Books

I Do Not Care If You Do Not Read E-Books

~ Casey ~ Leave a comment

Okay, here’s a fun fact about me: I don’t care how you read your books.

Let that sink in. Breathe deep. Read it again: I don’t care how you read your books. For some reason, however, there exist people who care deeply about how I read MY books. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, but when I tell people that I have just downloaded Whatever Novel by This Certain Author, I used to get a disproportionate number of responses that include “Oh, I would never read on a Kindle. I just can’t. For this set of reasons that I will now tell you.” I am forced, by the rules of polite conversation, to nod and smile and listen while this ridiculous person sings the virtues of the paper book. Ever since I decided to take pruning shears to the people that I associated with, the frequency of this phenomenon has decreased dramatically. I still run into it online, fortunately not always directed at me.

Ever since Kindles and Nooks arrived on the scene, I have seen way too many people feeling the need to proclaim that they hate e-readers and e-books. Like, okay? How would you feel if somebody went around shouting about how they couldn’t stand to read hardcovers? If you read online, constantly, that reading paperbacks just wasn’t as good as reading on a sleek, slim e-reader? What if, and I’m just imagining amusing scenarios here, an e-book reader felt the need to tell you that they hated the way that paper books smell?

Reverse that feeling and you have me, every single time I encounter another person who feels the need to announce that they refuse to read e-books. Okay, I’m delighted for you. Go somewhere else now.

I loved Stephen King novels growing up. I’ve never read The Stand or IT (don’t start with me). As an adult, when I have tried to knock these bricks off of my book bucket list, I’ve failed several times due to sheer size of the things. Even the paperbacks are more unwieldy than I am truly comfortable with. I have a Kindle now; I can read those books if I really want to. My day job taxes my hands and arms tremendously. I’m frequently in pain at the end of the day. So reading e-books is an accessibility issue for me. I couldn’t read books if I didn’t have an e-reader. Imagine, if you will, the sensation of having your entire arm slammed in a door. Not just a finger; your ENTIRE ARM. This is a feeling that I deal with regularly. Now imagine having that feeling, being a book lover, and facing down a 400+ page hardcover. Screw that, imagine being unable to manage a semi-illustrated, 200 page paperback. Furthermore, I enjoy comics and graphic novels but I have literally no space to store a collection of them. Enter e-comics. I CAN READ COMICS NOW. An entire new world of reading has opened up to me.

If you’re a paper-books-only person, congratulations! You are part of a sector of readers that is different from the one where I live. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. But unless we’re having a discussion that actually merits you saying it, and you feel the need to tell me that you just can’t get into e-books, or that you refuse to read e-books, take that need, throw it in a mental sack, and toss it deep into the depths of your mental basement. I don’t need to hear it, and you don’t need to say it.

Aaannnddd I Quit

~ Casey ~ Leave a comment

Given that it’s been … I don’t know how many days since I’ve read the book I was referring to on Monday, I think it’s time to declare the book a DNF. I haven’t even thought about it. I am clearly just not into it, so it’s time to move on.

It’s freeing to decide that my time is worth more than a book that’s doing nothing for me. It means that I value myself enough to know when I’m wasting my time. It also means that I have a lot of books to read, and I’m not going to spend precious reading time on this particular book anymore. Oh well. They can’t all be winners.

Meanwhile, I’m deep into The Hanging Tree and have reached the point where I’m beginning to fret a little about having no more books left in this series just yet. I have one novella and one novel left, plus three graphic novels. There will be new installments later this year, and while I know this, I’m impatient and I want moar. I’ll live.

[Books] When To Quit?

~ Casey ~ 1 Comment

Are you one of those stubborn, determined readers who finishes everything that you start? Because I have learned that, while I think it’s an admirable quality, I’m not that kind of person. I used to think that I was! I’d get to a point in a book where I was stalled because of one reason or another. Usually, I just wasn’t gelling with some aspect of the story. More often than not, I fail to care. Something within the book has to make me care. I’m at that point with one of my current reads, and while part of me truly wants to finish the book due to other factors, I find that I just do not give one good goddamn about what happens. Nothing in this book has me interested in what happens at the end.

Cut because I’m going to talk more. I won’t be naming names. But cutting anyway. Continue reading →

On Piracy And Why I’m A Little Pissy Today

~ Casey ~ 1 Comment

So. This happened:

If you want to read the entire thread, go on. I can wait. If not, long story short: somebody took an eARC of Seanan McGuire’s Middlegame and uploaded it to a book piracy website. I am beyond infuriated at this behavior. One, because McGuire’s probably my favorite writer. I am not exaggerating when I say that I am still alive because she is still publishing books. So to see that her work is being stolen? Sends me into a fit of rage so strong that my hands are actually shaking a little right now. The person who created one of my actual lifeboats had her work stolen, and her future work jeopardized because of potentially lost sales.

Secondly? As a book blogger who is doing her damndest to read and review responsibly with NetGalley so that I can keep a good rating and keep getting access to eARCs, I am LIVID with the person who got access to Middlegame and decided to just throw it up on a piracy website. This person is endangering the entire eARC process for the rest of us. I don’t get paid to do this; this is my hobby. I spend my time reviewing books because I love them, and I want other people to read and love them as well. I have purchased copies of easily two-thirds of the books that I received early access to, because I enjoyed them that much. Some idiot, the same idiot that has done this to plenty of other authors, is potentially poisoning the well for the rest of us. Other writers have managed to convince their publishers to skip eARCs; if McGuire’s publishers decide to stop offering her work via NetGalley, I’ll live. I’ll be pissed off that one person ruined it for the rest of us, but I’ll live. And I wouldn’t blame them one bit.

Kindle Roulette

~ Casey ~ 5 Comments

On March 2nd, having just finished the second InCryptid novel, Midnight Blue Light Special by Seanan McGuire, I decided to play a game. I have so many Kindle books. So many, indeed, that Mr. Price accidentally nicknamed my Kindle “Thousands of Books” — he came into the living room a few years ago, looking very disgruntled. He didn’t mind, he said, that I bought so very many books. He just wished that I would take better care of them. When I inquired as to what he meant by that statement, he replied that I had left thousands of books just laying on our bed. Then I got his meaning and had to smile.

Cut because I care. Read on if you want to learn about Kindle Roulette (and you do). Continue reading →

[Book Review] Jewels of the Sun by Nora Roberts

~ Casey ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time, I wasn’t the nicest of people. I wasn’t a part of the Let People Enjoy Things movement. So I wrongly looked down upon romance novels and those who chose to read them. A friend of mine told me about Jewels of the Sun in those dark, unenlightened days, and recommended it highly. So I read it on a whim and discovered that it was a romance novel with a hidden fantasy element. I was so enamored with it that I read the two followup novels, Tears of the Moon and Heart of the Sea immediately afterwards. I would go on to read almost a dozen or Roberts’s other fantasy-romance novels, with great enjoyment. I was still a little bit snarky about the romance genre, and I acknowledge that I was wrong. I know better now, and even if I’m not an avid romance reader, I do enjoy them from time to time.

Cut because I love you Continue reading →

[Book Review] Rivers of London: Body Work and Night Witch

~ Casey ~ Leave a comment

I return! I was too busy being sick to string together enough sentences for any blog entries last week, other than my review of That Ain’t Witchcraft for Speculative Chic. I really loved that book, and I can’t wait for the next one. It’s going to be a long year. It might be time for an end-to-end reread of the InCryptid series. In the meantime, I’m still working my way through Rivers of London! I have reached the graphic novel portion of the series.

My friend Lane, when she reviewed this series for Speculative Chic, mentioned that she didn’t read the graphic novels, and it felt like there were some weird gaps in continuity. So I treated myself to all of the currently existing graphic novels in the series, and dug up a reading order that included them within the novels’ timeline, and hopped in. This is partially because events that happened in Body Work and Black Mould are referenced in The Hanging Tree, and I wanted to find out what happened, especially given that Sahra Guleed (who is awesome) was involved.

Short reviews, maybe a few spoilers Continue reading →

Book Review: Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

~ Casey ~ 1 Comment

After the last installment of the Rivers of London series, I was chomping at the bit to get to Foxglove Summer. If you’ve read the book, or my spoilery review, you know why. Unfortunately for me, the massive, twisty not-quite cliffhanger isn’t addressed very thoroughly in this volume. That’s fine; it was still a great read, and I’m still exceedingly satisfied with my reading experience and this series as a whole.

Let me just say right now: you can’t really read and enjoy these books unless you read them in order. Too much either won’t make sense or will have little to no impact upon you as a reader if you aren’t already familiar with what’s going on. Aaronovitch expects you to keep up and unforgivingly gives very little in the way of plot/character rehashing.

A lot of ongoing series have a volume or two that takes our primary protagonist out of their primary setting. The author picks them up and plunks them down somewhere entirely new. This was the first of such books in this series. I’ve found that this type of book can be hit or miss for me. If it occurs in the proper place in the series, it generally works well. If the writer tries to do it too soon, for me, it doesn’t go over well. A series that I love with all of my heart and soul did this in the second volume. That, to me, was entirely too soon. We’d just started getting to know the heroine and knew next to nothing about her world and the way that things worked, then we’re whisked away to what was (at the time) an insignificant place to deal with insignificant things. Now I understand the reasoning behind this alternative setting, but I still think that it could have come a little later in the series and had the same overall impact. Plus, I feel like the book would be better received and enjoyed by new readers to the series. Anyway.

Some spoilers. I don’t ruin too much for you, because I’m a nice person. Continue reading →

Book Review: Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch

~ Casey ~ 2 Comments

Okay, Aaronovitch. You’ve got me. I was already on board with this series, finding Peter to be a likeable and humorous narrator, and quite enjoying the other characters a great deal as well, but this?

This one might have broken me just a bit. I can’t even find an appropriate “mind blown” GIF to insert here, because…just…damn.

I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to discuss this book without going into spoiler territory, so I’ll see what I can do to avoid them until at all necessary. Fear not, I will mark them very clearly so that you know when to stop reading.

There will eventually be spoilers. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Wiccan Wheel Mysteries by Jennifer David Hesse

~ Casey ~ Leave a comment

Well, okay. This isn’t a proper review, exactly. It’s more like my overall thoughts on the first three books in this new-to-me cozy series.

But first, let me chat with you about cozies. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, just visit this website and the answer to almost any question that you might have is likely here. In short, a cozy mystery lacks gratuitous scenes of bloody murder, features a usually quirky, always likeable protagonist, who also happens to be an amateur detective, and things are wrapped up by the end of the book. There’s almost always some kind of theme that ties the series together — maybe the protag owns a bookshop (which seems to be really popular) or a bakery. Perhaps she Does Scrapbooking, or is active in her church. These are all themes that I’ve found, by the way.

Read on, if you wish to listen whilst I wax poetic about my favorite type of comfort reading! Continue reading →