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Tag Archive: Amazon Kindle
Children’s book: Pete the Amazing Dragon (Fairy tales books) by Tal Nir
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I love dragons! I love chocolate! How could I resist this free Kindle book? I loved the cover picture, too. The rest was only okay. Sorry. I wanted more and bigger pictures and was annoyed by the writing that had many uncomfortable sentences. Rhyming ‘well’ with ‘well’ well…
When I review children’s books I try to think of what my children would have liked, what would have spawned great conversations, what I would have enjoyed. I think mine would have gone back to books with more and bigger illustrations. I do like the fact that you can get the coloring book. That would have drawn us all into possible addicts of Pete the Dragon. This one just didn’t work well as a Kindle book for me.
Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a continuation of The Dragonriders of Pern. I didn’t have the money for the Kindle version so I managed to listen to this Audible version while attempting to decypher the book with its tiny font. Because of the narrator’s wonderful voice and character depictions I was able to keep track of where I was in the story even when my eyes refused to read any more.
I loved this book the first time I read it nearly two decades ago and found it equally exciting this time. Other books in this series are about the dragons and their riders and the fight against thread. This books challenged us to look at traditions and even break them to see if there might be a better way to do things. New sciences were discovered or recovered in this book. These kept me involved wondering if our own descendants may run into similar discoveries should we let go of our tightly held concepts. Who know, maybe gravity will cease to be so grave!
Anyway, I am lucky to have the next of the Dragonrider books in Audible form and have already cheated ahead. I remember White Dragon as one of my favorites, so I’m getting back to my ‘reading’ um, listening. 😉
Proximity by M.A. George
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I picked up this book on an author-giveaway-day on Smashwords. Somehow I forgot that I already had it. Then Kindle had a freebie day and I pick it up there, too. Does that ever happen to you? I look at the cover, it does play into how I feel about a book. Then I read the blurb and about the author. This book must have passed those criteria with flying colors!
After a slow start, getting to know the characters, Proximity took off. I was hooked. From about 60% of the book, I couldn’t stop reading. In fact, I was still reading at 5 this morning. Thank goodness for an ending that didn’t leave me hanging. Sure there was a few threads that need to be taken care of, but I was left elated which, of course, made me wakeful, wondering how the next bits will be taken care of. (Non-spoiler enough?)
I can’t wait for payday so I can get the next book. Thank you M.A. George for writing such a different, kind of story. Oh, and I need to mention how I loved that the characters were very well educated with goals and talents, along with a little romance. Very good!
The Apocalypse Gene by Suki Michelle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Disclaimer: This was a free Kindle book from BookRooster from quite a while ago, for an honest review.
So here goes. Um… I am so torn. There were parts I liked and others had me yawning. And I don’t think it’s the parts meant to be boring. I loved getting to know Olyvia and her mother and live with them through the dark and depressing life. I thought it adorable to get the little romance going. I could even get into the little computer icons, even though it seemed to take away from the problem at hand. Even still, I managed to shift gears and enjoy the cuteness.
War! What is it good for? I suppose in this case it is to cure cancer. Not a bad goal, I suppose, but really! During all the Micah parts and the war parts I got so bored that I had to let my text-to-speech yammer on while I read emails. I tuned in to learn how the story concluded. It was a nice ending.
Another thing I had a hard time with was the philosophy of the author thrown in quite obviously. The gods and demons and all that left me … meh?
Look, maybe it was just me. A lot of people have given high ranks to this book, so read it yourself and let me know what you think.
In The Beginning by Abby L. Vandiver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have been finished with this book for two days and still can’t figure out how to review it. It did hook me and I wanted to find out what would happen to the characters. But this angst of the main character, Justin, who I thought was a male in a committed relationship with husband, Mase, until I think the third chapter, was too much.
Look, I suppose there are scientists out there that can’t wrap their minds around a couple theories of the origins of mankind at once but I doubt if they were ‘believers’ or that they would have this kind of mental breakdown. Not a true scientist. But maybe that is my problem and not that of the book.
Most of the book is a bit like Indiana Jill but beliefs of God are dealt with lightly, after all they are looking for the lost scrolls or artifacts yet to be found. The end of the book, though, gets a bit God heavy. And the angst grew when I didn’t think it needed to be there. Still it was a very good read.
Thank you, Abby L. Vandiver, for giving me the free book for review.
Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow! Just Wow! This book was fantastic! Wait… And yet it was not.
Susan Nusabaum has presented us with a microcosm study in her fictional novel of the society of disabled youth in conventional nursing homes. Wow, again, that was a mouthful (keyboard full?)! Sadly, I don’t believe that the truth is far from this depiction.
The individual stories that create the novel outlines the hopeful actuation of each person dealing with their own demons, their own needs, their own striving for romance while being disabled in one way or another.
As many of you know, I read my books on Kindle with text-to-speech. This book has a character that is Puerto Rican but the author did a great job of capturing all accents and individual speaking quirks. These were so well done that my Kindle reader read them perfectly and even if I wasn’t looking at the printed e-pages I still knew who was talking.
The story starts and ends with a wheel-chair bound woman who lands a data-entry job with this nursing home. She is a strong woman who isn’t stuck in the nursing home, but sees what is going on. We see, through her eyes and the eyes of the other characters what it feels like to be collectively warehoused with others of differing disabilities.
This book is an eye-opener for all readers. Hopefully we all come out of the read with a better understanding for our all our fellow citizens. Whoever recommended this book to me, thank you! I now have it on my Amazon wishlist and hope someday to have the Audible version as well. This is well worth a few rereads. I see that there may be a movie of this book. I bet it will be equally wonderful! Kudos Ms. Nusabaum!
Ann Angel’s Freedom by Katharina Gerlach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Disclosure: This was a free ebook, from the author, for honest review.
If Little House on the Prairie was set in Germany during the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the main character was in her early teens, it might be this book. I liked the characters. The author did a good job bringing this person, Anna Angel, to life. I know I will think on this book often in the future.
What I found hard to deal with, and this is due to my needing to use text-to-speech, were the use of the closing single quote for an apostrophe. The author used a lot of contractions so I had to get used to hearing the words broken up. I don’t know if that was due to rules of writing in German or what. The other thing was the use of German words where I think an English word would have worked. I’ve taken a couple semesters of German and enjoyed a bit of it. Those long combination nouns are fun to interpret.
I wish I would have known of the Glossary at the back of the book. I know it would include a lot of extra work to make links to the words so that one could click on the word, find out the definition or history to that work and then allow the back arrow to carry one back to where they left off in the story. But that is just a minor wish on my part.
At about 60% into the book, the action picked up enough that I had to stay awake until I finished the book. I do wish to know more about Angel that the quick blurb at the end of the book. Maybe a story to include the facts mentioned there? One can only hope. Danke schön, Katharina Gerlach, for letting me read your novel.
In reply:
Initial post: Sep 21, 2013 9:39:02 AM PDT
Katharina Gerlach (Indie Autorin)I’m sorry for the interruption in the text-to-speech feature. I will go through the eBook again and see if it is feasible to swap the quotes for apostrophes. I didn’t even know this could cause trouble (actually I didn’t even know there was a difference 😉 ).
I tried to link the words in the glossary to the words in the text but that didn’t work out because some were used more than once.
I’m glad you liked the story. Thank you for your review.
A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire: Book Four by George R.R. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I can’t believe I have now finished a second reading of [b:A Feast for Crows|13497|A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4)|George R.R. Martin|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358261107s/13497.jpg|1019062] This time around I read the books according to the prescribed method found on http://boiledleather.com/. I prefer this method over reading the books straight through. A Feast of Crows is a disappointing book if read straight through. It has very little of our favorite characters. Since both of the last two books start immediately after the third, the continuity seems to get lost.
In this second read, I had the advantage of watching the television series so as to know the characters better. I don’t think I had that going into the books the first time. I caught a lot more innuendo that I missed before. The bottom line of this read is that George R.R. Martin presented a world that was basically misogynistic, but full of good and bad people of both sexes. Each character was human with light and dark thoughts. Even the bad guys/gals had light thoughts and vice versa; that humans try but even while trying, fail. George did seem to project the idea of what women go through and glorified those women in his books who managed to pull up to their male equals and the dangers for those women that are power-hungry and not just wishing for equality. (Sorry for the awkward sentence there. My mind is a bit fuzzy right now.)
Once, again, I must sing my praises for narrator, Roy Dotrice. Yes, I would prefer that he not use leprechaun voices for women and/or Tyrion. Still it is handy to separate the characters. I listened to him on the Audible version as I read an ebook version. BUT–The Kindle version is now only $4.99. That is a 50% discount!!! It still isn’t text-to-speech enabled, nor is it lendable. For those of us with cash-flow problems, the books and cds are now at the libraries.
Below is the review of my first reading.
***
NO TEXT-TO-SPEECH. NOT LOANABLE. WAY TOO EXPENSIVE! AND ONLY A MACHISMO WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD. POWER, POLITICS. WOMEN ARE AT THE LEVEL OF SHEEP OR COWS. And as I am reading this I remember being forced to read such as this in school and teachers telling me it is wonderful and a classic. Male teachers, no doubt.
I read to escape real life. If it wasn’t that I want to have an honest conversation with my adult children about this series, I would not be dragging myself through this. It is dark and bloody. This world is even worse than the world we live in now. It may help women who read this to see and remember how far we have come and yet how far we haven’t. As long as books like this praise rape and plunder and this is considered the usual behavior of males in our society, we will never have a society of peace.
Meanwhile, I do respect that the author has managed to keep tabs on all his characters. The writing is good. The plot is well strung. There are some phrases that I find irritating now as after this many books WE KNOW. But maybe it is how the author keeps the characteristics unique?
Anyway, I am on to book five. I think I see the light at the end of this tunnel. I have so many other books I want to read!
Darswords 
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