Found this gem on my Facebook page. It’s a tank mobile book give away vehicle from an artist in Argentina, Raul Lemesoff. He gives away the books for free as long as people agree to read them. Honestly, he looks a little crazy, but also like he’s having the time of his life. [via Bored Panda]
Go to this link to watch a video about the making of the book machine and a little more about the artist himself. Unfortunately I can’t embed the video, but go to the link, you wont be sorry!
I was looking for a fun light read, and after browsing through the children’s mystery section at my library ebooks/audiobook website I settled on Floors by Patrick Carman narrated by Jesse Bernstein.
The Whippet Hotel is a strange place full of strange and mysterious people. Each floor has its own quirks and secrets. Leo should know most of them – he is the maintenance man’s son, after all. But a whole lot more mystery gets thrown his way when a series of cryptic boxes are left for him . . . boxes that lead him to hidden floors, strange puzzles, and unexpected alliances. Leo had better be quick on his feet, because the fate of the building he loves is at stake . . . and so is Leo’s own future!
I really enjoyed this book. I’m a big fan of books that revolve around children exploring a particular place. One of my favorites is From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. Floors has a lot of similarities to The Mixed-Up Files. First, the child protagonist is relatable. In The Mixed-Up Files, Claudia runs away from home because she feels misunderstood by her parents. Like Claudia, Leo’s motivation for his adventures is understandable. He desires to help his father keep his job at the hotel.
Secondly, the child protagonist has a sense of adventure and wonder that helps keep my own alive. In The Mixed-Up Files Claudia chooses to runaway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City because she wants to live in a place of beauty and wonder. When she discovers a mystery at the museum she can’t help but be drawn in by her natural curiosity. In the same way, Leo is drawn into a mystery in the Whippet Hotel a place of full of strange curiosities because he can’t let a cryptic box puzzle go unsolved.
Which leads into my third point, that the child protagonist in each story uses practical resources at their disposal to solve the mystery. In the Mixed-Up Files Claudia and her brother go bathing in a wishing well to pick up coins and use them to buy necessities, and after hours sneak around the museum searching for clues. In Floors, Leo uses his new found ally and his knowledge of the hotel to solve puzzles and search for clues without getting caught.
Jesse Bernstein is a fine narrator. He has narrated a lot of children’s and young adult books and his voice lends itself to that wonder and sense of adventure. Some of his voices were not that distinguishable, but that did not hinder my enjoyment of the book.
If you want a decent mystery (that you will probably figure out some of) set in a place of wonder, strange happenings, and full tilt excitement, check out Floors by Patrick Carman.
The third installment in Evanovich’s Lizzy & Diesel series, Wicked Charms, is as wickedly charming as the title suggests. This is a review of the third book in the series, so spoilers! If you want to read about the first two books, you can check out my review of Wicked Appetite here and Wicked Business here.
First, I must mention I am completely biased to like Evanovich’s work. She remains funny through out the years and series. No matter what bad mood I’m in her heroines antics will always cheer me up, and for that I am grateful and probably a little blind to some of the cliches and some times lack of development of character that tend to happen in some of her series. For me, her books are more about the capers and less about relating to yet another female character who can’t make up her mind if she likes someone or not. So when I saw that this book was available in audio version from the library, and that Lorelei King was the narrator, I downloaded it as fast as my fingers could tap at my screen. It was everything I was hoping for, fun, laughter, interesting plot twist, zany characters, and delicious sounding food.
Murdered and mummified more than ninety years ago, bootlegger Collier “Peg Leg” Dazzle once found and re-hid a famous pirate’s treasure somewhere along the coast of New England. A vast collection of gold and silver coins and precious gems, the bounty also contains the Stone of Avarice — the very item reluctant treasure seeker, Lizzy Tucker, and her partner, Diesel, have been enlisted to find. While Lizzy would just like to live a quiet, semi-normal life, Diesel is all about the hunt. And this hunt is going to require a genuine treasure map and a ship worthy of sailing the seven seas . . . or at least getting them from Salem Harbor to Maine.
Greed is eternal and insatiable, and Lizzy and Diesel aren’t the only ones searching for the lost pirate’s chest. There are people who have dedicated their entire lives to finding it, and are willing to commit murder or make a deal with the devil, just to hold the fortune in their hands. One of those people may even be Wulf, Diesel’s deceptively charming and enigmatic cousin. Wulf desires the Stone of Avarice. He also desires Lizzy. It’s hard to say how far he’s willing to go to gain either one.
It’s a swashbuckling adventure full of raiders, monkeys, minions, and mayhem. Lizzy and Diesel are going to have to do everything they can to keep their heads above water and hope they are living a charmed life.
I really like how each of these books has had a completely different type of mystery which ties into and relates back to the over all story arch of finding the seven deadly sins stones. (Which means there are four more books planned for this series!) I particularly enjoyed this mystery with the precious gems, treasure map, and a pirate reenactor who can’t stop speaking like a pirate. There was a lot of action with spelunking and boat chases thrown into the mix.
Interestingly enough Lizzie’s career also takes a turn as she gets an offer from a business tycoon to become the face of a brand. Of course I was yelling at Lizzie while driving home one evening to get a lawyer to read the contract before… yeup, signed it. Dammit Lizzie! I know your desperate for a cash influx, but you can spend a small percentage of the upfront money to make sure you aren’t getting screwed over. Bagh.
Not so surprisingly Lizzie and Diesel’s relationship progresses. I’m not too keen on this relationship. It would be one thing is Lizzie seemed like the kind of person who wanted casual relationships, but she doesn’t, she just seems to be going with the flow instead of figuring out what it is she wants from a relationship and going for that. One of my complaints about Evanovich’s characters is that they have a hard time deciding what they want. If Lizzie wanted casual relationships and went for them, kudos to her, I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with indecision become a decision over and over again.
I loved listening to this as an audio book, but then Lorelei King is just perfect for the job. One of the reason’s I was keep to try this as an audio and not just pick it up in paper format like I had for the other two books in the series is that I recognized her as the narrator from another audio book series and enjoyed her acting abilities in that one as well. She has clearly distinct voices for characters without going overboard and pulling me out of the story. What is so amazing is that her incarnations of the characters are so close to the way I already thought of them that I never once wished I had picked this book in another format. Sometimes this happens when I’ve started a series in a different format, but not with Lorelei King.
If you are looking for a funny light read about a pirate treasure, uncertain romance, that includes monkeys a magic 8 ball and cupcakes, check out the Lizzy & Diesel series by Janet Evanovich.
I know it has been a while since I posted. I’ve had a very busy summer and fall with my new job, but things are leveling out and I’ll be able to devote more time to writing up reviews and posting geeky finds. I’ve been reading away like the Dickens because my commute is atrocious and the only thing keeping me slightly sane is audio books. I say slightly, because, in spite of really good stories, the horrible drivers that constantly put everyone’s life in danger are frequent enough to cause panic attacks and I long for the days when public transportation was a viable option for my work commute. Blech.
Anyway, onto things that are a bit more fun. Like audio books and the ability to borrow them from the library. 🙂
Glass Houses by Rachel Caine is part of the The Morganville Vampires series. While told from Claire Danvers point of view, there are three other main characters, Michael Glass, Shane Collins, and Eve Rosser. Claire is a bright student who is in college at the age of 16 in small school in Texas (yes, this is why I chose the book). She is being bullied by her dorm mates and so decides to move into off campus student housing with some other older kids where she finds out the sleepy little Texas town is hiding some dangerous secrets.
I thought the college town full of vampires was a fun concept and enjoyed Claire’s story. I like how the book is not just another urban fantasy novel, but also deals with complex relationships between the four friends and with Claire and her bully. I did not like that Claire was 16. It needlessly complicates things and, in my opinion, makes Claire another kid who should tell her parents what is going on instead of trying to handle things on her own. She has loving, smart parents who are concerned about her and she just ignores them. These things do not make her the best role model.
But the story is interesting and I do like other things about Claire and her friends. They are smart, they try to do the right thing, and help each other out. It does get annoying that they do not always go about it the right way. In an attempt to “help” Claire one of the guys traps her in a secret room to talk to her. All he does is talking, but the trapping thing is a huge red flag. I hope that as the series progresses they learn from their mistakes and become better human beings who use their smarts to actually do the smart, right thing.
Edit: This book was read by Cynthia Halloway. Cynthia did a good job, though her male characters sounded more alike than her female characters, she read with good inflection and dramatization of events.
I was looking for something different when I came across The Chase by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg and read by Scott Brick. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of young adult fantasy and I thought and adult contemporary novel would be a nice palate cleanser. I was right. The Chase was just what I wanted to read next as I listened for 9 hours, 7 minutes, to Scott Brick tell the adventures of FBI Special Agent Kate O’Hare and one time con man Nicolas Fox.
Internationally renowned thief and con artist Nicolas Fox runs daring cons, now teams undercover for FBI with agent who caught him, Kate O’Hare. Together they catch the world’s most wanted—and untouchable—criminals, next Carter Grove, former White House chief of staff, now ruthless leader of Black Rhino private security for a rare Chinese rooster from the Smithsonian.
Like all Janet Evanovich books, The Chase, which is the second book in the series, was a hilarious romp of various capers and eccentric characters. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was funny, had some clever moments, and was exactly what I expected to read when I chose the book. I didn’t have as many laugh out loud moments as in previous books. This was in part because a couple of Kate’s father’s cronies show up and they were rather reminiscent of various characters in other Evanovich books that I didn’t find their addition to the novel to be all that necessary or new. I will admit there were some tired moments in the book, but over all I found myself enjoying the adventures of Kate and Nicolas.
Part of my discontent with the book was due to listening rather than reading it myself. Maybe I read sarcasm into the characters more than is warranted, but Scott Brick’s choice of no sarcasm in the voice acting characterization of Kate and Nicolas left me a bit baffled. I think it may be because I read the first novel and had my own character voices going that Brick’s skewed slightly away from what I was expecting and that was an internal disappointment others wont experience. I’m not saying he did a bad job, because he did an excellent one, it just wasn’t what my head thought it was going to hear.
While I enjoyed listening to The Chase, if I pick up the third in the series, it will be a paper version that I’ll read quietly laughing to myself.
In search again for a series that I could enjoy listening to, I decided to give The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Oz Series, Book 1 a radio dramatization by The Colonial Radio Theatre a try. I read the books when I was younger, but it has been a while. I remember liking the first few quite a bit, and then petering off as the author, L. Frank Baum, got heavier and heavier handed with his message to the reader. The version by The Colonial Radio Theatre was adapted for the dramatization by Jerry Robbins, performed by Jerry Robbins and The Colonial Radio Players.
Summary from Brilliance Audio:
One of the true classics of American literature. Originally published in 1900, it was the first truly American fairy tale, as Baum crafted a wonderful fantasy, peopled with memorable characters — a cornfield scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and a humbug wizard. Follow the adventures of young Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto, as their Kansas house is swept away by a cyclone and they find themselves in a strange land called Oz. Here she meets the Munchkins and joins the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion on an unforgettable journey to the Emerald City.
Jerry Robbins did a fair job with his adaption for dramatization. I felt it closely resembled the book, at least from what I can remember. Which may surprise some people as the movie definitely veered away in some aspects. I also quite enjoyed the multiple voice over actors speaking the different parts, that is always far more enjoyable I find. I did have a hard time with the minimization of narration. Often the characters would say things I thought would be better suited for a narration. It was more like a play with a small narrator part than a book being read.
Of course as a dramatization by a theater group, I probably should have expected this. Perhaps, it is because I have Neil Gaiman’s, American Gods on constant repeat as I fall asleep, but I expect a great deal from dramatizations and voice over acting. I find very few productions live up to that particular audiobook. A book that I have found a greater and greater appreciation for the more times I listen to it. You can read my review here.
If you are looking for a family friendly fun theater dramatization of first book in The Wizard of Oz series The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as radio dramatized by The Colonial Radio Theatre is an excellent choice. Plus they did several books in the series, which I may eventually get back to when I’m done with my current selections.
Recently I was contacted by Jeff Deck co-author of The Great Typo Hunt, which was one of my very early reviews on this website. You can read my review of The Great Typo Hunt here. Jeff sent me a free copy of his newest creation, his eBook Player Choice, in exchange for an honest review.
It’s 2040. With neural implants, people can play games in an immersive virtual reality known as the aether space. Game designer Glen Cullather has a plan for the most ambitious aether game ever imagined: a fantasy epic that gives players the freedom to do anything.
But Glen’s own life is fragmenting into alternate realities. He can’t tell whether his aether game idea has succeeded, or failed miserably. And Freya Janoske is either his biggest rival, or his most intimate partner. Glen must figure out what’s real and what’s, well, fantasy—for his own survival.
Player Choice is a fast-paced gaming sci-fi adventure that dares to ask:
What happens when unreality becomes our reality?
The book is divided into two very distinct parts. The first part is about Glen’s very real alternate realities that are akin to reading about some very lucid dreams. The question is which one is real. Like lucid dreams there are some really real and emotional moments that make it hard to decipher what is happening, but like Glen I knew something was up and while I figured out mostly what was going on, I didn’t quite figure out everything. Which, as we all know, I enjoy immensely. I also enjoy reading about, discussing, and researching lucid dreaming, so this was definitely my favorite part of the book.
Part of the message that Glen is trying to tell in his games is about player choice besides violence and human agency. But Glen has almost no agency in his own life. In fact, I really didn’t like his character at all for quite a bit. He’s that guy. The guy that thinks every single romantic female wants to cut away at his manhood. Just because he fantasizes about her, she must be who he thinks she is. He has no idea how to socially interact with anyone except for two people, and even then after years of friendship, he has hidden huge areas of his life from them. Yet, he expects everyone to respect him. This is the guy I’ve avoided all my life. Glen is unable to express anything except through anger or leaving. His interests must be everyone’s interests. How he sees the world is how it is. Introspection is for the weak. Yes, real healthy there Glen. Thankfully, Glen does learn a lesson or two and by the end of the first part I could at least stand him if not completely empathize with him. His choices led to where he is, and he has to deal with those consequences.
The second part of the book delves into Glen’s gaming world, the one that he created. I’ll be honest, not my favorite part of the book. But, I’m not the worlds biggest gamer. So reading about, what I’ll admit is a very cool gaming world, wasn’t as exciting for me as the lucid dreaming like part. I think people who are gamers, will really enjoy this part of the book. Jeff has definitely built a cool game in Glen’s world and the game has nuances that make it interesting on a deeper level than just conquering bosses. It was interesting, but I was looking for human interest pieces in among the gaming. Glen’s relationship with his girlfriend was interesting and Glen’s past was interesting. I wish there had been more of that than of the gaming, but that is just the type of thing I enjoy more personally.
Glen’s past is rather sordid. He has a lot of family issues. Which are usually the points of a book I really enjoy. I did have one minor issue and that was Glen’s relationship with his sister. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it is not a healthy relationship, and may even need a trigger warning that it is of very adult non-healthy relationship issue. I think such things do need to be talked about, and dealt with and definitely fiction is an avenue for that discussion. But I don’t think gaming is therapy. Glen did not deal with his “coming to terms” with their relationship in a way that is conducive to him actually healing from it. He goes from one emotion about it to the next without any real introspective reflection or decision about what is healthy for him. I also believe it takes more than a few days to heal from something like that and while it is definitely a very good start that Glen started talking about his past with his friends, it is just that, a start.
I wish authors would create some sort of sci fi/ fantasy universal health center that they would periodically send their characters to so that people who read these books could see a way of dealing with emotions that isn’t slashing at them with magical swords or dousing them in potions. Take Harry Potter for example, that is one character that really needs some sort of therapy. I could name a ton billion trillion characters like that. I know this is one of my personal soap boxes, so other people who read this book may not have the same reaction.
What I do think is telling, is that I had a reaction. I like books that strike up an emotional feeling and engage me in the world that I am reading. Jeff has definitely written such a book. As a side note, Jeff’s grammar past has definitely done him some good. I’ve read a few self-published books recently and his is definitely formatted the best, and didn’t have any typos or grammar mistakes that I caught. It was quite refreshing! If you want to give Player Choice a try, check it out on Amazon where it is free! I assume that is for a limited time, so hurry up and head on over there.
Player Choice leads the reader down dream like paths into alternative realities and worlds that will make them reexamine their own choices and agency.
I downloaded The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (as read by the author himself) via Audible with a free credit. I’m quite a fan of Gaiman, so when I was searching for an audio book I am always drawn to his stories and discovered this one.
Sussex, England: A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. He is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet sitting by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean), the unremembered past comes flooding back. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie – magical, comforting, wise beyond her years – promised to protect him, no matter what.
One of the reasons that I am constantly downloading audiobooks is that I like to listen to stories as I fall asleep at night as well as listen to them as I drive around town. I started The Ocean at the End of the Lane and immediately found myself drawn to this strange otherworldly tale, at times scary and intense, always imaginative and all consuming. But soon discovered this is not a good bed time story. I would lie there at night as Chris slept soundly beside me, wide awake staring at my phone to caught up in the story, too scared to stop the story, too frightened to keep going. I would pause it, try to drift off, then worried about the boy, sit up and start it again. Restless I started a different audiobook and drifted off to sleep within a matter of minutes.
This is not a book to try to fall asleep to.
Like his other stories, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is full of strange mythologies interwoven with such relatable characters that I was pulled into the story, sucked in, and had to fight to find my way out again. Though the main part of the story happens in a man’s past when he is quite young, it is not a story for children. At the same time, Gaiman is able to capture the voice of a young boy, reminding me of how I used to view the world, that I began to recall my own childhood, well, at least all the scary moments of growing up.
As I’ve come to expect from Gaiman, his prose is wonderful and wonderfully read by himself. The pacing of Gaiman’s writing is beyond compare and I never step outside the story to wonder what will happen because I am always entranced by what is happening, in that moment. Some times so engulfed in the story that I can’t sleep. Gaiman has such an amazing talent for voice acting that I have come to love the stories he reads himself. Just the other day I was in a bookstore and discovered a book of his I have yet to read, but didn’t pick it up because I want to find out if it is an audiobook instead. My queue in Audible is full of books by Gaiman and I don’t see that discontinuing any time soon.
I realize that my review more describes my experience reading this book than what it is about, but as far as I can tell, this is the best way to review this book. For one, to describe the story would be to ruin the magic of the tale, anything more said than the blurb ruins the world building and character building that Gaiman worked hard to create. Secondly, I’m not alone in my experiential review of this book. Patrick Rothfuss’ own meandering love story about this book is more about his experience of reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane than a typical review.
This is a story to experience. So, go out there and find your experience. Buy a copy, listen to the audiobook, fall in love with Gaiman just a little bit more.
Clicking on the second and third pictures will take you to posts that have even more pictures of book quotes.
I downloaded Better Off Dead (Lily Harper Series) by H. P. Mallory onto my AmazonKindle app because it was free and looked interesting.
If there’s such a thing as luck, Lily Harper definitely doesn’t have it.
Killed in a car accident before it’s her time to go, Lily learns that the hereafter isn’t exactly what she hoped it might be.
First, there’s AfterLife Enterprises, the company responsible for sorting out the recently dead and sending them on their way to the Kingdom, (aka happily ever after,) or to the Underground City, (not so happily ever after.)
Learning that Lily’s death was indirectly their fault (her guardian angel, Bill, was MIA during her accident and was one of their employees,) Afterlife Enterprises offers Lily the chance to live again.
But, as with most things involving the afterlife, beware the fine print. Most notably, Lily will become a soul retriever, venturing into the bowels of the Underground City to retrieve souls that were mistakenly sent there by Afterlife Enterprises during a Y2K computer glitch.
Second, there’s angel Bill. As if risking her second life in the Underground City wasn’t enough, Lily’s guide to the Underground is none other than her incompetent, alcoholic, womanizing guardian angel, Bill, the antithesis of anything wholesome. With only Dante’s Inferno and Bill to help her in her quest, Lily’s future isn’t looking bright.
Finally, there’s the legendary bladesmith, Tallis Black. As Scottish as his kilts and heavy brogue, Tallis Black is a centuries-old Celt who, for reasons only known to him, offers to train Lily and act as her escort into the depths of the Underground City. Dark, brooding and definitely dangerous, Lily knows she shouldn’t trust Tallis, but she also can’t deny her attraction to him.
Between soul retrieving in hell, dealing with Bill and trying to figure out what’s in it for Tallis, Lily wonders if maybe she would’ve just been better off dead.
I really like the other H.P. Mallory series and think she is a good writer, but I have some reservations about this series and it didn’t catch my interest like her other two did. I was intrigued by the premise, I like Reaper Mystery tea cozy novels a lot, and I enjoy quirky characters which Better Off Dead has in spades. Angel Bill is quite hilarious even if he was a bit cringe worthy a few times, but in a way that made me laugh in spite of myself. He was the best parts of the book.
Lily is a well developed character who has a lot to learn about her new life. I can see her growing over the series and becoming a wonderful character. I just have a few issues with the premise of her character. My first issue is that when she becomes a Reaper she gets to choose a new body, and since she hates her old fat self she chooses to be a tall, curvy (but in all the right places), redhead- just like every other urban fantasy female lead. Her gangling movements, I’m in a new taller more beautiful body, scenes were off putting to me. It wasn’t as though she chose the right body for the job, she just chose her dream body. And I guess I would be fine with that realism, if the author addressed Lily’s hate of her old body in some way. And maybe Lily will come to realize that her old body wasn’t so bad, or learn something from this in the end, but there was no indication in the first book that this would happen. It seemed an odd point to make about the universe.
My other issue with Lily is that she is yet another virgin, and not necessarily because she wants to be, not because she is choosing for herself her own sexuality, in fact there is no female agency around her choice. I started reading another Reaper Mystery cozy tea novel that I at the same time and I really appreciated that character’s choice about her own sexuality, female agency was a real thing so it was hard not to compare the two. Perhaps Lily’s virginity would not have been such a big deal to me if I wasn’t comparing it to the other, on the other hand it was part of the plot in Better Off Dead.
H. P. Mallory sets up some great characters in Better Off Dead, they aren’t perfect and they have some room to grow. The premise remains interesting and the AfterLife was definitely different from other Reaper Mysteries that I read, so that was a huge plus. There is a kick-ass female in the story, she just happens not to be the heroine. Some of my favorite characters have started out as underwhelming female leads and have grown into amazing women, hopefully Lily is headed in that direction as well.
A Reaper Mystery tea novel about the after life, Better Off Dead has an interesting premise and some quirky characters that will keep you turning the pages.
Absurdly Nerdly 