Monday 10 December 2012

Books I've Been Previewing...

I have to admit that at this time of year I do tend to procrastinate more than usual...

Really I shouldn't as I have a lot to get organised still.
Christmas cards and letters to send; presents to wrap and label; and stocking up the freezer.

On the literary front I'm reading some previews of books that I downloaded onto my Kobo glo.

Previews are a great idea as you can try out an author you've never read before, or there's a book that's all the rage and you're not sure about it.

I've even decided to give new books by my favourite author a miss because they've not grabbed me with the preview...

I will be buying the full version of a few of the books I've previewed so far.

I've been trying to broaden my range of reading matter, so want to use Christmas as a catch up on my reading spell.

So here's a few of the books I've been previewing:

'The Casual Vacancy' by J.K.Rowling- the opening is promising, but the seemingly most interesting character drops dead at the beginning, and the others that we're then introduced to just bored me- they were selfish/irritating individuals. And I kept wondering how long it was going to be before something interesting happened- actually another character dropping dead might have been good, but I couldn't be bothered to buy the book to find out- I gave up before the end of the preview!

That's probably a deficiency on my part, not JKR's writing. I had no complaint about her characterisation; perhaps it was just her narrative style I disliked...

'Life, Death and Vanilla Slices' by Jenny Eclair- now I find her comedy very funny. She is a grumpy old woman in a fun way. Women of a certain age, or state of mind will recognise so much she says...

As individual chapters they were good, and if the book had followed through from the first character who had just bought the vanilla slice of the title, before her accident, and not then gone on to telling us about yet another character, I probably would have bought it.

I know stories that aren't linear can work, but again, I don't think I have the patience to wait around to find out how the different women connect together- if they do...

I can deal with stories that are going along, but then, with a flashback take the story back in time for quite a while, before coming back to the present.

I will be buying Sue Moorcroft's 'Want to Know a Secret'- When the lead character, Diane's happy life becomes unsettled; suddenly learning about a few things her husband has been keeping quiet about, but only after he has had a serious helicopter crash.
I got to the end of the preview and immediately wanted to know what happens next...

If you read e-books, do you find the preview facility useful?

And have you bought a book because of a preview that you wouldn't have bought otherwise?

Do please share your experiences of e-book previews...

Saturday 8 December 2012

A Mention in Writing Magazine...

Just a quick mention.

In the January 2013 issue of Writing Magazine (on sale from 7th December) there is a two page article about the background to the creation of the One Word Anthology (p28-29).

Along the bottom of the pages, there are photos of many of the writers who have stories and poems in the anthology. I'm there too.

It's been good to put faces to names at last, as many of the writers are only known by their forum name. :-)

If you haven't bought a copy of the e-book yet, you can still do so. Either click on the image in the side panel of my blog- it links to the book on Alfiedog.com, or you can find it on Amazon and Smashwords.

It's only 99p on Amazon and Alfiedog. And for the number of stories and poems you get in it covering a variety of genres, it's great value.

It's both light and dark, so something for everyone...