Reading over the long weekend

Books I read or tried to read over the holiday weekend:

• The Reluctant Wag by Mary Costello – Australian-set category, brief write up posted right after I finished.
• Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen — mystery set in south Florida.  This book was not quite cozy, more quirky or odd or weird.  I kind of like weird sometimes, but it was entirely too slow develop.  After 150 pages, it felt like the whodunit hadn’t progressed much.  
• Two Star Trek series books, one TNG and one Titan, were DNF.  I can appreciate them as being carefully written to fit into the franchise but the Red Shirts seem even more obvious in the books than in the tv episodes.  I pulled them from the read/toss pile after reading this post on the new Star Trek movie as a cultural indictment.  I haven’t seen it so I can’t offer my own perspective, but I will admit to being perplexed to the idea of a Star Trek series produced by someone who thought the original was “too philosophical.” 

I’ve been trying to download an ARC of a Michael Nava book from Net Galley but the site doesn’t like my password.  Or the substitute password it sent to me.  And it won’t email it to my Kindle.

Maybe I’ll try to read something from Anne Stuart or Georgette Heyer — their books are next on the keep/toss pile.

Books I pre-ordered or put on my wishlist:

1. Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews (July 31)
2. Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik (August 12)
3. American Savage by Dan Savage (May 28)
4. A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage 

On the audiobook front, although I have several languishing unheard, I’ve mostly been listening to Frank Turner (in anticipation of his show at Rams Head next week) and Fall Out Boy (perfect length for the elliptical at the gym), mixed with random chapters from Aaronovitch’s Whispers Under Ground (I love this audiobook) and Bujold’s Paladin of Souls.

Recent read: The Reluctant Wag

Title:  The Reluctant Wag (or WAG? – it’s in all caps on the cover art but not elsewhere…)

Author:  Mary Costello

Publisher:  Destiny Romance – I’d never heard of this imprint but given the little penguin, I’m guessing it’s an Australian imprint of Penguin Publishing.

Copyright:  2013

Copy courtesy of Net Galley.

Why this book?  Because I was looking for something a little different from what I’ve been reading lately, which has been mystery-heavy.  I didn’t recognize the publisher but the title indicated sports romance of some sort.  And then the book blurb sold me — I’m a sucker for any fiction, romance or other, set in Australia’s AFL thanks for Sean Kennedy’s Tigers & Devils.

The blurb:

When model Merise Merrick is asked to star in a campaign for the Yarraside Football Club, she couldn’t be less interested. As far as she’s concerned, football players are all overpaid jocks with zero intelligence. AFL captain Cal McCoy is completely dedicated to the game. With a premiership firmly in his sights, he has no time for romantic distractions.The last thing he needs is an inconvenient attraction to the new ‘face’ of the club. But Cal soon discovers that staying focused is easier said than done, while Merise finds herself falling for the excitement and power of footy – and its biggest star. Glamour, sport and fame combine in this irresistible contemporary romance.

What did I like about the book?  The set up — non-sporty person getting over preconceptions about professional sport and professional athletes.  And the setting — visiting Australia is on my bucket list and spending time in Melbourne is high on the subset of things to do in Australia.  The secondary characters were interesting, too, if a little vague since they weren’t POV characters.

The characters:  Merise is actually not an experienced model, despite the blurb:  she’s a journalism student “discovered” at her cafe job.  Which is a fine set up for a fairytale or a category romance, which this very much felt like.  (Is Destiny a category-type imprint?)  But the way she jumps to conclusions and judges people (Cal mostly) without knowing the facts is repetitive and disappointing as a character and makes me wonder how she’ll fair as a journalist.  Otherwise, she reads as young for her age (21?) and pretty immature, I thought, but maybe everyone is like that at 21.

Cal is…a typical Presents-ish hero.  He’s got a pretty cynical and judgmental view of women generally, and I found him difficult to warm to.  At one point he tells Merise that if she’d dressed differently she wouldn’t have been harassed at a  party, then claims not be victim-blaming (I call bullshit on that).  And later, when he sees an advertisement of Merise posing with another athlete, he thinks “How could she sell herself like that?”  Which made me roll my eyes and then irritated me; how is it any different than posing in an ad with him?  And also: it’s her job.  At various other points, he thinks of her as a possible provider of “cheap thrills”.  Perhaps the only things I liked about him were his concentration on his sport and his devotion to his family.  The sport part was clear, but the family piece was pretty awkwardly introduced and handled.

What did I like not so much?  The integration of various characters and plot points was pretty awkward.  For example, family, which is supposed to drive both Merise and Cal, is absent for the most part, then inserted as deus ex machina of sorts.  Merise isn’t just a poor student, we learn:  she’s paying back loans to her poor farmer parents…who are only mentioned twice that I noticed and didn’t even have a cameo.  Cal’s parent’s are injected into the story in order to save him from a PR disaster.

The copyediting seemed okay — although I’ve got some notes on my Kindle, I didn’t highlight any egregious typos or punctuation abuse.  The writing was very much of the telling rather than showing sort.

Overall opinion:  I  loved the setting and sense of place in the book, but I didn’t really care about the main characters.  I think that readers of Harlequin Presents categories might enjoy the book.

Real books vs. ebooks

I love to visit The Strand bookstore when I visit NYC:  so many books, so many choices.  And I’ve bought OOP and used books from the online store.

Having said that, I must confess that their marketing slogan, “Real books lower priced than ebooks!” seriously irritates me.  Whenever I see it in the store, I roll my eyes and walk past.  It appeared in the subject line of an email yesterday, and has really stuck in my mind since then.

The Strand makes money selling paper books, rare and common, old and new.  Ebooks aren’t something they sell or deal in at all.  I understand why they want to grab potential book buyers and their attention and their spare cash.  But calling paper books “real” implies that ebooks aren’t.  The nature of an ebook is a philosophical and legal question that can be debated for hours.  But what this slogan says, in so many words, is that the medium of the story being told is more important than the content.  Is that really the message an advocate of books/reading/literacy wants to send?

IMO, it will alienate ebook readers while pandering to readers who value the object over the content and who feel superior for their paper choice.  I don’t know, maybe their market research tells them that their customer base is not composed of ebook readers, so the slogan will work.  (It must be working — it’s been in use for several months at least.  Maybe The Strand is a brand that doesn’t need technology, or maybe its customer base is made of hipsters who love the retro aspect of reading paper books?)

There are always going to be people who want paper books.  And other readers who prefer ebooks.  And people like me who read both.

Disconnected

Back when Net Galley was newish, I signed up and got the occasional ARC for review.  Then my reading ennui struck and nothing appealed, not even ARCs.  Cleaning out my email folders (why do I have so many? why did I save some of that stuff?), I found my account information and thought I’d give Net Galley another try.  So I requested a few books:  one downloaded immediately, one was denied by the publisher based on my profile, and the other was approved.  The first up is a category-type romance from an Australian publisher.  I liked the opening chapter:  it reminded me in a good way of a Harlequin Presents.

The book purge has slowed a little bit now that I’ve visited the library and brought books with limited shelf life into the house.  Technically speaking, borrowing library books is a violation of the “no new books brought into the house before finishing the purge” policy but since I can’t keep them permanently, it’s not like I’m *adding* to the backlog.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Also on the purge:  I think I got rid of my copy of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  Or maybe it was a library book?  Either way, I can’t find it on my shelves or in any of the overflow bins.  The movie is playing at the independent theater near me, and I am curious to see how faithful the adaptation is (and whether I feel as ambivalent about the film as I did the book) but I can’t find my old copy for a quick re-read in anticipation of viewing the movie.

Hurriedly presses the back button

Somehow I missed the announcement that Tigers & Devils, one of my favorite books, was being released in audio. I hurried over to Audible to download a copy. Good thing I stopped long enough to listen to the sample. No, no, a thousand times no. Why on earth did the publisher select an American narrator for a book set it Australia and people entirely by Melbourne natives? I clicked away even more quickly that I’d gone to Audible in the first place.

Shame. I’d love to hear an audiobook of T&D with properly accented narration.

More victims of the Great Book Purge

Jinx by Jennifer Estep.  Paranormal romance.  I get that this is supposed to be fun and funny but the 50 pages I read just made me roll my eyes.

Minion by L.A. Banks.  Urban fantasy.  If I had read this when it came out, when it was new and original, before vampires were so done, I might have loved it.  But at this late date my patience for vampire hunters is nil and the opening was so over the top melodramatic that it was easy to set it aside for the donation box.

Beast by Donna Jo Napoli.  YA fantasy.  Liked the idea, but Napoli’s voice/style didn’t work for me.

An Experiment in Treason by Bruce Alexander.  Historical mystery.  Tedious set up of the mystery, so bored.

Dead North by Sue Henry.  Mystery.  I like the idea of an Alaskan set mystery and a dog-sledding protagonist.  But the details about settling into an RV and driving from Idaho to Alaska? Not so interesting.  The material may have improved once she got further down the road, but I didn’t hang around to find out.

I’m most of the way through Death in Hyde Park by Robin Paige (Edwardian mystery).  If I had realized that Paige was the pseudonym or Susan Wittig Albert and her husband, I would not have started this book:  her books have never worked for me.  This one isn’t terrible — mostly because I find the secondary characters interesting — but the irritating footnotes to remind readers that they can purchase the books covering the Sheridans’ other mystery adventures come across as a “BUY ME” arrow that is really off-putting.

Once it’s finished, my reward will be the new Carla Kelly historical.

Also, I read Undeclared by Jen Frederick.  It was…less than impressive.  In dire need of content and copy editing, and a heroine who wasn’t spineless.  The characters were nominally in college, but that setting seemed to be selected primarily to remove any parental supervision and give them freedom to drink and have sex (which, okay, college — but in no other way was college life involved in the plot).  I had problems with the set up of the relationship between the h/h, mostly the unconvincing backstory or the way they were MFEO — there was a lot of telling but not much showing.  It was a C- book at best for me, closer to a D+.  I kept reading for the train wreck factor.

Latest victims of The Great Book Purge

T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton.  This book had a $1 sticker on it, and I’m pretty sure I picked it up from a B&N remainder bin.  I used to read Grafton regularly and she was an autobuy through K but then she sort of fell off my radar for a variety of reasons related to the publishing industry rather than the books themselves.  This installment included the POV (3d person) of the Bad Guy, which was notable for the series.  The pace felt extremely slow to the point that I set the book aside a couple of times and probably wouldn’t have bothered to finish it in other circumstances.

Sacred by Dennis Lehane.  Why haven’t I read more by him?  Really liked this early installment of the Kenzie-Gennaro series.  And it’s a UBS find based on the handwritten price on the inside flap.