Tag Archives: books

in which I send my first rejection letter

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That’s right, SEND. Me, sending a rejection.

A self-published author sent me a message on goodreads. It said:

As you may recall, you entered to win my book [REDACTED] from the Goodreads giveaway.

As I would like to have a few more reviews for the book, I am writing to offer you a copy of the book, free of charge, if you would be willing to read it and post a review on several of the online book sites (Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, your blog).

Of course, I would ask that you give the book a completely honest review.

If you are interested, please let me know. I can send the book in any format (Kindle, Sony, Epub, Palm, PDF or a printed copy).

Thank you in advance.

Warmly,

[REDACTED]


I have no recollection of entering any such giveaway, but that doesn’t mean anything. Thank goodness goodreads has a page of giveaways I’ve entered. (This link will probably only work if you’re a goodreads member and have entered giveaways.) Anyhow, I gleefully pounce on the link to see whether my CRS has struck again or what, and nope–this book isn’t on it.

My reply:

Actually I don’t recall, and goodreads has no record of it either. Regardless, I’m extremely busy and can’t guarantee I’ll review any books at this time, much less promise to post reviews on multiple sites.

Thanks for thinking of me, though.


Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like someone was trying to hustle me here. As a result I am NOT HAPPY.

As an aside, maybe my mother did too good a job of pounding it into my head, “If you can’t say anything nice, just keep it to yourself,” but I never post bad reviews. Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it has no merit, or that other people won’t adore it, and just because a story is not to my personal taste doesn’t mean I’m all cool with making the author’s job harder. The Silmarillion springs to mind. Also Twilight, or pretty nearly anything with monsters as sex objects. I like my monsters ugly and eating people… No one’s really tickled my “monstrous and sensuous” bone since Claudia.

And yeah, sometimes books are not just not to my taste. Sometimes they’re really bad. But I am not the book police, and at least you know when I rate something highly, I really mean it.

a book devoured

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It took me rougly eight tries to make it through Stephen King’s The Stand. At first he kept losing me after he turned his camera away from Stu Redman. I just didn’t care for Frannie, and I outright disliked Larry. Everyone said what a wonderful book it was though, so I kept trying, and Nick was okay. It was M-O-O-N, and that spells Tom Cullen, who led me through the rest of The Stand–although it took a couple of more tries, because King lost me again at a certain spoilery plot point late in the game.

It never pays to get too attached to King’s characters.

So another month, another attempt to make it through, and finally–success! I had finished reading The Stand. I didn’t care for the ending much at all. With King, and for me as a reader, endings are hit or miss, and he is one author where I never skip to the end to see what happens and then back track to find out why and how it happened. With King, the why and how might be the only part I want.

And with his science fiction, I might even want the why and how only once.

Is The Stand SF? Technically yes, although it’s softer SF than some. When I think of King’s SF, I’m more inclined to think first of The Tommyknockers and Dreamcatcher. I’ve not been able to make it through either of those a second time despite multiple attempts, and despite the fact that I enjoyed them just fine the first time through. Under the Dome was ok, but I doubt I’ll ever try to read it again. And…the jury’s still out on Cell. I actually want to read that one again (since I’ve forgotten most of it) but I’m afraid it will fall under the Curse of the SF Re-reads.

Which brings me the long way ’round to my actual topic, which is his latest novel, 11/23/63. I very much enjoyed it, far more than UTD, more than any of his books since Lisey’s Story, which is one of my favorites. In this book, a teacher travels back in time to avert the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This premise tickled both my socks off, because godlight originally was supposed to be about someone travelling back in time to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which was going to lead to a chain of events that put a Lincoln decendant in the White House at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

See, too often have I come up with what I thought was a fantabulous story idea only to discover (or realize) King has been there first. The Pool Where We All Go Down to Drink from Lisey’s Story explains this metaphorically, but has never made me feel any better about it. I love you, but DAMN YOU, STEVE! I still haven’t forgiven you for Gray Matter, of which my version was called Couch Potato…

But this time, I drank first. This makes me happy.

godlight ended up nothing at all like that original premise, no backward time travel, no changing the past, nothing of the sort. And it’s win-win, because King obviously writes better than I do, and his story is miles and miles better than mine could ever have been.

Oddly, I didn’t care much about the whole JFK/Oswald plot line until just as it came to a head. Until then, King kept my attention with other things, including Oswald’s wife, and other characters also. Especially engrossing was the love story between the teacher and a woman from the past. When the time finally came and the teacher had to decide whether to return to his own time or not, it mattered hugely to me. (This same question failed to matter in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, sad to say.)

Are there ramifications to changing the past? How will we know if the protagonist never returns to the present?

The answer to those questions are spoilers. They are also quintessential Stephen King, and I hardly got any sleep until I found out.

So this book I give a big hooray to. Maybe even enough to forgive him for Gray Matter.

====================

My Top Ten Stephen King Novels (subject to change and re-ordering almost daily)

The Talisman (co-written with Peter Straub)
Lisey’s Story
It (Bev saved my life)
Dolores Claiborne
11/23/63
Firestarter
Rose Madder
Hearts in Atlantis
Insomnia
Bag of Bones

nook v book

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+1 Nook

11.22.63 fits in my purse.

-1 Nook

I had to stop reading 11.22.63 fifty pages from the end because my battery died.

+1 Book

If a hundred pounds of dog steps on it, a book is not $250 worth of landfill.

nook

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I bought a Nook Color about two or three weeks ago. Now I see they’ve released the next version (the Nook Tablet) for the same price. I didn’t see anything about that in my extensive research, grr!

However, I really like this gizmo. I can finally read all the e-books that have accumulated on my hard drives over the lifetimes of three computers. Well, ok. I probably still won’t read them all; in light of all the free giveaways on various sites, I’ll never be caught up, not even if I never get past the third page of most of the freebies. All the old Bobbsey Twins books? Free. Five Little Peppers, too.

Of course, there are still plenty of hard copies to be read also. You still can’t go to Goodwill and play blind travel among the midlist on an e-reader.

However. The reason I decided to get an e-reader in the first place was because of all the time I spent out on the deck last summer, avoiding the oven that our house had become until T-Moth got the AC fixed. A lot of that time was in the dark. I played a lot of Harvest Moon on the old Nintendo DS, enough to burn myself out on it. And I thought a lot to myself, I wish I was reading. I considered taking my laptop out there, but a laptop battery only has so many charge cycles in its lifetime, and I didn’t want to use it up reading in the dark. Also, it was hot, and hot isn’t good for laptops either.

Then, in one of those bolts from the blue, a friend said, “I’ve been thinking of getting an e-reader, maybe I’d read more, but I wonder if I’d have time to use it at all.” Whereupon I thought to myself of my long hours in the dark on the deck with the dogs, and thought, “I would!”

It was the first time I’d ever seriously considered owning an e-reader, since I never saw any way one would serve a function that couldn’t be served as well or better by an actual book, and with paper books you don’t have to kill yourself if you lose it or it gets stolen. A little research quickly proved that a regular Nook (or Kindle) with an e-ink screen isn’t backlit anyway, so if you want to read in the dark, you have to buy a clip-on light like for a paper book, and hey…I could just buy one of those, right? Read paper books in the dark, no problem.

Then I started school and had zero time for sitting on the deck, never mind reading anything much besides Contemporary American Business, and a few pages before I passed out at night (usually around 9:30, am I old or what?)

Then two thoughts collided in my head. One, that someone told me you could get really cheap textbooks for the Nook. And two, that it would be a lot lighter to lug around than books and a laptop. So I bought a Nook Color.

And learned you can get cheap textbooks for Nook, but you have to read them on your PC?!

But I really like it. I can surf a little internet,or check my e-mail, and read a little too, in those slivers of time otherwise spent staring off into space. I can read on the couch with the lights off while Mr Moth watches Burn Notice. (Although lately I’ve been paying more attention to that show.) And once, on a warmish night, I was headed for bed when it suddenly occurred to me I could sit on the deck and read. So I took the dogs out…and did.

It was all I’d hoped…tablet be damned.

sweets and books

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I apparently missed all the radical cloud action Tuesday while I was having an MRI, which time I spent trying to decide what symbols to put in my Drawing I project, and what I might take to a Thanksgiving thing, if I went. I try not to whine on about the diabetes, because I’m determined that it should only make me feel bad physically and not attitudinally. But autumn is my season, and Halloween and Thanksgiving are–maybe were–my holidays. Also Memorial Day, but that isn’t really screwed up in the same way as Halloween and Thanksgiving, not being so much about candy and food in general.

I’m not a big candy eater, apart from the occasional PMS chocolate, or taffy. And I found both in quite delicious sugar free versions. (Although the sugar free salt-water taffy can not compete with the Laffy variety, nuh uh. It is actually good though, and not just meh, it’ll do. But there aren’t any sugar-free peanut butter kisses, or air heads, or any of the silly crap I normally indulge in this time of year. The idea of passing out candy I must not touch myself just bums me on a collosal scale. As for Thanksgiving? Its approach has made me realize I have to cooking identity anymore. Sure I can whip out a ham that falls apart at the approach of a fork, but baking has always been my thing. Like with the candy, my heart is not in baking pies and cobblers and jelly rolls and upside down cakes and puddings that I can’t have any of.

My non-dessert specialties are lasagna and chili, neither of which are all that appropriate for a Thanksgiving thing.

On a Thankful Thursday note, I am grateful for sugar-free Hershey’s Special Dark, and that the MRI is over. I wish I had seen the clouds. Yeah, there’s some self-pity going on.

Let’s ignore it and see if it goes away.

I bought a Nook Color, and I’ve been browsing the free books on Barnes and Noble’s site. It seems I have an inner agent…an underdeveloped inner agent, but she’s there, nonetheless, and I would like to find treasure in the self-published trash heap. This means sifting through a lot of trash. Some things that lure me to click through to the book description: the word dog or wolf in the title. Zombies. Lots of ratings (say more than 20) of three or more stars. A completely unexpected word in the title, case in point: Wendigo.

Things that just tick me off: When the wolf in the title is a werewolf. Vampires, period. How much self-pubbed vampire dreck does the world need? (In fairness, I am thoroughly sick of vampire non-dreck, and have been since Lestat became a rock star, barf.) A description that tells me nothing about what the book is about. A description with really atrocious lack of writing skills, by which I mean tense problems, grammar issues, spelling errors. When the author’s name is huge and the book title is small and unreadable on the cover thumbnail; if your name is Stephen King this works. If you’re Ann Smith, no. Actually I find it off-putting if I can’t see the title on the cover for any reason. I get that self-published authors can’t afford top-end graphic design, but making sure the title looks good should be a no-brainer. You collect enough of these strikes together in one place and it won’t matter if your book is Zombie Dogs in Wendigoland. I’m only human.

More tick-offs include when all the reviews say the same thing, which to nothing, and thus scream SOCK PUPPET. A couple of less-than-perfect reviews/ratings make the whole deal seem more legitimate to me.

Lots of these tales are really quite very much bad, but that’s ok. The people that wrote them don’t know they’re bad, and maybe someone else will like them. Meanwhile I will hunt on…in between school projects, one of which I should be working on right this second. ‘Til next time.

thankful thursday

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I dreamed last night that Lita had more babies, and they escaped. I am thankful neither of those things is true, although I did come right in and wake them all up for a head count.

Still six.

I am thankful for Goodreads, because although I don’t use the social networking aspect of it, I’ve been keeping lists of books I’ve read since I was ten or so, and I love being able to keep track them in a place where I won’t lose the paper. I also love how simple it is to add the books I’d like to read. And if I get busy and ignore Goodreads for awhile, it’s still there waiting for me when I catch my breath.

Big Blue Berta, who just keeps zooming along.

T-Moth.

The opportunity to get a (mostly) free education. We normally don’t qualify for things, because we aren’t living at poverty level. But there’s no way I could afford to go back to school if not for help from the government, and neither could Zor.

Still on that same subject, today is Tolesday–Mr Toles being the instructor of my favorite class.

Fall. O, how I adore Fall, and we seem to actually be having one. The heat is over and the snow isn’t here yet. Yay!

And lastly, I’m thankful for an auxiliary character that popped into my head during Contemporary American Business. This guy suits Seldom’s story so much better than the cardboard guy I had planned for that job; he serves multiple functions. The Maasster would be proud.

oh, so that’s next

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I was just trying to noodle the first two scenes and realized I need my heroine to do something good right away, something heroic even, like saving the cat.

So now I’m leafing through Save the Cat, by Blake Snyder.  This book is actually about writing screenplays, and was not my favorite when I first read it in 2008.  That’s probably at least partly because according to Save the Cat, godlight is a superhero story, or would be if it were a film.  Still, the book has good ideas about character and plot, and I’m looking for questions the answers to which will help flesh out my story.

Even though I’m marginally more of a dog person, I  love the concept of saving cats.  One of my all time favorite heroines became one of my all time favorite heroines when Ellen Ripley went back for Jonesy, the ship’s cat.

So onward, noodle.