A few thoughts
So, for the last few days, while the rain was falling I am a little ashamed to admit that rather than curling up with my favorite books and the new ones, too, I have been binge watching TV shows through Amazon Prime and Netflix.
And it started me thinking a little bit about how much things have changed even as they have stayed the same. We hardly ever think about the constant access we have to one another these days or how much information is shared constantly between us.
Another concept occurred to me as well. I have a little bit of an obsession that I’ve had since my early teens. That obsession is a comic book series called elfquest and the way that I got involved with that comic book series was kind of a fluke. I was on a road trip with my best friend’s family to Hilton Head and once we got there I took my book that I was reading in the car and had brought with me to read it the beach and read it at the beach while we were sunbathing. This had an unintended consequence, since I was reading I was laying on my stomach all day while we were at the beach and by the time that we left my back had passed the color red and it’s sunburn on the way to the color purple. I took an ice bath once we got back to where we were staying but that wasn’t enough for this particular burn and aloe and laying on my stomach was not cutting it either So eventually the decision was made that I was going to return home and so I had to ride from where we were staying to the airport I had finished my book that I had brought with me for the trip and it was a pretty long drive to the airport so I looked everywhere in the car and found the first graphic novel for elfquest that my best friend’s little brother had brought along to read on the trip. I didn’t really like comic books and I couldn’t imagine that anything could possibly dull the amount of pain that I was in but it was a long ride and I decided to give this graphic novel a chance. I got to page 87 in the book and as soon as my parents picked me up at the airport I demanded that we stopped at a bookstore and pick up the book so that I could finish it. As I convalesced from my own stupidity in getting burned so badly I entered the world of Two Moons and voraciously ate all eight of the graphic novels that has been released at that point. this started my love of elfQuest and through the years I’ve enjoyed every single comic book manga book poster figurine t-shirt and anything else that you can think of that is involved with elfquest. Were that trip to happen today I do not know that I would have ever discovered elfquest because I would have been able to download a different book to entertain me on that drive to the airport and I would have missed out on one of the few things that have been consistent in my life my love of Elf Quest
But I started thinking about TV shows. These days there are a few different ways we get our TV. There are the network (public, cable, and premium) shoes that we still watch as they are released weekly. There are the entertainment providers like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu that release an entire season at once. Add in that the way we have watched TV has drastically changed and the younger me would have been shocked at all if it.
When I was a kid, we had family dinners that had to be over in time for my dad to watch a business show. And then depending on the night, we would either all go our seperately ways, sometimes watching TV sometimes not and then we would come together to watch certain shows as a family. Sometimes we watched Dallas although that was not one of my families staples. We watched Dynasty and LA Law religiously. It did not matter what else was happening in the world outside our living room. This was family time and we would discuss these shows in between episodes too. They were a part of our lives, one without a pause or rewind function and if you missed an episode you missed it.
Today you can watch any episodes of any show on any device. If there is a show we all watch, like Game of Thrones, we discuss it on social media almost immediately… Some of us talk during the episode.
Even if there is a show we all watch, the experience is of our choosing. We choose whether to watch it live on the tv or later on a dvr–we choose whether to binge watch over a weekend or closer to each series shows broadcast. We choose who to watch with or even how we will watch together.
I remember when the Disney Channel was first to be added into the world and Nickelodeon and HBO. I remember when it was questioned what these Channels could possibly offer that wasn’t already out there. Now the most basic of television packages comes with more channels than we know what to do with.
The question is are we better off? And my answers are as esoteric as they are necessary. I love being able to communicate with my family and friends 24/7 and yet we are far less connected to each other. We don’t have much anticipation or time for speculation these days until we get to the end of the season and our waits for answers are much longer.
As I watch my kids with their headphones and tablets. I think of how much things have changed and I wonder if our interconnectedness is a gift or a burden…
And then I turn on the read to me function in Google play books, put my headphones on and travel to whichever world I have chosen.
But in the back of my hand I wonder how many of those unexpected Treasures my children have missed simply because they have a hub of entertainment in their hands and thus no reason to read a friend’s little brothers comic book. And then I wonder how many I’ve missed in The Last 5 Years since I too carry my library of thousands of books around with me.
Weather and the Mayhem it Creates
I live in a state where the start of hurricane season is marked on a calendar and the end of it is a cause for celebration–we have survived one more year without the big one washing us away.
Katrina and it’s devastation shocked even those of us who live in Hurricane zones. And while there are certainly a number of places where we all know that we are one bad storm away from losing it all, there is far more of our country succeptable to a bad hurricane then we ever think about as it is the whole Atlantic coastline as well as the Gulf of Mexico’s coastline that has to face storms and their aftermath.
As Harvey hits, and rain and it’s wide variety of consequences are being felt in Texas and all along the gulf coast, I urge my friends who are affected to stay safe, stay together And batten down what hatches you had yet to get to.
And, selfish as it maybe, I thank g-d that this one has passed me by with little but rain in an unending supply, thunderstorms that rattle the house and the quite strange experience of standing on my front porch watching every low spot on my five acres turn Into a lake. But that’s the price of living in a hurricane zone… And every part of our great country has it’s drawbacks, hurricanes or tornadoes, earthquakes or volcanos… Let’s just hope that g-d has decided we need some Terraforming…
[Top]Wishing All My Friends A Great Dragoncon!
Hopefully, next year this blog will be established enough to support me going to Dragoncon to give updates but for now, I am wishing all my friends lucky enough to be able to attend a great time! And in an attempt to be helpful, I will publish Laurell K Hamilton’s Dragoncon schedule…
<iframe src=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FLaurellKHamiltonOfficial%2Fposts%2F10155081069737632&width=500″ width=”500″ height=”609″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true”></iframe>
[Top]A Book Review or two and a Little Respect
A couple of days ago, I warned that my posts might seem to be a little surreal because I was starting Jeaniene Frost‘s Night Prince which was the fourth and final installment in the that series. The reason that required a caveat was that Vlad is the hero int that series and he has a stepson and blood nephew named Mircea. Given that most of my posts revolve around the Cassandra Palmer and the Dorina Basarab series in which Mircea is a hero and Vlad a villain. I have to admit that it was difficult even within my own mind to make the switch. Eventually, though, my brain successfully made the switch and I came to really enjoy the return to the Night Huntress world. I have to give Jeaniene Frost some mad props. Mencheres plays a large role in the book and they throw in a stay at Kat and Bones cabin. What amazes me about this is that Jeaniene Frost is able to successfully end each series and then start another tangential story, one for which the foundations were laid in the process of telling this hero/heroine story. This means that when the next series, which will revolve around Ian, starts we know that some of our old friends will play a part and, in a way, each successive series is a continuation of the one before.
I also greatly enjoyed the Sweetest Burn, the second story in the Broken Destiny series. This series is truly unrelated to the other world. This series revolves around a battle between good in the form of Archons (Angel like beings) and Demons. These Demons have realms that are just a slight bit misaligned with reality and the heroine, Ivy has long been able to see glimpses of these realms and has a long history of psychiatric treatment due to this ability. When her sister disappears and her adoptive parents are killed while investigating the disappearance, Ivy decides she will fin and rescue her sister or die in the effort. This leads to a discovery of the Demons, their realms, minions (humans enlisted by both Archons and Demons to do their will on Earth since there are agreements in place limiting what can be done by the demons and Archons) and the fact that there is something quite special about Ivy. Ivy is the last descendant who has the blood of David from the biblical story of David and Goliath. The Archon who informs Ivy of all this brings someone to hep her Adrian, a man who was brought up in the demon realms and switched sides and who also has an illustrious ancestor as well-Jude, the man who betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver and who is prophesied to betray Ivy as well. Apparently there are 3 artifacts that can only be wielded by one of David’s descendants and have become necessary as the walls between the realms are weakening. Anyways, this second book revolves around a search for a magical staff, the one that Moses used. When Ivy used the slingshot at the end of the first novel, it became a tattoo embedded in Ivy’s skin and it comes as a great surprise when she learns that it can still be used although not to the same effect as before. This installment shows Adrian and Ivy’s partnership going to the next level, with a number of ramifications that, of course, only become apparent AFTER the events have occurred.
I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/BestBookLover/
If you want to support the blog and keep getting great content make a donation at paypal.me/Bestbooklover/
(Broken Destiny)
An Unwavering Recommendation…
Usually, I post about the books I read, the friends I find within each story and reconnecting with them. And right now I am reconnecting with Olivia and Gabriel–and all the mystery and magic of Cainsville. But I wanted to tell you about something seemingly unconnected and in the process I will explain the thought train that led to this post.
I love reading, as you know all to well. And I dislike audiobooks because depending on narrator, the book can be enriched through the process of creating an audiobook or it can be ruined by the slightest thing-a name pronounced differently, an accent that is different than what was expected or any other of a million reasons. When we read a book, we imagine the characters, their accents, and a million other things. An audiobook can ruin that because it makes the elements written in stone and each of these things can skew the enjoyment of the book.
I have been a long time fan of the Elfquest comic book series. When I first found them they had been reprinted as a graphic novel and were in color. When they later rereleased the comics in Black and White, they used a similar explanation–that the coloration of the comics limited the possibilities and locked the characters descriptions in stone. Printing the comics in black and white allowed for infinite possibilities and for the enjoyment of the stories in a whole new way.
For years I was a physical book reader, and my daughter still is. For her a book has to have a physical presence in order to be a book. Ebooks do not work for her-without the pages to flip and the smell of the paper and weight of the book in her hands, they do not seem real to her. Now, I fully enjoy all the facets of having ebooks- the ability to carry hundreds or thousands of books in the palm of my hand, rather than having to carry an extra suitcase on trips. I enjoy having multiple copies of the books in multiple places and the ability to transfer from device to device. I was and am a firm supporter of amazon kindles and have been for a long time.
Anyone who reads ebooks should look into the freeware program Calibre. It allows you to organize your library by author or series or even by publication date. It allows you to convert your books from one format to another and that allows you to use multiple devices. It can also manage your devices. You can merge files together (using plugins) and a million other things.
So now I have found the best program for my needs to be google play books. First off, google offers 24-7 tech support on using the play books app for free. In addition to allowing books to be read on multiple devices, with your progress in each book being communicated no matter which device you read the books upon. Google Play has a read aloud feature-it uses a computer voice of your choice. Much like the black and white comics, it still allows me to add the details to the story. It also allows me to speed up the reading so I can keep pace with where I would be approximately without using the read aloud feature.
So, whats the point of this long rambling post? It’s actually quite simple. My smartphone has become my reading device of choice. And protecting that smartphone has become VERY important. While there are a million choices in the market for cases, tempered glass protectors or plastic film protectors I want to speak with you about my experience with a company called Skinomi. They produce plastic film phone protectors. You can buy one just for the front screen, one for coverage of the entire device (front, back and sides), or one for just the front and back. he plastic film is self healing and the have a lifetime warranty on their products. They now have lines that can be used to change the look of your phone from wood to tempered steel or even cool black carbonite looking skin.
They are the best phone protectors out there. I have used a lot of different ones, but theirs have stood the test of time with each of my phones. In addition, they have exceptional customer service and replace your screen protector if there is an error in installation or for some other reason you need a new one. And it is a lifetime replacement on their products and there is a bubble free guarantee. So protect your phone-get a skinomi protector, they are the best on the market and worth the price!
[Top]
Happy Book Birthday to Kelley Armstrong
So, I did my happy dance about two hours ago, when my copy of Rituals hit my google play library. I’ve been posting a lot recently about the giveaways leading up to this, the final installment in Cainsville. For those of you wondering what on g-ds green earth is she talking about, I will try to explain.
Kelley Armstrong gained fame and notoriety with her women of the otherworld series. It started with Bitten, the story of Elena Micheals the only female werewolf. The series was exceptionally different as each book followed different strong woman of the otherworld. The otherworld was the paranormal world that coexisted with our world, but in secret and containing all the supernatural creatures. Many of us were greatly saddened by the end of the series and we have enjoyed each and every one of the short stories that continued to follow the stories of all our favorite characters, bringing our friends stories back into our lives.
These stories success opened the door for her Nadia Stafford series, about an assassin who is partially retired but somehow keeps getting sucked back into all kinds of shenanigans. Kelley Armstrong had written some other stand alones as well as some young adult series.
After the main storyline of women of otherworld concluded, except for the small vignettes the short stories allowed for quick peeks at how our characters were faring, Kelley Armstrong started two new series for fans to get excited about. The Casey Duncan series follows the main character, a trained police officer as she struggles to help her best friend with an abusive ex husband who seems to always find them which means they are constantly on the run. This continues until they hear of a rumor, a town whispered about where you really can disappear because there is no technology and the town exists on no map. It means that everyone must do whatever jobs they can and they live an almost communal type life. But rather than being created around an ideal of free love it is the idea that everyone, sometimes, needs a do-over and a way to disappear. But now there are murders occurring where people go to disappear after extensive background checks and thus begins the Casey Duncan series.
The other story, Cainsville, that Kelley Armstrong started seemed to be a more traditional fiction book. It centered around the world of Olivia Taylor-Jones, a vapid socialite who discovers that her true parents were serial killers. But as the story progressed it became more and more paranormal, calling on ancient Celtic lore. This is the final book in the series and I cannot wait to dive in…
Fiction
Random House Canada
August 15, 2017
496
The fifth book and the exciting conclusion to bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's "impossible-to-put-down" Cainsville series, in which she mixes hard-hitting crime writing with phenomenal world-building to create a brand of fiction all her own. When Olivia Taylor-Jones found out she was not actually the adopted child of a privileged Chicago family but of a notorious pair of convicted serial killers, her life exploded. Running from the fall-out, she found a refuge in the secluded but oddly welcoming town of Cainsville, Illinois, but she couldn't resist trying to dig out the truth about her birth parents' crimes. She began working with Gabriel Walsh, a fiendishly successful criminal lawyer who also had links to the town; their investigation soon revealed Celtic mysteries at work in Cainsville, and also entangled Olivia in a tense love triangle with the calculating Gabriel and her charming biker boyfriend, Ricky. Worse, troubling visions revealed to Olivia that the three of them were reenacting an ancient drama pitting the elders of Cainsville against the mysterious Huntsmen with Olivia as the prize. In the series' fifth and final novel, not only does Gabriel's drug addict mother, who he thought was dead, make a surprise reappearance, but Kelley Armstrong delivers a final scary and surprising knock-out twist. It turns out a third supernatural force has been at work all along, a dark and malevolent entity that has had its eye on Olivia since she was a baby and wants to win at any cost.
Goodreads Review
Ride the Storm by Karen Chance
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have long been a fan of Karen Chance’s body of work. I am a loyal fan and have remained undaunted in the face of all the machinations of the publisher and publishing machine. Karen Chance has long kept the faith with her readers. She often offers free stories that add to her published works to create a more complex, multifaceted and fulfilling world in which all her novels take place. Readers who only read the novels from the publishing house lose a lot of the details and the joy of seeing the characters in multiple lights. All that being said, Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer novel Ride the Storm has been one of the most anticipated novels in my memory. This is not the fault of Karen Chance and that cannot be said firmly enough. The publishing house has been moving dates on this novel for over a year with little to no explanation.
The previous book, Reap the Wind was judged too long by the publisher when submitted by the author. This led to a quick rewrite and the split of the book almost in half. This also left an unfulfilled feeling at the end of Reap the Wind. Many plotlines were left hanging, which left some readers unhappy and the continuous manipulation by the publishers with moving dates and little communication lost even more of the fan base. Ride the Storm is the second half of the previous book with a little bit of newer information which furthers the plot of the Cassandra Palmer novels.
I was recently asked by a friend to explain the Cassie Palmer novels and I drew a bit of a blank—how do you explain such a complicated and multifaceted storyline as the one Karen Chance has created? I told her she just needs to read it and we will talk about it once she has. To say that all of the Cassie Palmer novels are fast paced is kind of like saying a quadruple shot espresso is a little bit energizing. These books move along at a frenetic pace and always have plot twists that are unexpected to say the least. It is impossible to have predicted where the main characters end up at the beginning of this book, let alone at the end of the book.
So much happens in this book to move the plot along that after reading it 3 times, I am still finding new details to enjoy. This is not a book to start when you have a deadline coming up or really anything planned. Depending on your reading speed and availability, you should plan to be unavailable until you can finish the book. This is not one you are going to want to put down as there are no really good stopping places. My recommendation is to start it on a Friday so you can have the weekend to take a break from reality and a trip into the Cassandra Palmer universe.
This book brings resolution to a lot of the ongoing plot lines that readers have been gnashing their teeth to know. We find out why MIrcea is so interested in Pythias. We get to see Pritkin rescued. We get to see Cassie find her feet and establish her own space independent of all the forces tearing at her. We learn more about Cassie’s parents. Dorina and Cassie finally meet. We go careening through the story and learn so much along the way that it’s hard to even begin to summarize it so I am not going to even try. Despite this, there is a seeming resolution to the love triangle between Cassie, Mircea and Pritkin but it is open ended enough that I see it more as an affirmation of the fact that Cassie has complicated emotions and feelings for both men.
This book is a solid addition to the Cassandra Palmer world and yet leaves a lot of storylines open for more exploration. It is my sincere hope that Karen Chance continues to publish Cassandra Palmer books for a very long time. In order for that to happen, fans have to not only buy this book, but review it. Talk about it with friends and build it up so that the publishers contract with Karen Chance for more Cassie Palmer books.
I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklove…
In the interest of full disclosure, I received an ARC ebook in return for this review.
National Book Lovers Day
[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”]
[et_pb_row admin_label=”row”]
[et_pb_column type=”4_4″]
[et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”]
Has there ever been a day more made for me? Books are my lifeline, my coping mechanism, their characters become my friends and lovers… Without books my world would be an exceedingly bleak place
[/et_pb_text]
[/et_pb_column]
[/et_pb_row]
[/et_pb_section]
Laurell K Hamilton Blog Post Repost and a Few Thoughts of my Own
My husband’s family is an armed forces family. His father was a marine and his mother in the army. They met in the Armed Services band and as the lore goes, that was that. My husband was in Air Force ROTC and got a scholarship to college and wanted to be a pilot. He got derailed by Calculus Four, but that is another story entirely… His little brother and sister were also in ROTC in high school, but chose different paths for their lives.
The first time I ever traveled with my children through an airport, I taught them that the men and women in armed services uniforms were special and that they fought for our country and deserved our gratitude–then I cringed as my two year old ran up to the marine, pulled on his dress uniform with sticky hands and then said “Thank You for saving my mommy” to say he was surprised was an understatement. After many apologies and smiles, we parted ways and I taught both my daughters that the correct phrase was “thank you for your service.” And to this day I feel a sense of pride each time they politely thank the men and women in the armed services. ( and now cringe as they are pretty close in age to the youngest recruits at 14 and 15, and they get a little more attention than I’m necessarily comfortable with)
That being said, I am a fan of many writers who write detective stories and police procedurals. And every time I hear about a police officer losing his or her life I cringe. I have a few friends who ended up as police officers and I always call them when I have any issue that regards the police so I know how to best proceed.
Police officers and fire fighters come into our lives at the worst moments- either we are victims of crime or in the process of committing one. But regardless, they run towards danger and do it every day all day. So why didn’t I teach my daughters to thank them for their service? Why did I teach my daughters that if they are ever pulled over to go to a public well lighted place before stopping? Honestly, most police officers are a suspicious bunch and if you approach them out of the blue, even to thank them for their service to thee community, I’ve found them to be a little wary about it. I try to always nod at them and say thank you when I see them out and about and will redouble my efforts going forward.
So, I’m not sure exactly what my point was when I started other than that police officers and fire fighters don’t get nearly enough appreciation from the communities they serve. Instead we point at the few bad apples and teach our children to be careful and that a uniform doesn’t necessarily mean a hero.
That being said, please give what you can to this fallen officers family and if you happen to see a police officer or fire fighter in the next few days thank them for their service. And send positive thoughts and prayers to ALL the heroes in our communities.
I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklovernet-336745780072074/
If you want to help support this website, donations are accepted at paypal.me/Bestbooklover/
[Top]