cult.
Switch over to Sheriff Ethan. He's looking for a missing little girl. Turns out, she's been in his house all day, because she knows that he can protect her and her mother, Joanna, from the batshit insane family members who are after her.
So. Lots of running around, lots of trying to get all of the pertinent, unbelievable information from Joanna and Autumn, and finally, a call from Savich, which confirms their completely unbelievable story. Turns out, one of the crazies after her, Blessed, can take over people's minds, and when they finally get hold of him, he "stymies" everyone and gets back loose.
Lots of chasing around. Savich and Sherlock come to Virginia to help and to record the psychic phenomenon and let Savich's wonder computer, MAX, loose on stuff. The crazies take Joanna, Ethan and Autumn hostage, and Autumn does an acting job that deserves an Oscar for playing her crazy uncle to do what she wants.
In the mean time, Savich and Sherlock return to Washington to deal with the bank robber crazies, who they catch, of course, but partly because Autumn "calls" Savich and then psychically pummels the bank robbers for him. Back in the podunk cult town, Ethan and Autumn manage to throw down, which ends up with Autumn, who the cult leader calls the strongest psychic power he'd ever seen, shot.
At the end, Ethan and Joanna are together (which still boggles my mind. Even though Joanna's husband, Autumn's father, had been in prison for three years, he'd died two weeks before. That's a little fast, not to mention the fact that we barely see any kind of relationship developing), Autumn is alive, and they're wondering about whether or not she psychically burned herself out. After all, that kind of power's dangerous. Of course, the book ends on her psychically reaching out to Savich.
All of this could have easily been done in half the amount of pages by cutting out a tremendous amount of unnecessary scenes, and the bank robber plot really wasn't needed. Instead, the bank robbers seemed added in because the book couldn't pin the entire plot on just the psychic aspect. By the time I got to about the last third of the book, it was midnight and I was really wishing it was over already.
Here's my beef with KnockOut, and to be honest, with Death Echo as well. If I've read a series, I expect it to continue in the same vein. I don't need psychic intervention to make it fresh. I like the same kinds of adventures that we've seen before. And here's the other thing: when you go into a paranormal novel, you have a certain level of suspension of disbelief that you don't necessarily have when you're talking about an FBI thriller. To have that suddenly introduced to you, Pow!, shakes things up too much to ever really get your proper frame of mind back. I realize the need to keep things interesting and fresh for the reader, but you do that through your characters. You don't do this by adding an unbelievable plot device into a book where it doesn't belong.
KnockOut= D+
Right. I'm going to go be productive now.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Death Echo: In-depth Review
Lowell, Elizabeth. Death Echo. New York: Avon, 2010. Paperback. +423 pages. $7.99
What's this? Two posts in three days? Say it isn't so!
But it is so, thanks to a cold front, believe it or not. After it started raining last night, my knee started giving me problems, so I put away everything else (studying, WoW) and settled down to finish Death Echo in the bathtub.
First, let me get this straight. I love Elizabeth Lowell. I've loved Elizabeth Lowell since I started reading her books, probably back in 2005 or 2006. The Donovan books (Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove and Midnight in Ruby Bayou, mentioned in the last post) were absolutely awesome, and I could not put them down. Maybe if I went back and read them now, I wouldn't be as impressed, but I doubt it. They were really interesting, dealing with the world of gems and gem-dealing, something that has always fascinated me (Dear National History Museum, you rock).
Generally, I like two genres of romance novels. I like historical romance, generally Regency, and I like romantic suspense. When you can get the two of them together, you get Stephanie Laurens (most of the time). The point is, I'm not reading romance novels for the man candy, necessarily. I like my romance novels to have a plot that is not the hero and heroine falling in love. The romance should be a happy side effect, and the book could go forward with out it if necessary.
But I want you to know where I'm coming from when I say that, well, I'm disappointed with Death Echo. Yes, I want my romances to have a plot. But I expect anything published by Avon to, well, have a romance!
Here's the plot. Emma Cross, former CIA agent, works for St. Kilda Consulting, who's been called in to help the U.S.'s intelligence agencies track down a yacht that has been stolen and renamed that may be carrying weapons of mass destruction and stop an imminent attack on Seattle, carried out by Georgian (the country, not the state) terrorists trying to blame Russia. Really, I got a little confused by the plot and the motivations of the terrorists, but it had to do with Georgia-Russia-US relations and trying to upset the status quo with old USSR nuclear material. And something about counterfeit money. Anyway.
Our hero, Mac Durand, is former special ops, who lost his entire unit in Afghanistan when the CIA gave them bad intel and hung them out to dry. Now he works in the Pacific northwest piloting boats for various and sundry purposes. He brings in the yacht to the U.S. without knowing what's up. Emma recruits him to St. Kilda, and they go undercover to continue taking the boat to where it goes. Their cover? Basically, Mac's pre-Kilda job, and Emma's arm candy. Really, really stupid arm candy. There's also something about a former KGB agent who kills one of Mac's friends and who makes far too many appearances with very little actually happening.
Anyway. Mac and Emma take the boat up the Inside Passage, get stonewalled by Canadian customs because the FBI and the CIA are having a pissing contest, then parts of the CIA that aren't talking with the part hiring St. Kilda get involved and the yacht ends up sunk. Come to find the main bad guy has sunk it so he can swap it out with the yacht that everyone thought was stolen and renamed, but is actually a completely different boat. Confused yet? In the meantime, our intrepid heroes are running against the clock, as they have seven days before the shit hits Seattle.
Being a romantic suspense novel, you expect some romance in all of this suspense (which, incidentally, has some pacing problems); the kind of desperate, we've got to save the world, there's nothing to do on a stake-out but wait, fighting against the darkness, life-affirming (add whatever other metaphor you like here) romance that fits into most suspense novels (see Catherine Coulter's FBI thrillers for examples of this done well).
Yeah, no. There's some kissing, mostly for show when their undercover, and no internal monologue about how this might actually be making either of them feel. There's an implied happy ending, but no real wrap up that yes, they'll be living happily ever after working for St. Kilda and preventing other terrorists from trying to do more terrible things.
And shouldn't Mac have had some serious work in trying to learn to accept and trust Emma, the former CIA agent, rather than to simply ask, "Did you work in Afghanistan?" When she says no, apparently all his feelings about the CIA go back into remission as far as she's concerned. I mean, this is a classic romantic suspense set up! You let the lack of trust on a vital mission interfere with the romance until the hero and heroine are at each other's throats. Then the untrusted does something to save the other person's life, and ta-da! We are back into romance land, as the saved person shows how grateful they are.
I can't speak to the plausibility of the plot. Maybe it's possible, and to be honest, her assessment of the cooperation, or lack thereof, between intelligence agencies in the United States? Probably not far from the truth. And she did pick something that worries the intelligence community--old nukes from the Soviet Union that have been unaccounted for. But there were some things that bothered me, like this line, for example. "After all, the Georgians had left a nuclear calling card--a rudimentary dirty bomb--in Moscow once, simply as a warning" (422).
It's near the end of the book, so suspension of disbelief is maintained up until then. But...really? That snapped me out of it, because, well, plausibility is a bit much here. And something stated that factually in a debrief by a CIA agent in the book--well, I expect it, in a book that has stuck with facts about border defense post-9/11 the whole book to stick to the facts! And let's face it, if this had actually happened, we'd have seen it out of the WikiLeak cables by now. Also, Vladimir Putin would have wiped Georgia off the face of the planet. Probably Georgia the state too, just because it had the same name.
Anyway. It's a rather disappointing read, but not so bad that I'll give up on Elizabeth Lowell completely (it's not like she's Troy Denning or anything).
Death Echo = C-
What's this? Two posts in three days? Say it isn't so!
But it is so, thanks to a cold front, believe it or not. After it started raining last night, my knee started giving me problems, so I put away everything else (studying, WoW) and settled down to finish Death Echo in the bathtub.
First, let me get this straight. I love Elizabeth Lowell. I've loved Elizabeth Lowell since I started reading her books, probably back in 2005 or 2006. The Donovan books (Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove and Midnight in Ruby Bayou, mentioned in the last post) were absolutely awesome, and I could not put them down. Maybe if I went back and read them now, I wouldn't be as impressed, but I doubt it. They were really interesting, dealing with the world of gems and gem-dealing, something that has always fascinated me (Dear National History Museum, you rock).
Generally, I like two genres of romance novels. I like historical romance, generally Regency, and I like romantic suspense. When you can get the two of them together, you get Stephanie Laurens (most of the time). The point is, I'm not reading romance novels for the man candy, necessarily. I like my romance novels to have a plot that is not the hero and heroine falling in love. The romance should be a happy side effect, and the book could go forward with out it if necessary.
But I want you to know where I'm coming from when I say that, well, I'm disappointed with Death Echo. Yes, I want my romances to have a plot. But I expect anything published by Avon to, well, have a romance!
Here's the plot. Emma Cross, former CIA agent, works for St. Kilda Consulting, who's been called in to help the U.S.'s intelligence agencies track down a yacht that has been stolen and renamed that may be carrying weapons of mass destruction and stop an imminent attack on Seattle, carried out by Georgian (the country, not the state) terrorists trying to blame Russia. Really, I got a little confused by the plot and the motivations of the terrorists, but it had to do with Georgia-Russia-US relations and trying to upset the status quo with old USSR nuclear material. And something about counterfeit money. Anyway.
Our hero, Mac Durand, is former special ops, who lost his entire unit in Afghanistan when the CIA gave them bad intel and hung them out to dry. Now he works in the Pacific northwest piloting boats for various and sundry purposes. He brings in the yacht to the U.S. without knowing what's up. Emma recruits him to St. Kilda, and they go undercover to continue taking the boat to where it goes. Their cover? Basically, Mac's pre-Kilda job, and Emma's arm candy. Really, really stupid arm candy. There's also something about a former KGB agent who kills one of Mac's friends and who makes far too many appearances with very little actually happening.
Anyway. Mac and Emma take the boat up the Inside Passage, get stonewalled by Canadian customs because the FBI and the CIA are having a pissing contest, then parts of the CIA that aren't talking with the part hiring St. Kilda get involved and the yacht ends up sunk. Come to find the main bad guy has sunk it so he can swap it out with the yacht that everyone thought was stolen and renamed, but is actually a completely different boat. Confused yet? In the meantime, our intrepid heroes are running against the clock, as they have seven days before the shit hits Seattle.
Being a romantic suspense novel, you expect some romance in all of this suspense (which, incidentally, has some pacing problems); the kind of desperate, we've got to save the world, there's nothing to do on a stake-out but wait, fighting against the darkness, life-affirming (add whatever other metaphor you like here) romance that fits into most suspense novels (see Catherine Coulter's FBI thrillers for examples of this done well).
Yeah, no. There's some kissing, mostly for show when their undercover, and no internal monologue about how this might actually be making either of them feel. There's an implied happy ending, but no real wrap up that yes, they'll be living happily ever after working for St. Kilda and preventing other terrorists from trying to do more terrible things.
And shouldn't Mac have had some serious work in trying to learn to accept and trust Emma, the former CIA agent, rather than to simply ask, "Did you work in Afghanistan?" When she says no, apparently all his feelings about the CIA go back into remission as far as she's concerned. I mean, this is a classic romantic suspense set up! You let the lack of trust on a vital mission interfere with the romance until the hero and heroine are at each other's throats. Then the untrusted does something to save the other person's life, and ta-da! We are back into romance land, as the saved person shows how grateful they are.
I can't speak to the plausibility of the plot. Maybe it's possible, and to be honest, her assessment of the cooperation, or lack thereof, between intelligence agencies in the United States? Probably not far from the truth. And she did pick something that worries the intelligence community--old nukes from the Soviet Union that have been unaccounted for. But there were some things that bothered me, like this line, for example. "After all, the Georgians had left a nuclear calling card--a rudimentary dirty bomb--in Moscow once, simply as a warning" (422).
It's near the end of the book, so suspension of disbelief is maintained up until then. But...really? That snapped me out of it, because, well, plausibility is a bit much here. And something stated that factually in a debrief by a CIA agent in the book--well, I expect it, in a book that has stuck with facts about border defense post-9/11 the whole book to stick to the facts! And let's face it, if this had actually happened, we'd have seen it out of the WikiLeak cables by now. Also, Vladimir Putin would have wiped Georgia off the face of the planet. Probably Georgia the state too, just because it had the same name.
Anyway. It's a rather disappointing read, but not so bad that I'll give up on Elizabeth Lowell completely (it's not like she's Troy Denning or anything).
Death Echo = C-
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Three months later....
1. I apologize to John Ruskin for my last post. I'm now in a pre-Raphaelite class, and he's actually pretty cool.
2. Important book news: Jim Butcher's Ghost Story has been pushed back to July. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth. However, what's this? Chapter one? My husband has some interesting theories about who the captain is.
3. In school related reading, I've recently read Tennyson: An Unquiet Heart. Very interesting, very informative. It's neat to look at Tennyson as a real person, rather than the poet laureate who was the be all end all of Victorian poetry. He was cranky, often slovenly, painfully shy, and a chronic, clinical depressive who had little ability to manage his money and who worked on his poems until, some claimed, he'd polished all the shine off them. This might explain why "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is one of my favorites--it was written in one sitting and published approximately ten days later after the Light Brigade was delivered a resounding defeat during the Crimean War.
Of course, the fact that it was quoted in an episode of Deep Space 9 ("Sacrifice of Angels") doesn't hurt either:
O'BRIEN: Cannon to left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon in front of them, volley'd and thunder'd
BASHIR: Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well into the jaws of death. Into the mouth of hell rode the six hundred.
NOG: Whatever it is the two of you are reciting, I wish you'd stop.
4. While on vacation, I picked up Nora Roberts' Happy Ever After and Elizabeth Lowell's newest, Death Echo. I read Happy Ever After first, since I was really looking forward to Death Echo more. It's good enough, and I suppose a good enough end to the quartet, but I can't help but feel that Nora Roberts needs to perhaps focus on quality, not quantity. The woman has published more than 190 books. The used bookstore where I picked it up had one entire (big) shelf devoted to just her books.
In any case, it certainly wasn't worth sixteen dollars, which was the retail price on the cover. Part of this is the fact that the book itself is larger, dimensionally speaking, I feel sure. The other is that I'm sure Nora Roberts can command sixteen dollars for one of her books, rather than the eight most other romance novelists can get for their (longer) novels. It's still a bit frustrating, and why I don't buy her books new anymore.
I will say that the first Yahoo! game based on the quartet, Vision in White, is pretty fun (though I've only played through the free trial), and it seems to follow the book pretty closely.
I'm halfway through Death Echo, and I hope to have time to read it this weekend, after I take a midterm in my pre-Raphaelite class and in French (which I hope to have done before this weekend), and after I grade papers and put together midterm grades for my students. It's a bit implausible (okay, a LOT implausible, and I would have thought that before my husband, the international security expert, had begun schooling me on what does and does not actually happen in that field), but it's entertaining, and it's fairly fast-paced, though not enough that I couldn't put it down (which we can see happened).
Still, if you're looking for an Elizabeth Lowell book to read, you can't go wrong with Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. The Rarities Unlimited books are also good, but Death Echo is probably the weakest of the St. Kilda Consulting books.
5. I did manage to pick up two books on the to-read list at Barnes and Noble, on sale, even! Sherrilyn Kenyon's No Mercy and Catherine Coulter's Whiplash. Of course, I still need to read Coulter's Knockout, which I haven't gotten to either, but is around here somewhere.
6. I'm also halfway through a weird little book called Einstein's Dreams. It's quite curious, going back and forth through different conceptions of time in the same 1905 Swiss towns. Very definitely postmodern, and very definitely weird, but I understand why it was titled the way it is. The interludes, a fictionalization of Einstein's conversations with a friend while he contemplated the theories of relativity, give it a frame that makes all the odds and ends fit together.
7. In other news, I am so glad that my brother doesn't live in Japan anymore, even though the prefecture where he studied abroad was okay. Episcopal Relief and Development is taking donations to their disaster relief fund to help over there. In the meantime, I will leave you with the prayer for Japan, added to the Daily Office for the foreseeable future.
2. Important book news: Jim Butcher's Ghost Story has been pushed back to July. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth. However, what's this? Chapter one? My husband has some interesting theories about who the captain is.
3. In school related reading, I've recently read Tennyson: An Unquiet Heart. Very interesting, very informative. It's neat to look at Tennyson as a real person, rather than the poet laureate who was the be all end all of Victorian poetry. He was cranky, often slovenly, painfully shy, and a chronic, clinical depressive who had little ability to manage his money and who worked on his poems until, some claimed, he'd polished all the shine off them. This might explain why "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is one of my favorites--it was written in one sitting and published approximately ten days later after the Light Brigade was delivered a resounding defeat during the Crimean War.
Of course, the fact that it was quoted in an episode of Deep Space 9 ("Sacrifice of Angels") doesn't hurt either:
O'BRIEN: Cannon to left of them, cannon to the right of them, cannon in front of them, volley'd and thunder'd
BASHIR: Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well into the jaws of death. Into the mouth of hell rode the six hundred.
NOG: Whatever it is the two of you are reciting, I wish you'd stop.
4. While on vacation, I picked up Nora Roberts' Happy Ever After and Elizabeth Lowell's newest, Death Echo. I read Happy Ever After first, since I was really looking forward to Death Echo more. It's good enough, and I suppose a good enough end to the quartet, but I can't help but feel that Nora Roberts needs to perhaps focus on quality, not quantity. The woman has published more than 190 books. The used bookstore where I picked it up had one entire (big) shelf devoted to just her books.
In any case, it certainly wasn't worth sixteen dollars, which was the retail price on the cover. Part of this is the fact that the book itself is larger, dimensionally speaking, I feel sure. The other is that I'm sure Nora Roberts can command sixteen dollars for one of her books, rather than the eight most other romance novelists can get for their (longer) novels. It's still a bit frustrating, and why I don't buy her books new anymore.
I will say that the first Yahoo! game based on the quartet, Vision in White, is pretty fun (though I've only played through the free trial), and it seems to follow the book pretty closely.
I'm halfway through Death Echo, and I hope to have time to read it this weekend, after I take a midterm in my pre-Raphaelite class and in French (which I hope to have done before this weekend), and after I grade papers and put together midterm grades for my students. It's a bit implausible (okay, a LOT implausible, and I would have thought that before my husband, the international security expert, had begun schooling me on what does and does not actually happen in that field), but it's entertaining, and it's fairly fast-paced, though not enough that I couldn't put it down (which we can see happened).
Still, if you're looking for an Elizabeth Lowell book to read, you can't go wrong with Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. The Rarities Unlimited books are also good, but Death Echo is probably the weakest of the St. Kilda Consulting books.
5. I did manage to pick up two books on the to-read list at Barnes and Noble, on sale, even! Sherrilyn Kenyon's No Mercy and Catherine Coulter's Whiplash. Of course, I still need to read Coulter's Knockout, which I haven't gotten to either, but is around here somewhere.
6. I'm also halfway through a weird little book called Einstein's Dreams. It's quite curious, going back and forth through different conceptions of time in the same 1905 Swiss towns. Very definitely postmodern, and very definitely weird, but I understand why it was titled the way it is. The interludes, a fictionalization of Einstein's conversations with a friend while he contemplated the theories of relativity, give it a frame that makes all the odds and ends fit together.
7. In other news, I am so glad that my brother doesn't live in Japan anymore, even though the prefecture where he studied abroad was okay. Episcopal Relief and Development is taking donations to their disaster relief fund to help over there. In the meantime, I will leave you with the prayer for Japan, added to the Daily Office for the foreseeable future.
Prayer for Japan after the Earthquake
from the Church of England
O loving Creator, bring healing and hope to those who, at this time, grieve, suffer pain, or who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. We remember those who have died and we pray for those who mourn for them. We pray for those who may be affected as the tsunami spread across the Pacific. May we all be aware of your compassion, O God, which calms our troubled hearts and shelters our anxious souls. May we pray with humility with our troubled and struggling brothers and sisters on earth. May we dare to hope that through the generosity of the privileged, the destitute might glimpse hope, warmth and life again. Through our Savior Christ who lives with us, comforts us and soothes us. Amen.
Friday, December 10, 2010
A Spenserian Stanza On the Pathetic Fallacy
The pathetic fallacy is a farce.
Ask anyone who has ever seen a dog,
Their tails wagging in the park
Or when their master comes home. Or for fog
On cat feet, is there another analog?
Or for a parakeet dancing away
To nothing more than a simple theme song?
I will attribute human feeling any day
To my natural world. Screw John Ruskin anyway.
Ask anyone who has ever seen a dog,
Their tails wagging in the park
Or when their master comes home. Or for fog
On cat feet, is there another analog?
Or for a parakeet dancing away
To nothing more than a simple theme song?
I will attribute human feeling any day
To my natural world. Screw John Ruskin anyway.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Hm.
I swore that I would not abandon this blog.
She says a month and a half from the previous entry.
To be fair, things have been nuts. Teaching, taking classes, wedding planning, dealing with my mom being sick, etc. Absolutely insane. There hasn't been a whole lot of time for reading for pleasure; to be honest, there hasn't been much time for reading for school either. Articles here, articles there, library books scattered everywhere with Post-it notes in the margins.
And in the meantime, Bergie is howling. I think he's lost in the house somewhere. But why should that be any different than normal?
Anyway. First, a couple of updates on the Kindle - I figured out how to turn off the highlighting feature, so it doesn't show other people's notes. However, I can't make the highlighting feature work consistently for my own highlights. More meddling to come. Also, the battery lasts way longer than the previously discussed three weeks. Which is awesome. I will say that, since I am using many of the free books, it paid for itself within 24 hours of me having it.
Still, some of the pricing on new books is ridiculous. I'd been looking forward to The Reckless Bride for sometime. I checked on Amazon to see how much it was for the Kindle--the same price as it was for the regular book - $7.99. (btw, what is up with book prices these days? Honestly, it's ridiculous!)
So, I bought the book at Walmart for $5.84. Much more reasonable, and I have a solid, actual book that I can loan out, read in the bathtub without much risk, and resell to Half Price Books at a later date and actually get money out of. (This is why the Kindle won't kill the book market completely.)
Speaking of, The Reckless Bride was a decent close to Stephanie Lauren's Black Cobra Quartet. It wasn't spectacular, by any means; the ending was sort of contrived. There was a nice twist to the end that I never saw coming. Also, unlike The Brazen Bride, I didn't stop and go, "Wow, there's a ridiculous amount of sex in this." More than her other novels, certainly, but not eight scenes in the first 150 pages.
Also recently read, Side Jobs by Jim Butcher.
Excuse me while I squee a little bit.
First of all, there were a ton of stories that I'd never read. Mostly because I'm too cheap to go buy an anthology of short stories when I really only want one--namely, Dresden. Second, because there was an all new novella that took place forty-five minutes after the end of Changes.
Have I mentioned that Murphy kicks copious amounts of ass?
Also, there was a little bit of Harry/Murphy romance, and that made me happy. Buy it. Read it. Now.
The only other book that I've read completely (for the first time) was Jack Stillinger's Reading The Eve of St. Agnes. It's a scholarly work on Keats' poem and was decently interesting. The man is a scholarly genius and basically did all the work for my Keats presentation for me (no joke, it has everything you could possibly want to know. I wanted to take the book to class, say "read this" and have that be my presentation). Of course, I also have to find a new way to go about writing my paper, because Stillinger has done a lot of the work already, and if there's one thing hammered into your head in English programs is to be original and to contribute to the conversation. (I'm giving you my strained grin right now. It's hard to be original and to contribute to a conversation when your head is ready to explode with all the stuff you have to do.)
(By the way, College of Graduate Studies? You suck.)
I did also finally finish Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and was immensely disappointed when I got to the end...and it was the end. The woman didn't have the decency to finish the book before she died! The main character pissed me off, because she was a doormat. She could have had everything she ever wanted if she just grew a pair and stood up for herself. No, in all seriousness, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently, Gaskell had a happy ending planned, so at least it didn't end on a completely depressing note. Still, all she was teaching her gentle readers was to be a doormat and everything will come to you.
It's a miracle we ever got the vote.
Anyway, that's a quick run down of the last month and a half of reading. Time for me to go to bed.
She says a month and a half from the previous entry.
To be fair, things have been nuts. Teaching, taking classes, wedding planning, dealing with my mom being sick, etc. Absolutely insane. There hasn't been a whole lot of time for reading for pleasure; to be honest, there hasn't been much time for reading for school either. Articles here, articles there, library books scattered everywhere with Post-it notes in the margins.
And in the meantime, Bergie is howling. I think he's lost in the house somewhere. But why should that be any different than normal?
Anyway. First, a couple of updates on the Kindle - I figured out how to turn off the highlighting feature, so it doesn't show other people's notes. However, I can't make the highlighting feature work consistently for my own highlights. More meddling to come. Also, the battery lasts way longer than the previously discussed three weeks. Which is awesome. I will say that, since I am using many of the free books, it paid for itself within 24 hours of me having it.
Still, some of the pricing on new books is ridiculous. I'd been looking forward to The Reckless Bride for sometime. I checked on Amazon to see how much it was for the Kindle--the same price as it was for the regular book - $7.99. (btw, what is up with book prices these days? Honestly, it's ridiculous!)
So, I bought the book at Walmart for $5.84. Much more reasonable, and I have a solid, actual book that I can loan out, read in the bathtub without much risk, and resell to Half Price Books at a later date and actually get money out of. (This is why the Kindle won't kill the book market completely.)
Speaking of, The Reckless Bride was a decent close to Stephanie Lauren's Black Cobra Quartet. It wasn't spectacular, by any means; the ending was sort of contrived. There was a nice twist to the end that I never saw coming. Also, unlike The Brazen Bride, I didn't stop and go, "Wow, there's a ridiculous amount of sex in this." More than her other novels, certainly, but not eight scenes in the first 150 pages.
Also recently read, Side Jobs by Jim Butcher.
Excuse me while I squee a little bit.
First of all, there were a ton of stories that I'd never read. Mostly because I'm too cheap to go buy an anthology of short stories when I really only want one--namely, Dresden. Second, because there was an all new novella that took place forty-five minutes after the end of Changes.
Have I mentioned that Murphy kicks copious amounts of ass?
Also, there was a little bit of Harry/Murphy romance, and that made me happy. Buy it. Read it. Now.
The only other book that I've read completely (for the first time) was Jack Stillinger's Reading The Eve of St. Agnes. It's a scholarly work on Keats' poem and was decently interesting. The man is a scholarly genius and basically did all the work for my Keats presentation for me (no joke, it has everything you could possibly want to know. I wanted to take the book to class, say "read this" and have that be my presentation). Of course, I also have to find a new way to go about writing my paper, because Stillinger has done a lot of the work already, and if there's one thing hammered into your head in English programs is to be original and to contribute to the conversation. (I'm giving you my strained grin right now. It's hard to be original and to contribute to a conversation when your head is ready to explode with all the stuff you have to do.)
(By the way, College of Graduate Studies? You suck.)
I did also finally finish Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and was immensely disappointed when I got to the end...and it was the end. The woman didn't have the decency to finish the book before she died! The main character pissed me off, because she was a doormat. She could have had everything she ever wanted if she just grew a pair and stood up for herself. No, in all seriousness, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently, Gaskell had a happy ending planned, so at least it didn't end on a completely depressing note. Still, all she was teaching her gentle readers was to be a doormat and everything will come to you.
It's a miracle we ever got the vote.
Anyway, that's a quick run down of the last month and a half of reading. Time for me to go to bed.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
I am remiss, I know.
Yes, I am aware that it's been a month and a half since I blogged here. But here is what's gone on since August 30th.
1. I moved.
2. As a consequence of that moving, I spent two weeks without internet at home. Cue gnashing and wailing of teeth.
3. School started.
4. As a consequence of school starting, I started teaching again--two sections of ENGL 1010, and I'm teaching it in a way much differently than I taught ENG 101 at Eastern, so I'm having to kind of wade my way through a new teaching philosophy and how it works in practice.
5. Mom has gotten much worse. She goes back to the neurologist on Monday. We have given up hoping for better news and are simply hoping for not worse.
6. My baby brother turned 17.
7. My car broke down ten miles outside of Hazard, aka five hours from Murfreesboro. Fortunately, I have some awesome in-laws-to-be who took care of all of this.
8. Fall TV season started. Hello, NCIS, how I have missed you.
9. I got a Kindle.
10. I don't really have a ten, but it seemed odd to stop the list at nine.
I realize that it's not much of an excuse, but whatever. My blog.
But this is a book blog, so let's get to the bookery!
Q. What is the coolest piece of booktech out there? A. Amazon's WiFi Kindle!
My friend, our favorite Snarky Writer, has a Nook, which I gave serious consideration to. But here's a comparison of the two, which I think will explain why I prefer the Kindle.
1. The actual machine. The Kindle's outside is a dark gray, just textured enough to keep light from reflecting off it. The Nook, by comparison, has a high gloss finish that I find distracting. The Kindle is also slightly smaller and lighter than the Nook.
2. The buttons and keyboard. The Nook does have an advantage on the Kindle with the regular screen at the bottom, giving a touch screen that lets you flip through books much like you might albums on an iPod touch. However, the Kindle has a full QWERTY keyboard instead. It's not big enough to type, but you have distinct buttons, which make it easier to type notes.
Furthermore, the side buttons to flip pages are smaller on the Kindle. I think this makes it a little easier to hold than the Nook without the risk of flipping pages.
3. The screen. Both the Nook and the Kindle feature e-ink technology, and can be read in direct sunlight. I haven't been able to compare refresh rates side by side, so I can't tell which moves faster.
4. The content. Barnes and Noble has over 1 million books available for the Nook. In comparison, the Kindle has 1.8 million free out-of-copyright (pre-1929) books. When it comes to .pdfs, however, B&N has the advantage so far. Both SW and I have been attempting to download .pdf files to our respective e-readers for class. I can open .pdfs from places like JSTOR fairly easily, but .pdfs of scanned books, etc. don't show up well--if at all. The Kindle, at least, also doesn't have any magnification ability for .pdfs, so heaven help you if you have bad eyesight. The Nook also has some trouble opening these scanned .pdfs, but SW has been able to open files I haven't. Still, when it comes to doing dissertation research, I think I'll save a lot of trees this way.
5. Memory. The newest iteration of the Kindle can hold up to 3500 books. The Nook, by contrast, holds 1500. Still, both B&N and Amazon let you delete books from the device, and your purchase history is saved, letting you download the book again if you would like at a later date.
6. Power. The Nook's charge will last for 10 days with wireless turned off. The Kindle will last for three weeks with wireless on and a month with it off.
7. Price. The Kindle's WiFi version is $139, and 3G is $189. B&N's WiFi is $149 and 3G is $199. I did go ahead and invest in the two year service agreement, which I normally don't do, but I think it's worth it in this case.
For me, the Kindle was the best choice, despite the fact that I often abhor some of Amazon's business practices and the fact that I love Barnes and Noble as a store--I'm a member of B&N, and I'd much rather buy a book in the store than order it from Amazon--not to mention that if you go to the counter at a B&N and ask them to order a book for you, there's no shipping and handling, and many of those books are in within five business days, well before Amazon's free shipping would get it to you (even if you live right outside the Amazon distribution center, which I have).
All my rhapsodizing aside, there are some things that still need fixed/updated. The first is the page turning buttons, which aren't necessarily intuitive. A flip forward button and a flip backward button are on both sides, the forward button being bigger on the bottom and the backward being smaller on top. Still, I keep trying to use the left flip forward button to flip backward, and I think this might be more intuitive, at least for readers of English.
.pdfs need more support, zoom, and a scrolling ability so you can scroll down a single, zoomed in page.
The Kindle's voice features, which reads books aloud to you, still needs a little work. Don't get me wrong, it sounds more like a human voice and less like Stephen Hawking's computer than anything I've heard yet, and they've made massive improvements. This I expect to see improve as voice technology improves, not something Amazon or B&N can necessarily take care of.
Highlighting. The Kindle shows frequently highlighted passages, with the option to see how many people have highlighted that passage. Even if you select the option to hide how many people have highlighted a certain passage, you still have a little message at the bottom of the screen that tells you that you can go see how many people have highlighted the passage, and I find that both distracting and annoying. Amazon needs to add the option to turn off where other people have been highlighting - not just the message, but the highlight itself. (Fortunately, they do offer an option to share your own highlights or keep them private. While highlighting statistics seem to be anonymous, I don't really want to contribute to that.) I understand how this could be helpful to students at a lower division level, but I'm in graduate school. AND it disrupts pleasure reading more than a little.
Organizing. Trying to add books to certain categories is more than a little difficult, because when you add books, it shows every book on the Kindle, not just the ones that haven't been categorized yet. Amazon needs to add an option that would allow you to toggle between these.
So, there you go, my review of the newest booktech. For me, it's hands down the Kindle. Next time, I'll talk a little about what I've been reading on the Kindle so far (read: Ph.D. preliminary exam material--much of which is free from Amazon.)
1. I moved.
2. As a consequence of that moving, I spent two weeks without internet at home. Cue gnashing and wailing of teeth.
3. School started.
4. As a consequence of school starting, I started teaching again--two sections of ENGL 1010, and I'm teaching it in a way much differently than I taught ENG 101 at Eastern, so I'm having to kind of wade my way through a new teaching philosophy and how it works in practice.
5. Mom has gotten much worse. She goes back to the neurologist on Monday. We have given up hoping for better news and are simply hoping for not worse.
6. My baby brother turned 17.
7. My car broke down ten miles outside of Hazard, aka five hours from Murfreesboro. Fortunately, I have some awesome in-laws-to-be who took care of all of this.
8. Fall TV season started. Hello, NCIS, how I have missed you.
9. I got a Kindle.
10. I don't really have a ten, but it seemed odd to stop the list at nine.
I realize that it's not much of an excuse, but whatever. My blog.
But this is a book blog, so let's get to the bookery!
Q. What is the coolest piece of booktech out there? A. Amazon's WiFi Kindle!
My friend, our favorite Snarky Writer, has a Nook, which I gave serious consideration to. But here's a comparison of the two, which I think will explain why I prefer the Kindle.
1. The actual machine. The Kindle's outside is a dark gray, just textured enough to keep light from reflecting off it. The Nook, by comparison, has a high gloss finish that I find distracting. The Kindle is also slightly smaller and lighter than the Nook.
2. The buttons and keyboard. The Nook does have an advantage on the Kindle with the regular screen at the bottom, giving a touch screen that lets you flip through books much like you might albums on an iPod touch. However, the Kindle has a full QWERTY keyboard instead. It's not big enough to type, but you have distinct buttons, which make it easier to type notes.
Furthermore, the side buttons to flip pages are smaller on the Kindle. I think this makes it a little easier to hold than the Nook without the risk of flipping pages.
3. The screen. Both the Nook and the Kindle feature e-ink technology, and can be read in direct sunlight. I haven't been able to compare refresh rates side by side, so I can't tell which moves faster.
4. The content. Barnes and Noble has over 1 million books available for the Nook. In comparison, the Kindle has 1.8 million free out-of-copyright (pre-1929) books. When it comes to .pdfs, however, B&N has the advantage so far. Both SW and I have been attempting to download .pdf files to our respective e-readers for class. I can open .pdfs from places like JSTOR fairly easily, but .pdfs of scanned books, etc. don't show up well--if at all. The Kindle, at least, also doesn't have any magnification ability for .pdfs, so heaven help you if you have bad eyesight. The Nook also has some trouble opening these scanned .pdfs, but SW has been able to open files I haven't. Still, when it comes to doing dissertation research, I think I'll save a lot of trees this way.
5. Memory. The newest iteration of the Kindle can hold up to 3500 books. The Nook, by contrast, holds 1500. Still, both B&N and Amazon let you delete books from the device, and your purchase history is saved, letting you download the book again if you would like at a later date.
6. Power. The Nook's charge will last for 10 days with wireless turned off. The Kindle will last for three weeks with wireless on and a month with it off.
7. Price. The Kindle's WiFi version is $139, and 3G is $189. B&N's WiFi is $149 and 3G is $199. I did go ahead and invest in the two year service agreement, which I normally don't do, but I think it's worth it in this case.
For me, the Kindle was the best choice, despite the fact that I often abhor some of Amazon's business practices and the fact that I love Barnes and Noble as a store--I'm a member of B&N, and I'd much rather buy a book in the store than order it from Amazon--not to mention that if you go to the counter at a B&N and ask them to order a book for you, there's no shipping and handling, and many of those books are in within five business days, well before Amazon's free shipping would get it to you (even if you live right outside the Amazon distribution center, which I have).
All my rhapsodizing aside, there are some things that still need fixed/updated. The first is the page turning buttons, which aren't necessarily intuitive. A flip forward button and a flip backward button are on both sides, the forward button being bigger on the bottom and the backward being smaller on top. Still, I keep trying to use the left flip forward button to flip backward, and I think this might be more intuitive, at least for readers of English.
.pdfs need more support, zoom, and a scrolling ability so you can scroll down a single, zoomed in page.
The Kindle's voice features, which reads books aloud to you, still needs a little work. Don't get me wrong, it sounds more like a human voice and less like Stephen Hawking's computer than anything I've heard yet, and they've made massive improvements. This I expect to see improve as voice technology improves, not something Amazon or B&N can necessarily take care of.
Highlighting. The Kindle shows frequently highlighted passages, with the option to see how many people have highlighted that passage. Even if you select the option to hide how many people have highlighted a certain passage, you still have a little message at the bottom of the screen that tells you that you can go see how many people have highlighted the passage, and I find that both distracting and annoying. Amazon needs to add the option to turn off where other people have been highlighting - not just the message, but the highlight itself. (Fortunately, they do offer an option to share your own highlights or keep them private. While highlighting statistics seem to be anonymous, I don't really want to contribute to that.) I understand how this could be helpful to students at a lower division level, but I'm in graduate school. AND it disrupts pleasure reading more than a little.
Organizing. Trying to add books to certain categories is more than a little difficult, because when you add books, it shows every book on the Kindle, not just the ones that haven't been categorized yet. Amazon needs to add an option that would allow you to toggle between these.
So, there you go, my review of the newest booktech. For me, it's hands down the Kindle. Next time, I'll talk a little about what I've been reading on the Kindle so far (read: Ph.D. preliminary exam material--much of which is free from Amazon.)
Monday, August 23, 2010
My dad is a fanboy.
Me: *placidly quilting and watching Buffy*
Dad: *comes in from work* What are you watching?
Me: Buffy. Spike's come back and Buffy's about to kick his ass.
Dad: Ah.
Few minutes later:
Dad: Is he trying to bite Willow?
Me: O.o? Do who with the what now? Whaaaaa? Willow?
Dad: What? I can't know my pop culture?
Me: *facepalm*
Dad: *comes in from work* What are you watching?
Me: Buffy. Spike's come back and Buffy's about to kick his ass.
Dad: Ah.
Few minutes later:
Dad: Is he trying to bite Willow?
Me: O.o? Do who with the what now? Whaaaaa? Willow?
Dad: What? I can't know my pop culture?
Me: *facepalm*
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