Hello, now that summer is drawing to a close, we’re coming into prime book release time. As usual, I have a metric tonne of books about whose release I am super excited. Some of these are continuations of series in which I am already invested, some are new series from authors I love and some are reissues of old favourites. So, let’s get into it, shall we? To kick off, I was really excited by the recent news that Raymond E.Feist has managed to resolve the ebook rights issue for North America. While most of his newer works have been released in ebook, his earlier novels have so far been unavailable in my preferred format. This will all change on August 22nd when his Riftwar saga as well as his Empire trilogy with Janny Wurts will be released as ebooks. I understand audiobook format will follow later this year. Although I have read all of these, I am very happy to add them to my collection. I consider Feist a true master storyteller and if you are not familiar with his work, this is a great opportunity to get started. Be aware, though,that the series does have a somewhat slow…
The big news this week is that I have finally managed to track down a Kindle Voyage to purchase – yay! It’s not available in Canada, and it’s been out of stock on Amazon.com for weeks. I managed to order one from Best Buy so this weekend I will be making my yearly pilgrimage across the border to pick it up. It does really annoy me that Amazon always delays selling it to Canada when the UK and German markets get it at the same time as the US. Anyway, that’s my rant this week. I have chosen to pay extra this time and include 3G connectivity. The main reason I’m doing this is because I read on my Kindle a lot away from home – busses, cafes, the break room at lunch – and I’m missing the fact that it doesn’t then update my reading progress. This means that Whispersync for Voice doesn’t always update and work the way it should. I’m hoping that the 3g always on connectivity will help with that. Yes, I know, I could always connect to a WiFi network but I don’t always bother if I”m just having a quick 10 minute read….
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars – The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher is the sequel to William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, a retelling of George Lucas’s space saga in the style of William Shakespeare. I would strongly recommend picking this up as an audiobook rather than ebook or hard copy – Random House Audio’s production is top notch with an excellent cast. It is far more like a radio play than an audiobook and the excellent cast does a wonderful job of telling the story. What I liked The source material. The original Star Wars trilogy is a darn good story. It contains a lot of strong themes which would have been as relevant in Shakespeare’s time as today: love, betrayal, youthful impetuousness, struggle against tyranny. Doescher therefore has a strong base on which to base his adaptation. It also isn’t too jarring, for example, when Han rails against Lando’s betrayal in Shakespearean language as it is a theme and emotion found in many of Shakespeare’s works. Yoda. On my first listen through I was a little disappointed that Yoda didn’t sound too different from the other characters. In the movies, he has a unique speech pattern and I was hoping…