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.

One of these things is not like the other ones

In my on-going skim of the In Death series, the book as object is something I’m more conscious of than I used to be:  the cover art, the author photo(s), the blurbs, or recommendations.

I find the Stephen King quote (“JD Robb is cool.”) on the cover of Strangers in Death to be too personal, directed toward the author rather than the work and also just a little weird.

Salvation in Death has blurbs specific to the book from Lisa Scottoline, Andrew Gross, Linda Fairstein, and Kathy Reichs.  Plus a general endorsement from Janet Evanovich…which seems out of place in context, both in terms of content and author-type.

Why do the back covers of some books have passages from the book, while others have author photos?  And the author photos themselves — has anyone ever done a survey of the evolution of NR/Robb’s author photos?  Because they are fascinating and say a lot about the content of the books and the marketing approach (even without the brouhaha of Robb possibly trying to look Dallas-ish in a long leather duster).

I have (had) the entire series but for the most recent book; I’ll be keeping about a dozen early books in the series that were originally published in mass market paperback, plus two later books following the move to hard cover. The rest of the hard covers and a few paperbacks will be heading to the donation bin.

What to read next?

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

Well, that’s exaggerated.  But the sentiment holds:  despite having a plethora of books, including a gigantic pile to skim in order to keep or discard, I feel like I have nothing to read.  Or to put it more accurately, nothing that I *want* to read right now.

The new Carla Kelly western historical is waiting on my Kindle and a paper copy of Roberts’s Whiskey Beach is sitting on my kitchen table (better than 50% off with various B&N discounts and coupons!) but neither book appeals at the moment.

I’m about halfway through Scahill’s Dirty Wars but need something lighter to offset it for the moment.  Surely there is something — anything – in the massive paper and electronic TBR that would appeal?

Two Sweden-set mysteries

Awhile ago I bought a copy of Kristina Ohlsson’s Unwanted because the first few pages grabbed me…but before the writing caught my attention, the cover art did.

 

One mistake changes everything…

In the middle of a rainy Swedish summer, a little girl is abducted from a crowded train. Despite hundreds of potential witnesses, no one noticed when the girl was taken. Her distraught mother was left behind at the previous station in what seemed to be a coincidence. The train crew was alerted and kept a watchful eye on the sleeping child. But when the train pulled into Stockholm Central Station, the little girl had vanished. Inspector Alex Recht and his special team of federal investigators, assisted by the investigative analyst Fredrika Bergman, are assigned to what at first appears to be a classic custody fight. But when the child is found dead in the far north of Sweden with the word “unwanted” scribbled on her forehead, the case soon turns into the investigation team’s worst nightmare—the pursuit of a brilliant and ruthless killer.

 

The rest of the book lived up to the cover and the first impression.  The scene that matches the cover art is important, but the shoes themselves are not integral to the story…which is a shame because that is some lovely footwear.

Another impulse purchase based on cover art was The Princess of Burundi by Kjell Ericksson.  Its winter landscape reminded me of Ansel Adams in a way.  But I lost patience with the writing after about 100 pages, because the pace was just so slow.

Next up:  Clarissa Dickson Wright’s Spilling the Beans or Caridad Ferrer’s When the Stars Go Blue.  Or maybe a reread of Siri Mitchell’s The Cubicle Next Door.

 

Is math that hard?

Maybe it is in the editorial context. I don’t know.

I just finished an otherwise good book with what seems like noticeable simple math/age error in the opening chapter.  The narrator tells readers that her husband (a villain) proposed to her when she was 28 years old.  And that they’ve been married for 2 1/2 years.  Which would seem to indicate that she is at least 30 if not running up on 31, yes?  Except then the narrator has a conversation with another character who chides her as being sheltered and not yet 30 years old.

How exactly does that math work?

Look, it isn’t that big a deal in the scheme of things for the book whether she’s 29 or 30 or 40.  But when dates or years are specified, I do the math mentally.  When it doesn’t add up properly, I spend time trying to figure out where/what I misunderstood and am jarred out of the story.  Which is probably not the storyteller’s goal.

This particular author is sort of well-known in her niche and has, as I understand it, very good editors at the various publishers she works with.  And yet this is not the first wonky math in her books:  percentages adding up to more than 100%, timing that makes no sense unless major holidays are moved, etc.

Maybe things shifted in the editorial process.  I don’t know.  But I can tell you that as much as I enjoyed the book, what stands out is the not-quite-right age of the heroine based on the conflicting information provided.

Things I miss (or not)

In light of Beth’s recovery and first SBD in a while:

As the move and consequent Great Book Purge of 2013 have progressed, my reading behavior has shifted.  Is it for the good or the bad?  Who knows?

1.  I’m buying very few books.  That probably seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it?  If I want to pare my collection, don’t keep adding to the TBR pile.  But I did still buy ebooks occasionally — they weren’t taking space on a shelf and didn’t need to be dusted, skimmed, and then sorted into a keep or go pile. Now, though, I’m not even buying ebooks.  It could still take me years to get through the TBR, even if I don’t ever buy another book.  (That’s not going to happen — I’ve got two books pre-ordered for release later this month — but I’m expecting my book budget to be significantly diminished this year.)

2.  The book reviews in my feed reader are getting short shrift.  Even though there are several reviewers out there whose taste corresponds (more or less) with mine, I’m reading their new book reviews and moving on without bookmarking or checking out samples at the publishers’ websites.  It’s not that the reviews aren’t good — it’s that the “don’t bring anymore books into the house” mantra has finally sunk in, and bookmarking reviews can only lead to book buying that I don’t really need right now.

3.  My younger self had some questionable taste or was just unthinking in terms of the sexism and misogyny inherent in some books.  A fair few of the books I’ve discarded (read: ripped in half and tossed because they offended me) were books I loved at one point, but reading them 15-20  years later makes my brain hurt.

4.  I miss the days when I knew I was going to love the next In Death book, when I pre-ordered every new Linda Howard book, and when Sandra Brown, Barbara Delinsky, Lavyrle Spencer, Deborah Smith, and Catherine Coulter still wrote romance.  Spencer has retired while the others write either straight suspense or angsty women’s fiction now.  Linda Howard’s romantic suspense devolved into chemistry-less how-to survival guides, and the In Death series is utterly predictable.

5.  Reading through older books, I’m marveling at the editing.  It’s not perfect by any stretch and there are typos but the volume of them is incredibly low in comparison to the piss poor editing that seems to pass for professional work from both NY publishers and small presses and epublishers.

6.  Because I’m working mostly through print books right now, I’m reading very little m/m or gay fiction.  I don’t miss it at all, which is pretty telling.  I’d gotten to the point of needing a hiatus from the genre, and the break has been good for me.   I am looking forward to a new release from an auto-buy author though.

Recently read

Beautiful Sacrifice by Elizabeth Lowell — suspense with a little bit of romance.  Lowell has always done a good job of integrating research into geology, gemology, archaeology, etc. into her work.  This book is set in 2012 and centers around Mayan archaeology, history, and culture.  The main character is a museum curator and archaeologist specializing in the area, and the plot revolves around mysterious, priceless artifacts in the run up to the end of the world as predicted by the Mayan calendar.

As a mystery it was merely okay — the Big Bad and Big Confrontation were predictable — but I appreciated the plot.  Lowell used some standard romance mechanisms: the heroine describing herself via reflection, the hero finding admirable in the heroine some average characteristics that were described as absent in all other women, etc.  At one point in an important scene, the hero began not knowing about an important gang (of sorts) but finished the scene by lecturing another character and sharing information about the gang based on his prior experience, which made me scratch my head.  If he didn’t know who they were at the beginning of the conversation, how did he have that expertise less than 10 minutes later?

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Dearly Devoted Dexter, and Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay.  Loved the first book, liked the second book, bored by the third.  Perhaps it was a bad idea to read them all in quick succession?

Next up:  some urban fantasy?

Dead links

Others have said it more eloquently but I’ll say it again:  when an author doesn’t update her website for a year, and the most recent “Coming Soon” notice is for a book that has been out for 9 months, she’s not doing a good job with marketing.  I don’t care how big an author is:  a year is too long to have a static website, regardless of whatever social media the author is using.

Also, having a link to the author’s personal blog on their website redirect to an error message is problematic.

~~~~~

Of the four books in the DABWAHA semifinals, I’ve read only one.  A lot of readers loved Webber’s Easy but I found it average at best.  Roux’s Stars & Stripes might be good, I don’t know; I attempted one of the earlier books in the series and abandoned it after reading the sample, because one scene was so ridiculous that it made me question the author’s basic research and the characters’ common sense.  

Eh.

~~~~~

Going through the old Napier categories on my shelves, I found her Marlowe family series.  Some of them are a little dated, but the series is a keeper I think.

People are mysteries

Two bags of books went to my mother’s house yesterday: some of the books she’ll keep, and the rest will be taken to the jury room.  [She doesn't like genre romance, but she'll try the mysteries and loves English village sagas.]  Apparently many potential jurors arrive for jury duty without reading material or anything to keep themselves occupied during the monotonous wait to be called.  I’ve donated maybe 100 books in the last couple of months; they all disappear pretty quickly, Mom says.

Three of the books in this bundle were Nora Roberts’ romantic suspense releases in hardback.  Mom took a look at them and said, “Oh, Harold will like those.”  And then she paused, and said, “Oh.  No.”  Because Harold, step-dad’s BFF, died in February after being diagnosed with Stage IV pancreatic cancer.  He was in his 70s, a retired electrician who gardened and carpentered for fun, and he fished and crabbed religiously.  I would never in a million years have guessed that he was a Nora Roberts fan, but apparently he loved her books.  I never knew that.  I wish I had.

 

Another beloved book that I find ~meh~

I’ve had a copy of Laura Leone’s Fallen from Grace on my bookshelf for a long time.  It’s an older library copy, in large print.  I’m sure I saw it on the library’s sale shelf and picked it up because of so many rave reviews about it.

I slogged my way through 100 pages (longer than that usual 50 page for a test read because it’s large print and I wanted to be fair), but stick a fork in me because I am done.  It’s going on the discard pile (unless someone emails me and says they want it, then I’ll mail it rather than donate it).

The prose is okay.  And I appreciate the meta of a genre fiction writer struggling with sales and the publishing industry and recreating her professional reputation.  But I just don’t care about either of the characters.

I’ve also skimmed a bunch of Nora Roberts’ single title romantic suspense hard backs.  A couple of them are staying but most of them are going.  Along with a fair chunk of the backlists of Emma Darcy, Susan Napier, and Robyn Donald.