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“He arguably lead a more interesting life than his most famous creation, so it shouldn’t come as a shock to learn that there’s a biopic of Ian Fleming in the works titled, imaginatively, Fleming, with John Orloff set to write it.” Huzzah!
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“Focht-Hansen said at the beginning of her summer course, used books could hardly be found. The combination of the price and the scarcity of the book do not seem fair, she said. Many of her students resorted to using online-posted texts at Web sites such as Project Gutenberg, which boasts being the first producer of free electronic books, or e-books.” (via @GutenbergNews) Wahey!
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“We’ve added integration with Twitter, the popular SMS/microblogging site. Basically, it’s an easy way to add a book to your LibraryThing while standing in a bookstore, library or friend’s house.” Woohoo!
Jan 312009
Jan 312009
This is Part 1 of a 2 part post about January 2009 on Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog. Part 2 will be focused on the Blog Improvement Challenge and my status on that front. Tune in tomorrow to read all about it!
I’m amazed at all the things I did this month. I certainly think this is the most amount of books I’ve read in a month (barring that one October where I read about 20 Doctor Who books)! It was really fun, too; I’m a lot more energized about blogging and reviewing books now than when I first started blogging and I think it’s paid off. 
Thank you to everyone who commented and visited Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! You all make me want to continue blogging and improving. Here’s to another great month!
Reading Stats
I read 17 books and 16.
4 of them were audiobooks.
1 was chick lit.
4 were mystery/detective.
9 were YA/teen.
3 had a pair of twins in them (and two sets were twins with psychic powers).
10 books were written by authors new to me.
0 of them were rereads!
9 were books from my TBR pile.
1 was an ARC.
I read 4883 pages and listened to 35 hours.
I hated 2 books but absolutely loved 4.
I checked one book out from the library (but haven’t read it yet).
Reading Challenges Status Updates
666 Horror/Paranormal Book Challenge: 4/36 (I think)
2009 Pub Challenge: 1/9
Baker Street Challenge: 0/7
Read Your Own Books Challenge: 6/25
Support Your Local Library Challenge: 0/25
Under the jump is links and lists of various posts, er, posted during January.
Continue reading »
Jan 302009
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“Sales of e-books are being held back as there are not enough titles to meet growing demand and the companies producing them are reluctant to expand.” (via @bookoven) Booooo.
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Don’t know how useful this is for readers (though it could be very useful for booksellers), but it’s interesting. I liked what Carole Tonkinson (Harper Collins) said here: “With the adoption of the Kindle and the Sony E-reader and the plethora of nonfiction information available on the internet, I think the look and feel of the book will be more important than ever in 2009. We want to publish books that provide readers with an aesthetic experience of great quality and that celebrate the book as book.”
School for Scumbags by Danny King
Publication: Clipper Audio (2008), read by Dave John, 9:28:00 long / ISBN 9781407423920
Genre: Fiction, Crime, Teen
Rating: 4/5
Find @ Audible or paper version @ Amazon
Promising title + promising plot = awesome!
Summary from WholeStoryAudio.com:
Habitual teenage delinquent Wayne Banstead is expelled from yet another school for sticking up the tuck shop. He finds himself hauled off to Gafin School for Misdirected Boys: a ‘special school’ for ‘special children’. It plays host to the worst of the worst, the cream of teenage offending – thieves, bullies, arsonists and flashers.
The teachers should have their work cut out, but things aren’t quite what they seem at Gafin School. Far from rehabilitating the boys, the teachers seem intent on instructing them in how to get away with things…
This was a fun book. I liked it so much I actually made time outside of my normal audiobook schedule to listen to it. Dave John is a decent reader, though his character voices tend to sound the same. His accent (affected or otherwise, no idea) fits the setting and characters perfectly, and it certainly helped make the story more real.
A school intent on teaching kids to be thieves is an unusual and interesting plot, but the focus is actually more on the characters. Banstead (or Banners, as the other boys call him) is a delinquent, true, but he’s likable and is pretty much what I’d consider a British teenage delinquent to be. Obviously since I’m neither British nor a delinquent (nor a teenager nor male, either), I’m basing my opinion on years of watching crime movies and reading other books featuring teenage delinquents (some of them even British ones). So as far as that goes, I’d consider School for Scumbags a smashing success.
Several times I had to stop myself laughing out loud as I didn’t want to scare the other bus passengers, but rest assured I dearly wanted to. It’s funny without being ridiculous and absurd, and overall the tone was pretty light considering the plotline. However, it does change a bit in the last third of the book; the transition from LOL to OMG! was a little jarring, and while I liked the end, I wished it had been introduced a little less jarringly.
This being a book about teenage delinquents, there are of course lots of swearing and references to sex and masturbation. That sort of thing doesn’t bother me, but for those of you who do care about that, er, stay away, I suppose. (It’s actually not as bad as it could have been.)
The thing I liked the most, actually, was that the book wasn’t a cover for a morality tale. Yes, the kids are criminals, and yes, they get into criminal enterprises, but they’re not bad kids and they learn that crime is a serious and dangerous venture. And if they want to continue being criminals? Well, that’s fine with me; I don’t need them to have big revelations or whatever, so long as they realize what they’re doing and think about it a bit. Besides, if no-one wanted to be a criminal I’d be left watching romantic comedies and animations about sparkly unicorns. Viva la Ocean’s 11 wannabes!
(And hey! It seems like someone’s even doing a a movie of School for Scumbags! That’ll be fun to watch.)
Other reviews: Independant Crime | Genre Go Round Reviews | CurledUp.com
Jan 292009
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Publishers answer a question that’s been bugging me lately: what’s a good time to post a review of an ARC?
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“Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.” OMG I want to read this!
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“Amazon.com has notified its publisher and author clients that it plans to cease offering e-books in the Microsoft Reader and Adobe e-book formats. In the future, the online retailer says it plans to offer only e-books in the Kindle format (for wireless download to its Kindle reading device) and the Mobipocket format, both of which are owned by Amazon.”
Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher
Publication: Scholastic Audio Books (2007), read by Jim Dale, 9:39:53 long / ISBN 0545003652
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Children’s/YA
Rating: 4.5/5
Find @ Amazon or paper version @ Amazon
Third audiobook of the year, woohoo! And this one was pretty long, actually. Normally, YA fantasy books clock in around 7 hours (excepting bigguns like Harry Potter or Eragon). This one’s around 9 and a half hours, but it was worth sticking around for.
Summary from Amazon:
On a school trip to the Natural History Museum in London, a 12-year-old loner named George is banished for something he didn’t do. Angry, he lashes out and breaks off a dragon’s head carved onto the wall of the museum. Next thing he knows, a pterodactyl carving comes to life and begins to chase him. From Gunner, a walking, talking statue, George learns that he has entered another layer of reality, and that his arrival has started a new war between good spits (statues that are imbued with a soullike essence by their inspired makers) and evil taints (soulless carvings). With the advice of various spits, and the companionship of a girl named Edie, George seeks answers from two Sphinx statues, whose enigmatic clues lead the pair into a terrifying adventure.
I really enjoyed listening to this. Jim Dale’s an excellent reader– I hadn’t ever listened to anything with him before, so I had no idea! But yeah, I liked that he changed voices for each character (and he’s so good at it!) plus the different accents were done well, too (er, at least to my American ears).
The story itself was a little slow, but at least it was a steady pace. The characters were marvelous, and the plot was full of intrigue and all sorts of exciting things. The moving statues themselves were, of course, one of the most exciting things, but I also enjoyed getting a little tour around London. While fearing for various characters’ lives, of course.
I did like the characters, even the scary, mean ones. I loved how George grew as a person (even though the Gunner has to give a big speech about it just to drive the point home. Unnecessary! I could see he changed for the better myself, y’know.) and how Edie changed for the better, too. I loved the Gunner especially, but also the Clocker and even the Sphinxes were somewhat likable (though annoyingly vague). The more human villains weren’t particularly threatening, at least not until the end, but the taint-villains were seriously creepy. Probably it was more because they were everywhere and could potentially attack at any moment, while the more human villains were left to futile plotting and snide remarks. But those taints– gah, so creepy.
The action sequences were both exciting and dramatic, while not getting bogged down by too many details. The ending was exceptionally well done: a cliffhanger, but it left me excited for the next book rather than annoyed at not getting a decent resolution. Can’t wait to read Ironhand!
Other reviews: The Book Gnome | Hackwriters.com
Jan 282009
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“As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs.” (via @bookoven)
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“What would have to happen for books to be considered a legitimate form of media in the iTunes store? We can’t know for sure until Apple actually embraces ebooks as “real” media. In the meantime, we can reverse engineer some of the requirements based on Apple’s previous moves.”
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