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Christmas ebook roundup bonanza

This is an unusually large book roundup, because hey, lots of amassed online credit!

Grabbed from Barnes and Noble (and most of these were because I got a VISA gift card from work for my next yearly anniversary, and blew it on an ebook spree, woo!):

River Marked

River Marked

  • Rise of the Spider Goddess, by Jim C. Hines. Fantasy. Got because I thought it was hysterical that Hines published the manuscript of his very first novel ever, complete with snarky commentary about his younger self’s work.
  • And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie. Mystery. Got this as a freebie when I bought my new Nook.
  • The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Amused to actually get this as a freebie when I bought tickets to see Five Armies. I already have an ebook copy, but this one was the non-enhanced version.
  • Wanderlust, Doubleblind, Killbox, Aftermath, and Endgame, by Ann Aguirre. SF, books 2-6 of her Sirantha Jax series, re-bought in ebook to replace them in my library.
  • The Spymaster’s Lady, by Joanna Bourne. Historical romance. Re-bought in electronic form to clear out space on my shelves.
  • Genuine Lies, by Nora Roberts. Romantic suspense. Another digital re-buy of a previously owned print book.
  • River Marked, by Patricia Briggs. Book 6 of her Mercy Thompsons, another re-buy.
  • Blue Diablo, also by Ann Aguirre. Urban fantasy. The first of her Corine Solomon series.

Grabbed from iBooks since I did another run to empty the coin jar into the Coinstar machine at Safeway:

  • Deathless, by Catherynne M. Valente. Fantasy. Grabbed because I wanted to read her take on the Russian myth of Koschei the Deathless.
  • 7th Sigma, by Steven Gould. SF. Grabbed because I liked the concept of mysterious metal-eating machines, and the desert territory they’ve overrun.
  • Motherless Child, Glen Hirshberg. Horror. Grabbed because I am periodically in the mood for horror, and this sounded pretty creepy–and challenging the recent idea of the vampire as romantic hero.
  • The Three-Body Problem, by Cixin Liu. SF. Grabbed because I was very curious about this as it got talked up on Tor.com, and because I want to get a taste of Chinese SF.
  • A Soul for Trouble, A Soul for Chaos, and A Soul for Vengeance, by Crista McHugh. Fantasy romance trilogy, picked up because I know the author via Carina Press.

Nabbed from Kobo:

  • The Secret Heart and The Lover’s Knot, by Erin Satie. Historical romance, first two books of her No Better Angels series. Grabbed because Book 2 was positively reviewed on Dear Author, and because I really like the author’s covers. Also, bonus points for her having a hero named Julian in Book 2! Had a delightful exchange with her on Twitter about both of these things!

From Carina Press, since we had a 50% off sale yesterday:

  • The Siren’s Song, by Jennifer Bray-Weber. Historical romance. With PIRATES. YARR.
  • Soul of Kandrith, by Nicole Luiken. Fantasy. Book 2 of her series.
  • Journey of Dominion, Journey of Wisdom, and Journey of the Wanderer, by Shawna Thomas. The rest of her fantasy/fantasy romance series.
  • The Guardian’s Witch, by Ruth A. Casie. Paranormal/historical romance. Grabbed this one because I thought the cover was gorgeous, and because I’ve featured this one on Boosting the Signal.
  • Firewall, by Sonya Clark. Paranormal/futuristic romance.

163 for the year.

December 24, 2014 by
Books

Thanksgiving weekend book roundup

Yoinked from B&N, digitally:

A Play of Shadow

A Play of Shadow

  • Symbiont, by Mira Grant. SF/Horror. Book 2 of her Parasitology series, bought for general Because Mira Grant purposes. And also because I LOLed at her posting to her journal that, quote, “nothing says Thanksgiving like tapeworms!”, unquote.
  • Never Judge a Lady by Her Cover, by Sarah MacLean. Historical romance. The fourth of her Rules of Scoundrels series.
  • Blood Magick, by Nora Roberts. Paranormal romance. Third of her Cousins O’Dwyer trilogy.

And, from Kobo:

  • The Future Falls, by Tanya Huff. Urban fantasy. Third of her Gale series.
  • A Play of Shadow, by Julie E. Czerneda. Second in her current fantasy series.
  • The Best of All Possible Worlds, by Karen Lord. SF. Grabbed because I’d heard some good things about this, and of the Star-Trek-ish influence on it.
  • Adulthood Rites and Imago, by Octavia E. Butler. Books 2 and 3 of her Xenogenesis series. Grabbed because I already had Book 1 and I seriously need to read this trilogy.

135 for the year.

November 29, 2014 by
Books

Spotted on Dear Author today: to DNF or not to DNF

Dear Author pointed at this article today, in which the article writer admonishes people who bail on a book before finishing it. I do not agree with the article, though I’ll give its author props for a cogently written argument.

As you all know, Internets, I am a voracious reader–voracious enough that I’ve started reading books in a whole extra language, for fuck’s sake. I read on the bus. I read at lunch. I read while waiting in lines for stuff. I read print. I read ebooks. I read on my phone. I read on ereaders. If there’s a newspaper lying around and I have nothing else to read, I’ll read that. Hell, if there’s something suitably interesting on it, I’ll read the back of a cereal box.

So trust me when I tell you that 999 times out of a thousand, if I commit to starting a book, chances are very high that I will finish it. If I pick up a book in the first place, I’ve already done my due diligence–I’ve read reviews of it, I’ve checked out its ratings, I’ve probably even read sample chapters. Something about the book has piqued my interest and made me think, okay yeah, this is possibly a book with which I will be happy to entertain myself for a few hours.

But every so often, I will DNF a book. (That’s Did Not Finish, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the acronym.)

And when I do, it’s typically because something in it has actively pissed me off. Crappy writing isn’t usually enough by itself to make me do that–though I’ve found that if I have too many reactions of “no no no YOU’RE WRITING IT WRONG”, I’ll bail. More often than not, though, it’s because something in the storyline has pissed me off. Usually, a character that does something that makes me want to climb into the book and punch them out of irritation.

As the article I link to points out, sure, it’s possible that a book that does that to me will eventually hand me something awesome that makes up for it pissing me off. But I can think of exactly one example of a book where the writing was compelling enough to make me stick around, despite the fact that I actively loathed every character in the book. And the book in question did not in fact redeem itself in my experience.

So I don’t honestly see the point of sticking around to finish a book that irritates me. That’s tantamount to saying “gosh, hitting myself on the head with this hammer really hurts! But maybe if I keep at it long enough, it’ll start feeling better!”

Seriously, who has time for that?

What about the rest of you? What makes you bail on reading a book?

November 7, 2014 by
Books

Quick ebook roundup

Just to clear this off my post queue!

Green Rider

Green Rider

Picked up electronically from Kobo:

  • Where I Belong, by Alan Doyle. Memoir. I bought the hardcopy of this from greatbigsea.com earlier this year, but of course I wanted the ebook too.
  • Green Rider, by Kristen Britain. Fantasy. Re-buy of a book previously owned in print, the first of her ongoing series that finally had a book five show up. I’m more likely to re-read books 1 and 2 if I have them electronically, so this is me going about getting those.
  • The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. YA/Zombies. Another re-buy of a book previously owned in print, because I want to get caught up on her zombie books, too.
  • Writing Out the Notes, by Bob Hallett. Another memoir. Because as long as I’m reading stuff by Great Big Sea musicians, I really ought to finally read this too! I’ve got a print copy, but it’s available in ebook as well.

Pre-ordered electronically from Barnes and Noble:

  • Unbound, by Jim C. Hines. Urban fantasy. Book 3 of his Magic Ex Libris series, which I went ahead and pre-ordered on general Supporting Mr. Hines principles, particularly since he recently drew the ire of GamerGate.

127 for the year. And I’m counting the Hines as this year even though it doesn’t drop till January, because I’m paying for it now.

November 3, 2014 by
Books, Other People's Books

All-French ebook roundup post

So B&N sent me a $5 credit, because I was one of the first 200 responders to a survey they sent out–they’d seen I’d recently bought a Nook HD, and they wanted to know my experience with it vs. with my earlier Nook. Awesome, I said, and promptly answered the thing and got the five bucks.

Les Rêves de la Mer

Les Rêves de la Mer

Which I then promptly turned around and spent, and this time, my target purchases were books by Élisabeth Vonarburg! She’s been on my radar for a while as a prominent Quebecoise SF/F author, so I’ve finally grabbed three of her novels to queue up for when I’m feeling ambitious enough with my French to try to tackle her. Probably after I do a bit more Élodie Tirel, and some Esther Rochon. 😀

The titles I got were:

  • Le Silence de la Cité
  • Chronique du Pays des Mères
  • Les Rêves de la Mer

I was originally just going to get two books, but as soon as I grabbed Chronique I realized that that was actually book two of a series, so I grabbed Silence as well. And I grabbed Rêves since it’s Book 1 of a different series, the Tyranaël books.

Just going by the titles and by what I gleaned out of the blurbs for these books, I’m expecting stuff heavy on the feminism. It’ll be interesting to eventually compare her to oh, say, Sheri Tepper, who I also need to read.

This puts me at 117 for the year.

September 24, 2014 by
Books

Quick book roundup

Grabbed from iBooks. Both of these are recent Tor releases, which I picked up due to liking the look of their excerpts posted on tor.com.

  • Unwept, by Tracy Hickman and Laura Hickman.
  • Child of a Hidden Sea, by A.M. Dellamonica

Grabbed from The Dreaming, a comic shop in the University District:

  • Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: The Novelization, by A.C.H. Smith. Got this because of also having gotten the edition of The Labyrinth that came out.
  • The Complete Elfquest, Vol. 1, by Wendy and Richard Pini. Gotten because a) always a pleasure to buy Elfquest, and b) having this edition around means I can have something to share with folks in case anyone visiting wants to check Elfquest out.

114 for the year.

August 30, 2014 by
Books

Another quick book roundup

Grabbed from Kobo in ebook form:

  • A Fatal Grace and The Cruelest Month, by Louise Penny. Books 2 and 3 of her Inspector Gamache series. Read the second one from the library, and that put her officially onto the To Buy list!
  • Harbinger, by David Mack. This is a Star Trek novel set in the era of the original series, first of a series about a particular starbase. This intersects with the Enterprise’s own adventures, and the Enterprise crew shows up in this one. But I’m getting it specifically because the author got cranky mail from a reader complaining about a lesbian relationship between a couple of the characters–namely, a Vulcan and a Klingon. Part of me wanted to snag this to show the author some support. The rest of me goes WOO! and wants to see how he pulls off this particular relationship!

Grabbed from B&N in ebook form:

  • The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton. Another thing I’ve read from the library lately and which I decided I need to own. This is a YA book, and it’s magic realism rather than urban fantasy, which makes for a nice change of pace in the reading tropes. Plus, the author’s got a dazzlingly lovely way with a sentence. But really, she had me with “story about a girl with wings”, and bonus for it taking place in Seattle. In the 50’s. Which makes me think, Millicent probably knew this girl!

And last but not least, picked up from Third Place in print:

  • Codex Born, by Jim C. Hines. Book 2 of his Libriomancer series. Already grabbed this electronically, but Mr. Hines is on my Buy In Both Formats list, so!

110 for the year.

(I’ve been reading a lot more from the library lately, trying to beat the To Read list down some and pull back on spending ebook money as long as Dara and I need to spend a lot on house maintenance. We’ll see how the numbers progress as we head through the second half of the year!)

August 16, 2014 by