Last night Amazon’s new Fire HD 6” arrived on my doorstep. Here are my first impressions of the new budget tablet. I will direct you to Amazon’s main Kindle page to get the full specs. The good The 6” format is darned cute and practical. Here are some pictures comparing it to the Fire HDX and Kindle Paperwhite. The format is going to be very practical for sticking in a handbag or pocket to take around. It is blocki...
Well, I had been going to spend this blog post moaning that I was in a bit of a reading slump anticipating all the new releases coming out this month. I felt I couldn’t really get into any of the books I was reading. However twice this week I managed to miss my bus or metro stop because I was reading! I suppose I was more engrossed in my book than I thought. For those interested among you the guilty book was Awakened, the eighth b...
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith follows the mystery surrounding the disappearance of writer Owen Quine. Strike and Robin are hired by Quine’s wife to find out where he has gone. As Quine was on the point of publishing a new novel thinly disguised as a tell-it-all peak at the world of London’s literati, the suspects in his disappearance soon add up. I have to admit I wasn’t feeling very inspired when writing this review. Tha...
This week has been a quiet week in terms of reading. It’s been the start of the new TV season which might have had in impact… (on that topic, I’m watching Forever and Gotham as new shows.) I finished Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling’s) second mystery novel, The Silkworm and you can expect my full review next week. Sneak preview: I liked it. I’m also continuing with the audiobook of Station Eleven by Emily St John Man...
Deviation by Christine Manzari is the first in an independently published YA dystopian trilogy. In Manzari’s world, following a devastating terrorist attack the US government set up the Sophisticates program of human genetic engineering to produce smarter, faster, better soldiers in the war on terror. The Sophisticates are divided into two groups, the Vanguard who are the intellectual ones, groomed to be the country’s next leaders...
My apologies for the delay in my reading roundup this week. I was rather distracted by the announcement of the new Kindles and the referendum held in my country of origin on independence. I stayed up late last night watching the BBC and Scotland Decides. I really hope once the dust has settled, the UK can work out some structure that works for everyone. Ahem, so onto more literary matters. This week I breezed through Christine M...
Last night Amazon announced its 2014 lineup of Kindle ereaders and tablets. I will direct you to Amazon’s main Kindle page to get the full specs. Looking at the eIink ereaders first Amazon announced that the basic Kindle now comes with a touch interface. This will retail for CAD79. This looks a really nice entry into the ereader market and you could do a lot worse. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the new Kindle...
Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins is the first in a loose trilogy of contemporary, cutesy young adult romance novels. It is followed by Lola and the Boy Next Door and Isla and the Happily Ever After. It tells the story of Anna Oliphant who is spending a year studying in Paris at the fictional School of America in Paris. She makes friends and has a romance with Etienne St Claire a young Londoner also studying at the sch...
In my recent reading roundup I mentioned that I felt The Iron Trial by Cassandra Clare and Holly Black is a poor man’s Harry Potter. I stand by that opinion. It is almost impossible to read The Iron Trial without comparing it to Rowling’s masterpiece. Let us review; a young infant born towards the end of a magical war is the sole survivor of a massacre which leaves him motherless and with a physical mark of the attack. There...
This week I have been reading shorter books so I feel I have been making excellent progress compared to the epic fantasy behemoths I’ve been reading lately. I finished the cutesy contemporary romance Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. I will be doing a full review next week, so I won’t say too much now. I have also been dipping in and out of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. OK, at 640 pages or 33 hours audiobook, that...