Tag: reading

E-reader woes

On By MikaelaIn Life

Last night while I was reading, my faithful Cybook Odessey froze. I cursed, pressed the power button to restart it. When nothing happened,  I cursed some more before letting it charge over night.

This morning, I tried to restart it and nothing happened. So I tried to do a hard reset.  Did it work? Uhm. Not really. Now it is caught on the start up screen.

And when I connected it to mum’s laptop with a vague intent to reformat the internal memory, the computer didn’t recognize it.  sigh.

So I guess I’ll have to get a new e-reader.  The drawback is that  I am not sure if I  want to get another rebranded Cybook Odessey. Why? Because the Swedish bookstore that sells them insists on making their own modified firmware.   Which is really annoying when add in the fact that Bookeen, the French company that makes the Cybooks, offered one of their rare firmware updates.  Grr.

Except it is on sale right now. Hm…

The other option is Kobo. The problem is that  Kobo isn’t available for me in Sweden. Which would mean I’d have to wait until Dublin before I get a new one.  (Yes, I could get a Kindle, but I buy far more books from Kobo, plus Kobo offers me coupons.)

Oh well. I’ll read on my tablet while making up my mind.

 

Why I stop reading a series

On By MikaelaIn Book Recommendations
The series goes on and on
Don’t get me wrong, I love opened ended series. But when the books are a tightly connected, we are at book 14 and the author happily announce book 16-18 and states it isn’t the end? I walk away.
I get having a long series, but when I have to re-read the books to remember what happend it isn’t fun anymore. A part of it is also what May wrote about in her post at Smexybooks in May : Keeping your readers informed. It is one thing to say that ” I plan the series to be 13-16 books long, and then I’ll write stand alones.” and one thing to say ” I plan to write in this world forever.” The first makes me keep reading. The second? Makes me walk away.
There are no series arc
Even if the series are focused on just one character, I want a series arc. I want that an event in book one sets up book 2, and book 2 in turn sets up book 3 and so on. If there is no series arc all the books start to blur, and feel the same around book 4.
The characters doesn’t change
This is the most important for me. The characters doesn’t change. They do the same mistakes again, and again. And it just never occurs to them that their actions affect the world around them.
The plot starts to feel formulaic
For me it comes a moment when I read a book, and I realises that it could have been any of the previous books by the author. The books might still be good, but the series isn’t on my autobuy list anymore.

WWW Wednesday Jan 16th

On By mikaelalindIn Books5 Comments

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

 

I found this meme at Book View Cafe, although originally it was created by Shouldbereading

 

• What are you currently reading?

The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  This is a freebie and it has been in my TBR pile forever. I know that Sherlock Holmes is a classic, but I just do not care about the mystery. To me he feels smug, and snotty.  No, I think I’ll give up on Sherlock Holmes, and re-read the Raffles series by EW Hornung instead.   ( Gentlemanna thief, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother in law.)
• What did you recently finish reading?

Heart of the Wolf by Terry Spears.  This is another book  that has been in my TBR pile forever. Parts of it was good, but I had some problems with connecting to the characters. 

• What do you think you’ll read next?

Not sure, either I’ll glom on the Granite Wolves series by Vivian Arend, or I’ll read Beautiful Scars by Shiloh Walker.