Category: Out of the Box Blogs

Anything that doesn’t have to do with books and reviews

Out of the Box Blogs

My Love/Hate of Ebooks

debra

First of all, I have a love relationship with my Kindle Fire and my ebooks.  Sometimes, I am a mood reader which is why I keep a couple of books going at a time.  With my Kindle, I can take it with me and have many books available if I am in a mood for something particular.  I enjoy the portability of having lots of my books available to me while only carrying a few ounces of weight.  However, I also have a hate relationship with some ebooks I have gotten over the years.

I started reading ebooks before ereaders were common place among us.  At that time, I downloaded the books from ebooks sites generally in PDF formats.  I still have them, have converted them using Calibre and moved them to my Kindle.  When I got my first Kindle (keyboard generation and still my favorite although it died), I got a lot of inexpensive ebooks from new authors or authors who had not been traditionally published and had opted for self-publishing. Before continuing, I want to say that I have found some authors this way that I love and am very happy with.  However, I have also noted many problems with these types of ebooks.  My pet peeves:  bad grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc.  Kid you not, I purchased an ebook from an indie author that had a sentence in it wherein the lead character went to one of the tropical island paradises and the author mentioned the name of the capital city.  Immediately after the capital city’s name was a set of parenthesis with a question mark in them, so we had the name and then (?) behind it.  My only thought was that I did not have a problem with the author in their draft not being sure of the name of the capital and leaving herself a note to check it out, but then it was published with the question mark still there!  Really?  I don’t remember now if I checked to see if the name of the capital city was accurate, but at that point, I did not care.  More than once, I have screamed, “Where is the editing in this book?”   I certainly do not mind the occasional error—it happens.  Nobody is perfect.  But repetitive errors in the same book are not acceptable to me when I pay hard-earned money for a book.

I need to stop ranting now.  Seriously, I love ebooks, but I feel that the industry has a lot of work to do.

To Be Continued.

Happy Reading,

debra

Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs

Whiny main characters RANT

Les

So, have you ever read a story where the main character is a girl who does nothing but whine? I know you have. Nothing gets on my nerves more than a main character talking about how they can take care of themselves, and then BAM they get into trouble and they are crying for help. Either stop talking crap about how brave and capable you are, or grow a pair and save yourself. Why do they make girls like this? Rarely do you read stories of guys like this. Don’t get me wrong I have found a few, but not as many. This by the way makes me even more angry. 

Ok rant over. Comment, and tell me what you think or if you think I am wrong. 
Peace

Les

Out of the Box Blogs

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow

Karen

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This book is set hundreds of years in the future where AI’s dominate and human rulers give up they children as hostages to keep peace. I know it’s a short blurb but this book had so much potential, it was different and fascinating to me, so much so that I skipping it ahead in my TBR list so I could read it, only to be disappointed. Here is why.

You basically are following a girl Greta, one of the hostage children as she lives her obedient and annoying life. She’s just so boring! Surprise, I didn’t like her. Telling me she’s going to wake up and do something and her actually doing it, two different things. Sorry she just seemed so flat! By the time some action did occur I was going through the motions, no longer engaged in the story, Nothing about it really got interesting it just stayed bland for me. Even reviewing this book I feel kind of meh, like why bother.

Concept? Amazing. Executing? Terrible. I would not recommend this read.

Books, great reads, Out of the Box Blogs, Reviews

Wishing for You by Elizabeth Langston

Les

Hey peeps!

So this is the sequel to “I Wish”. Don’t kill me, I know I said I would be done with this one a lot sooner. I had some issues with putting it down and really struggled with myself to pick it back up. But alas I am done.

Please understand, this is a well written and a great book. Me having to put it down was in no way the books fault. There were some things going on in this book that hit close to home. To me some parts seemed repetitive to the first one and it wasn’t turning out like I hoped it would. Not that it wasn’t turning out as it should, but not what I wanted to happen. (We all know it is all about what I want, right?)

So in this book the kick ass genie Grant is now with Kimberly to help her with her issues. As usual he does a great job helping her become independent and self sufficient. She has so many different traumatic things happening in her life and she is a force that rises above each time. I like her more than I did Lacey. I am extremely happy with the ending. I wish Lacey would have had a different outcome, but I understand why it is how it is. All in all I would give this book 4 stars.

Rating explanation: the things I felt were repetative and also because sometimes it felt like it was dragging to me. But this is a pretty long book to span the 30 days they spend with the genie and an epilogue of sorts. But it was well written and the characters were well defined.

So check it out, but read the first book first.

Peace,

Leslie