On Reading More

Since my cataract surgery, I’ve been doing a lot more e-book reading and just reading in general.  The problem I’m finding with e-books, aside the egregious formatting issues, crap editing, awful proofreading, and total lack of spellcheck (Or authors really DON’T know the difference between imminent and eminent or the fact a point is moot, not mute!) is that authors tend to write long novellas or very short books, under 200 pages, that leave characters undeveloped, no time for world building, secondary characters that have great promise become a flash-in-and-out shallow non-entity, and I’m left feeling like that should have been really good, but it ended up little more than a dog’s dinner of a slightly fleshed out outline.  Shallow, empty, unable to engage me completely the whole thing is little better than a piece of cotton candy in print.

Reading more has also shown the weaknesses of many highly acclaimed and/or bestselling authors.  Take Janet Evonavich.  Her most recent bit of fluff, Look Alive Twenty-Five was so bad I ended up skimming it.  Trite, reusing sentences and partial paragraphs in every damn book, predictable plots, everything a series that should have retired gracefully 15 books ago becomes, added the final insult – not one thing was truly funny.  Her fans will consistently overlook all these flaws and rave about Steph, Morelli, Ranger, and Lula – never looking at the downward spiral of the quality of the plots and increasingly absurd ‘set pieces’ designed as humorous skits within the book, but unrelated to the story.  Her fans are rabid, but sales are declining with quality.  Evanovich has made her millions, it doesn’t matter.  The stories can be on life-support and her ardent fans will buy and rave about them.  I get free e-books or I don’t bother.  Look Alive Twenty-Five – which gets a D- (0.8*) from me – wasn’t even in the review listing. Why?  Her fans just don’t care.  As the Bard would say, “There’s the rub.”

There are some real quality authors doing e-books at novel length, but the short attention span of readers seems to push publishers and authors into a short format.  Publishers of print books rarely give new authors a chance to build a following.  The result is astounding mediocrity.  Or as I said to my doctor, “Short and predictable.”  There is no greater condemnation than that.

It also says a lot about readers.  They will settle for a steady diet of bland ‘fast food’ books rather than take the time to find something worth the effort to read and be willing to wait for a well-crafted novel that is fully visualized and researched with three-dimensional nuanced characters and creative world building.  98% of ebooks are the equivalent of a fast food drive-thru window items thrown together by people who know nothing about food, managed by people who care only about time (not taste), owned by a soulless company, and consumed by people indifferent to anything except a quick refueling of their stomach.  The meal is forgettable and tasteless but they can claim they ate something resembling food.

Why this rant?  Well, as I said, I’ve been reading more, sometimes 15 books in a series in 3 days – yeah they’re that short!  You quickly realize that every genre has been infected.  UF, paranormal, and cozy mysteries have a pandemic of lousy books.  Not far behind are books that ‘borrow’ a character or element from a bestselling author and spin empty stories around them.  One of the worst offenders is The Jack Reacher Cases by Dan Ames.  Ghastly is giving them too much credit.  I began reading Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books before anyone knew who Lee Child was or heard of Jack Reacher.  Jack Reacher, like Robert B. Parker’s Spencer, became an iconic character.  Why Lee Child allowed the use of his character as a plot point is beyond me.  The books are so badly written and plotted (There was a PLOT????) they can’t even be called average.  AVOID THIS SERIES!  Oh yeah, avoid Diane Capri’s The Hunt for Jack Reacher series too.  She still hasn’t found a decent plot or a coherent story.

Seeley James, an action thriller writer of average or slightly above skill, start the Sabel Security series.  I had issues from book one but gave the author time to develop the characters and the over-arching plot.  I tell you, the whole concept was so OTT I struggled from book 1, but Book 5, Death and Secrets had me once again trying to figure out how to throw an ebook against the wall in outraged frustration.  The heroine is the owner of Sabel Security, a business started by her adopted billionaire father and named for her.  Pia Sabel isn’t just a former world-class Olympic soccer champion, she’s natural at security and working out arcane plots.  Yes, she even learns her REAL momma is now the evil VP of the US!  So a soccer champion heiress turned security company president and field operator (with zero experience) not only outwits all these super-villains, she looks great doing it and teaches kids soccer when she can!  BARF!  The books ranged from D to C+ (2-3.2*) and only if you suspend all credibility.  If you can get past Element 42 (good luck with that) it doesn’t get worse till book 4 and 5 and that’s where I gave up.

Now you know I had some good reads too.  Here they are:

Kill for Me (Victor, Bk 8) by Tom Wood gets a solid B+ (4.2*) recommended read from me.  Victor the assassin remains steadfastly in character through the series, adhering only to his own ethics while hunting and being hunted.  A fascinating character, not likable but not repulsive either.  Tom Wood does a fine job keeping his plots tight and interesting.  A recommended series for anyone who enjoys the anti-hero genre.

Fortune Furlough by Jana DeLeon sees Ida Belle, Gertie, and Fortune off on that long talked about vacation in Florida on a fictitious island called Quiet Key – which has a geographical description that seems to move it around but sounds like Sanibel/Captiva mixed with Little Palm Island (wrong location, right rescription) and Longboat Key (same problem).  Other than that, the plot is pretty good and there are enough laughs that you can enjoy the mystery of who killed the conman.  It gets a B- (3.8*) as it’s still not quite up to the early books but is an easy, fun read.

In a Badger Way is Shelly Laurenston’s latest shifter humorous romance and bless that author, she does make me laugh.  We were introduced to the MacKenzie sisters in Hot and Badgered that featured the oldest half-sister Charlie.  This installment features Stevie, the neurotic musical and scientific genius.  Stevie is not one of my favorite characters, but the book is fun and funny and loveable Panda Shen Li who we met way back in Bite Me.  Stevie decides Shen is her boyfriend.  He simply has little say in the matter, even after seeing what she shifts into.  But pandas are among the most easy-going shifters so, in many ways, Shen is Stevie’s best choice and truth be told, he’s not exactly averse to the idea.  Good fun with the usual slam-bang ending.  It gets a solid B (4*) and recommended read from me.

One of the series I gang read is still in progress, the Ascending Mage series by Frank and Rae Lea Hurt.  Book 1, Changeling Justice starts the story of Ember Wright, the younger daughter of two high ranking mages, her father who works with numbers for the Counsel, and her mother, a Class 5 Healer.  As a child, she shows no talents at all.  Come he testing day Ember is ready to declare herself a lost cause, but the man doing the testing is the most respected Investigator alive, called by one and all, The Legend.  While all mage tracks have 6 levels, Investigators have only 3.  And that is what Emmy is, an investigator.  The story starts with her apprenticing with The Legend himself.  They are chasing a culprit in a cemetery when Ember says the name of the person whose gravestone she tripped over – and calls forth his ghost.  Wallace knows she’s far more than a simple investigator and is carefully guarding her secret.  When she reaches Senor status in just 10 years, he sends her to Minot to do the census of Dru – mages and changelings and things go sidewise from the start.  Ember becomes relentless in her pursuit for justice and with her mentor so far off she finds another one in the cemetery and the real plot begins unfolding through Changeling Hunter and Buried Truth.  So far the series is getting B- to B (3.8 to 4.0*) from me and book 4 is on pre-order.  It’s a definite cut above the typical UF fluff.

OK, that it for now and I’ll try and do more series reviews in a month or so and update any here I’m still reading.

Paperback Swap (PBS)

With some trepidation and a feeling that the site was withering on the vine, I returned to PBS.  I played in some swap games and argued with folks on the political affairs forum – and then a very strange thing happened.

PBS showed the site was not secure.  They corrected the login page and swear the kiosk where they sell junk is safe but ………………… well, nothing else is.  Now being somewhat security conscious while keeping in mind there isn’t much there that’s correct, I pressed them a bit and was contacted by a woman in the IT department and assured the site with our names and addresses and all manner of private info being exchanged by what PBS calls, incorrectly, ‘Private Messaging’ was getting converted to a secure site.  I began making deletions and changes.  I also posted two threads, one on the political forum and on on the general chat forum warning folks about the security issues.  PBS naturally came in and “Oh dear, it was just us forgetting to pay the fee for the security for an hour or so.  All is well.”  When I pointed out all but the Login was unsecured, they came back with ‘how hard it was to changes everything to https format’.

Now, remember, most of us are PAID members.  I’m not on a ‘free’ site anymore and haven’t been for 3 years.  And in 3 years they haven’t managed to secure the site.  I was not impressed.

BUT WAIT!  THERE’S MORE!

A stranger wanders into tiny little Current Affairs and Politics (CAAP) forum and starts a thread.  The thread title “THOU  SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS”.  No, that is not a joke.  Some complete twit actually had the unmitigated temerity to use a Biblical quote, and not just any old quote, one of the Ten Commandments.  Apparently, the poster, Len, uses a rather modern bible as the quote is normally “Thou SHALT not bear false witness….”  Now I am an agnostic and knew both those things, and also knew the commandment had to do with perjury more than general falsehoods although they too are covered.  But he posted a somewhat questionable graph and article about the number lies Trump has told vs Obama.  Now these ‘lies’ are not weighted in any way, a deliberate oft-repeated whopper like ‘If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance!’ vs cheating on your golf score or lying about your weight both equaled 1.

It also did not count how many time the answer was evaded, side-stepped, responded to with a non-sequitur, or simply ignored.  Obama was a master at those things.  Trump’s mouth is in gear before he thinks.   Never give a straight answer when and equivocation will do.  Chris Wray, Director of the FBI, did that by constantly saying, “We’ll wait for the Inspector General’s report,” to question from Committee members.  (I’m not counting on living that many years.)

So there’s a bit of back and forth – and I even eschewed remarking on this thread title and then I thought, “What the hell is a PBS Team Member who has extensive access with the powers that be doing on a political forum?  This doesn’t seem right.  It’s like a judge dating one of the lawyers trying a case in his court.”  hummmmm  So I am extremely uncomfortable.  All the forum members have different jobs and experiences and a wide variety of expertise and life experience, but there we are all equal.  A PBS Team Member is an insider with access none of us have to both personal information and people in power.  This bothers me.  If he wishes to engage in political debate, he should go to a site where he too is naught but an equal.  There are thousands to choose from.

Thinking about this more bothered me enough to send an email to Richard Pickering, the nominal owner of PBS.  I get a reply from the ever-anonymous, and super secret, and feared employee, The Librarian.  All these years and no one has ever ‘come out’ and admitted to being The Librarian.  Speculation is rampant.  Perhaps they get taken by a demon if caught out and new Librarian appointed.  Now one does not bandy words with The Librarian.  Well, except me.

After politely expressing my concerns to Mr Pickering, who ignored me, his loyal minion wrote:

Dear xxxxx,

The Team is usually far too busy to participate in Forums; we have no policy against it, though.

Len is our head programmer. He is an integral part of the Team, and we know him to be invariably gracious, patient, genial, kind, well-informed, and very highly intelligent. Without reading any of his recent posts, we strongly believe that if he has chosen to participate in the Discussion Forums, those who encounter his posts should consider themselves fortunate to have his contribution to the discussion.

As long as Len is being courteous, we don’t know why it would make you uncomfortable to have him participate in Forums. He is not your “boss” — he does not actually close accounts or reprimand members (although he *could* do those kinds of things, he is far too busy keeping the site running, and overseeing members is not his responsibility). Also, if you are doing something in Forums that you fear will get you “in trouble”, you should not be doing it! 🙂

It’s also wise to bear in mind that any member of the Team, or any member of the club, can “lurk” in any Forum at any time (meaning, read without posting), so you should not consider any communications there to be privileged or private. You should not be sharing anything in Discussion Forums that you aren’t comfortable with anyone (Team member or not) reading.

Luckily, there is an easy solution if you don’t like Len’s posts: you can click “Ignore this member” on one of them, and you will not see them anymore. It would be a shame in our opinion — you would be passing up an opportunity to learn something — but that is your choice! Also, if it makes you uncomfortable to have one of the Team participate in a particular discussion, you can always recuse yourself from that particular topic and let a few days pass; chances are good that Len won’t have the leisure time again for a good while, and there are plenty of other discussion topics in which to participate.

Of course, if you feel that Len has been discourteous or abusive, please specify the text to which you object and give us a link, and we’ll look into it!

All the best,

The PaperBackSwap Team

 

So, without checking anything, Len is praised as the font of wisdom that we poor, pitiful, uneducated, benighted, souls should look to for enlightenment.  And as an encore, he’ll walk on water and do the loaves and fishes!!!!!!!!  I don’t know about you but I sure as hell wasn’t feeling all that ‘fortunate’ about arguing with the HEAD PROGRAMMER of a site that has personal information on me!  Now anyone with an ounce of sense would stop there, but, well, I was REALLY pissed at the patronizing, condescending tone that twit took with me.  So naturally I replied:

 

By the way, as Head Programmer, you just admitted he has at his disposal all the skills and equipment to destroy my life.  Yeah, I want him on a political form.  Lurk all you like.  You run an unsecured site, so if I’m supposed to be impressed by his dedication, you’re crazy.

 

OK, there go both my Queen of Tact and Miss Congeniality Awards for 2017.  I might even get booted for a more …….. er, pointed post in the thread.  Yes, I did mention the bit about loves, fishes, and walk on water thing.  I also might have said something about The Librarian either being his mother or in love with him.

 

I don’t know which is worse, the moron from PBS who thinks Len walks on water and does the loaves and fishes routine, believes everyone here is so stupid and uneducated we need his brilliance and insight to manage our pitiful, ignorant, depressing, uneducated lives, plus we mustn’t be naughty because almighty PBS might be watching!  I assume The Librarian is Len’s mother or is madly in love with him.  She also thinks PBS customers need to be spoken to like dimwitted 5 year olds.  She obviously missed her calling as the Commandant of a daycare stalag.  I do so love being patronized and condescended to.  Malice drenched in sugar.

 

That post might just put me in the running for the Sarcastic Bitch Award.

I sent The Librarian’s response to Pickering with the following:

 

Are these people related?  Married?  Or does she just worship Len from afar?

I would be passing up an opportunity to learn something????  ARE YOU PEOPLE ALWAYS DEMEANING TO YOUR PAYING CUSTOMERS????   That twit called me ‘stupid’ about 4 times – albeit in the most patronizing and condescending manner possible.  You and she know nothing of my accomplishments or education.  You know nothing about me.  

But I will say this, if you want to backhand insult your own customers, you managed nicely.  Too bad your Librarian didn’t think that perhaps the golden boy Len might learn something from others.  Obviously, he knows it all.

That sandbox crack about getting myself ‘in trouble’ is so infantile I’m between speechless and wanting to dope slap the jerk who wrote it.

No wonder PBS is in a death spiral.  I’ll help give it a good kick on my blog.

 

Well, I’ve kept my word.  Here is the blog post about the idiots that run PBS.  My advice – RUN AWAY!

On Leaving PBS

After nearly a year of long of difficult self-debate, I finally decided to drop membership in PBS (PaperBack Swap).  This past year I found my myself more absent than there thanks to the eye surgeries, at the same time others things began happening.  I left the games early letting players know I’d be back after I could see with both eyes again.  It took almost 3 months.  But over those 3 months, I’d stop in a do a short hello or something ……… and found fewer and fewer games.

Life is taking a toll on the older members as they cope with personal and family illness.  Many leave for the ease of ebooks and the fact getting to the post office, especially in winter can be tough on the elderly.  The ranks of hostesses have thinned a lot, so there are fewer games.  So I went back and looked at my game log.  I’d played in well over 1,000 games.   I had been blaming my blurred sight on the slowdown before the surgery, but no such problem existed after Jan this year.  Aside from a brief explosion of fun games in March, I was playing in maybe one or two kind of boring games at a time.  Five years ago I averaged 10-15 games.  Two years ago 4-6 games.  Now it was 0-3.

I loved spinning my stories of my groundhogs and their insanity that were just fun and entertaining episodes.  I liked the players – with one exception – but rarely ‘won’ a book I wanted, sending the books to family or other gamers who did want one of the books I won with my compliments.  My membership was expiring in August, but with games taking longer to complete despite fewer players, I looked at the cycle time and realized I had to stop playing with the game I was in.  I no longer had time for another.

At the end of the game, I announced my departure.  I received multiple offers of free membership, but at $20 a year, the cost was not what was driving my decision, the lack of books was.  PBS book listings fell from 4 million+ to under 2 million in 2 years.  Many of my friends and PBS members had gone digital.  There was a drought of books that were new releases, my wish list was getting no offers, even mass-market paperbacks were scarce.  Finally, there was the mass cancellation of series and author contracts by publishers as they ruthlessly downsized.  The market for printed books was getting smaller and hardcovers insanely expensive.  I’d troll through Amazon listings and come away empty handed.  The games had few new book titles and even fewer authors.  I found myself reading more and more ebooks as they were cheap, good, and simply not in print at any reasonable price.  In short, I’d hit the perfect storm.  In the end, to stop the angst among game players, and my second guessing myself, and I simply closed my account a left a short “Goodbye”.

Authors had discovered that daunting as self-publishing is, they are no longer at the mercy of layers of people from agents to editors to printing schedules and distributors.  They could cut out all that overhead, write a good book and make more money per book than they did using traditional publishers.  They have to shoulder more of the promotional aspects, find editors, proofreaders, and copy editors, but all those people were laid off by publishing houses and now working freelance themselves.  I know one of my good friends will be leaving when her paid membership expires in December and she was a hostess.  She wisely transferred her virtual box to another hostess a few months back.  She will simply fade away as she has been doing and others did before her.  I didn’t have that option as my characters had become such ‘real’ personalities and were wanted in the games as much for their stories as for the fact I was one of the few with new release books.  It was just more drama than I expected.

I check on them as I had to open an account for my SIL and I’m slowly teaching her the basics of listing, the whole acceptance and order processing procedure, making lists, and looking for books.  So I can ‘ghost’ the site and make sure all is well.  Unfortunately, Games is just getting quieter and quieter with fewer and fewer players and fewer hostesses.  Summer is always slump-time, but so many of our players are MIA and more seem to just slip away.  PBS is dying slowly, but games, which attracted 70+ players 5 years ago, now can’t get 20.  Life has changed that much.

I have not gone happily or willingly into ebooks.  I swear there are claw marks on the door as I cling to print books, my preferred format.  But just looking at my Amazon account I realized so much of what I buy there, and I but a lot of different things, have nothing to do with books.  Of the books I buy, maybe 60-70% are hardcover.  The rest is a mix of mostly trade paperbacks and a small handful on mmpb’s.  But overall the number has diminished to a trickle while ebooks have surged thanks to promotions by authors, sales at Amazon, and Book Bub, and new release special pricing when you’re on an author’s mailing list.

So now I am free of PBS – with mixed feelings as I really miss the game players and telling my stories.  But – it was time.  Where will my 1,000+ books go?  Those I don’t keep – and I already have hundreds of ‘keepers’ – ok over 1,000 – so making the cut to ‘keeper’ status is hard, will go to FOL sales and the food pantry.  The action thrillers to my brother and his wife can take care of their new account, so in a way, I will still be feeding PBS books.  My SIL has zero interest in games and hates looking at LCD screens for long, so she’ll just exchange books and that’s it.

So the blog will go on with more ebooks showing up and fewer print.  I read as much or more than ever, it’s just different.

A Publisher’s Game

Remember back in September I posted Belle Chasse was offered as an ebook for $2.99 for those who had already pre-ordered the HC? Well, turns out there was a SECOND catch to that seeming bargain, the publisher will NOT allow the ebook to be loaned. To learn this, you would have had to search in the hidden info that provides the page count, etc., so it was there, just well disguised.

Amazon needs to inform customers an ebook cannot be loaned out at the START of the description, or even in the discount pricing box so we know immediately WHY it’s so cheap, not buried in with page count and other crap most of us ignore.

Since I bought the ebook SPECIFICALLY to loan, they ended up giving me a credit, which was nice of them, but that does not mean I’ll get sucked in by this trick again.

If you want the hard copy for your library and ebook for you portable ereader, it will be fine, so long as you realize lending will NOT happen. Not an Amazon decision, it is the publisher’s decision.

Who is your favorite……….?

I’m on a number of Good Reads forums where this question invariably comes up? What’s your favorite book? Who is your favorite author? What’s you favorite series?

You know, that hard to say because even in a single genre you have sub-groups and then mashups and …….. well, you get the picture.

But it got me thinking about some of the best reading  – mostly because my doctor needed some ideas for books that she and her sister, someone with very different taste in tropes, would like.  That’s not easy.  I have very strong ideas about what makes a book memorable.

I looked at some lists of the ‘Greatest Historical Fiction of All Time’ and most made me cringe.  I thought Wolf Hall was – meh.  So did my brother.  Now Anya Seaton’s Kathrine – yeah that was brilliant.  George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman was there as well, and though I loved it – and the series in general -not sure it belongs.  Many choices were written long ago, like Tolstoy and Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (Oh, just kill me now.  I hate Dickens.)  I, Claudius by Robert Graves, I can kind of get behind that one.  The Name of the Rose by recently deceased Umberto Eco was not that good for me despite it often being named to the top 20 of the mystery genre as well.  Most of the others, not so much.

It seems when I was growing up there were many great choices for historical fiction.  Thomas B. Costain was at the end of his career, but for a man who didn’t start writing till his 50’s, he did some remarkable work.  His 4 book non-ficion history of the Plantagenet kings starting with Henry II to Richard III is just excellent.  Then he wrote The Black Rose, later made into a film starring Tyrone Power, Jack Hawkins and Orsen Wells.  Set in the time of  The Three Edwards (the third book of is Plantagenet history) it is just a great historical adventure read.  For my brother, Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo will always be a favorite along with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

But my favorite historical fiction these days tends to run to mysteries and SteamPunk – which is any alternate history paranormal genre often done with a mystery trope.  But in plain old real world history, I was impressed by Mary Miley’s Roaring Twenties series, The Impersonator and Silent Murder (the better of the two by far).  A third book is due this year, and another complete for 2017.  A history major, she writes very well and has created a terrific character with Jessie Carr blending in real life people in Vaudeville and silent movies.

Agatha Christie was married to an archeologist and spent a lot of time in the Mideast and other locations.  This led her to write Death on the Nile, Murder in Mesopotamia (set at an archeology dig site), and Evil Under the Sun (movie filmed on various island locations off Spain, but the book is set on an island off of the south of England) set in the 20’s and 30’s as part of her Poirot series.  In retrospect, it’s amazing how good she was with plots that involved various ‘isolated’ groups as well as standard locations.  She was light years better than the typical cozy writer of today.  She also wrote one true historical mystery, Death Comes at the End, set in ancient Thebes.

Lindsey Davis sets her Falco series in Vespasian’s Rome and is a favorite for me.  She aged  out Falco (which was overdue) and his daughter, Flavia Alba has taken up her father’s private informer business.  John Maddox Roberts, better known in the fantasy genre, wrote his terrific SPQR mysteries set at the time of the rise of Julius Ceasar.

A big favorite among historical fiction fans is the adventure series Outlaw Chronicles that’s a spin on the legend of Robin Hood by Angus Donald.  They can be hard to find as he no American publisher, but I get them used or new from Book Depository, an Amazon-owned company, in the UK.  Best read in order, Outlaw is book 1 and The King’s Assassin is the most recent publication.  The last book in the series is due out next year.  His following is a mix of male and female readers, so give his stuff a try.

Bernard Cromwell is most famous for his Sharpe’s Rifles series that was made into a BBC series starring Sean Bean as Sharpe, but he writes non-fiction including Waterloo: 4 Days 3 battles 3 armies.  Jeri Westerson is another British author who sets her stories around a disgraced knight, Crispin Guest.  Described as Medieval Noir mystery, it has the same edgy sardonic humor as Lindsey Davis and John Maddox Roberts.  Book 7, Silence of the Stones, was just released in Feb, but all mysteries, the main story arc wraps up in a single novel, but to follow the origins of the lead character, read the first few in order.  Two other reliable historical mystery fiction authors are Ruth Downie who writes the Gais Ruso series set in Roman Britain, Gaul, and Rome.  The other is Rosemary Rowe who uses Roman Britain for her Libertus series.  Both can be expensive and hard to find, but are available.  Like Angus Donald, most are published by Severn House and no US publisher picks them up, hence buy used, get ebooks, or get it from your library.

Tasha Alexander does the Lady Emily mysteries set in Victorian London and throughout Europe.  (Her husband is English born action thriller author Andrew Grant.)  Deanna Raybourn has two series out – her famous Lady Julia Grey, which I was not crazy about until book 4, Dark Road to Darjeeling.  I really liked that one.  She’s started a new series featuring Veronica Speedwell, a female physician in London.  Like the Julia Grey series, it’s set in the 1880’s.  It is sitting on Mt TBR.  Set in Regency England are the Sebastian St Cyr books by C.S. Harris.  I tried the first few and was bored, but friends like them.  Too angsty for me.  Anna Lee Hubler’s Lady Darby books are a big favorite of my sister-in-law while my brother loved loved Steven Hockensmith’s Amlingmyer Brothers Holmes on the Range books set out west in the late 1800’s.  He ended the series at the famous Chicago Exposition.

Rhys Bowen has three series, her Evan Evans, Molly Murphy, and Her Royal Spyness.  I know the Molly Murphy series and liked quite a few, but prefer Her Royal Spyness, even though her lead character, Lady Georgiana, can get on my nerves, but Ms Bowen does a nice job weaving real people though her stories – from Noel Coward, to Edward VII (her cousin), to Charlie Chaplin.  Her prose really is a pleasure to read.

Historical mystery is a rich and broad genre moving across thousands of years and lots of fine authors.  Pick a period and you’ll likely find something.  Here are some other authors you might enjoy:

Will Thomas – Barker and Llewelyn series set Gaslight London; Collin Cotterill – Dr Siri series set in 1970’s Laos;  Laura Joh Rowland – Sano Ichiro series set in Edo in 1600’s Japan; Ellis Peters – her famous Brother Cadfael series set in 12th century England (also a BBC series); Gary Corby – Nicolaos series set in ancient Athens/Greece in 460BC; C.J. Samson – Matthew Shardlake, a lawyer, in mid-1600’s England; Carol Nelson Douglas – Irene Adler, opera star, in mid 19th century Europe; Alex Grecian – Murder Squad set in late 1800’s London (but a bit uneven in quality); Dennis Wheatly – Roger Brook special agent for British PM Pitt late 1700’s to early 1800’s.

There are simply too many to name and more all the time.  Those who like both historical fiction and mystery – like me – are delighted at the growth in this area.  Like all other genres, some are good, some not.  Find one that suits you and enjoy!

PaperBack Swap – Update 2016 – Does ‘The End’ Draw Nigh?

Come February 15 it will be the first anniversary of the annual membership fee and bizarre ‘caste system’ that PBS so ham-handedly introduced last year.  To say the change from free to paid membership was handled poorly is not giving the still seething outrage among many members its full due.  There must be a thousand faceless voodoo dolls with ‘PBS Librarian’ getting pins stuck in it every day.  Others have composed dance routines to celebrate its almost inevitable demise.  How can a simple book swapping site elicit such strong and long lasting emotion?   Let me explain.

Once upon a time, there was an idea to start book swapping site where people could join for free and list books available for trade so they could then get books in return.  The initial programming and server maintenance and updating were handled well and the forums where members could chat about books, current affairs, make offers on large lots of books like a flea market booth, sell their excess credits ……. it was all there.  The Founders were proud of their creation and called their members a ‘Community’.  Much of the data input and maintenance was done by volunteers who keep everything from pictures of book covers to ISBN’s updated.  The funding came to PBS by members buying postage and credits that had small fees attached, members donating credits and money, or buying special ‘elite’ level programs that gave them larger wish lists, or even buying books through PBS or PBS links to Amazon, which returned promotional fees to PBS.

As ebooks gradually began eating into the print book business, the volume of books traded per year began dropping.  Naturally, the fees that PBS had been collecting on postage and other sales dropped as well.  On Super Bowl Sunday 2015 PBS members got a nasty shock.  If they actually planned to USE all those credits they had accumulated in good faith, they had to buy a membership.  Now the annual fee was not high, but along with the fee came a weird caste system that allowed only PAID members to use forums and the private messaging system and trade books freely as before.  Now the middle-class member paid less per yer, got a finite number of ‘free trades’ after which PBS assessed their standard $0.50/trade fee.  Unless you bought PBS postage, then you earned another ‘free’ trade – except you paid the $0.50 fee when you bought the postage.  Now the lowest caste could not communicate with members unless they were actively involved in a trade with that member.  AND every trade they made to get a book with all those credits now had a FEE assessed/trade and the ‘fee’ had to be paid in PBS money.  To get PBS money you ……. well had to pay ANOTHER FEE.  So credits were essentially devalued like Frequent Flyer points where that first class seat to Hawaii suddenly went from 120,000 miles to 180,000 just as you hit 110,000 and would get them in 2 months.

For those who recall their Greek mythology, this might be likened to the ‘Sisyphus effect’ – standing in water with constant thirst yet never reaching it, and having food to feed your starving body just out of reach.  It’s hardly unique to PBS, but given the tight-knit community they fostered – and even bragged about – it was seen not just as a badly managed business decision, but as a personal betrayal.  Here, the very sense of community they built ended up turning on them because they committed the one unforgivable sin – betrayal.  And what was worse – they effectively retroactively DEVALUED the credits of members.

Unlike airlines and hotels, PBS does not provide a necessary function in life.  They don’t take from the east coast to the west in hours.  They don’t give you a room with clean sheets and a nice bath and room service.  You don’t even have much in the way of competition other than Bookmooch.  The other sites are the equivalent of mom-and-pop motels.  PBS is the ‘big dog, but they are middlemen, facilitators.  Had they taken a more businesslike approach and treated members as customers, not a community of co-equals, the relationship would have withstood the change far better.  Certainly, the ebook effect would still be eroding member numbers and books traded as more and more go digital, but their demise and the lingering hard feelings would not have spun so totally out of control.

When a frequent flyer.stayer plan gets changed, we get annoyed and members do take to social media to strike back at loyalty programs that suddenly change terms because thousands and thousands of frequent flyer/stayer plans get disrupted, miles get lost, points are dropped and the ‘cost’ of those rewards get higher and harder to obtain.  But the nice things about airlines and hotels is the fact we have CHOICES.  And while we are ‘loyal customers’ giving them nice profits, we don’t actually feel like we are partners in the business who had their senior partners stab them in the back.  There never was that sense of ‘community’, just rewards for being loyal.  And if we get annoyed enough, we change to a different provider.

Airlines and hotels usually handle the backlash – something they KNOW they will get – like a business.  That is, professionally.  They realize there will be outrage at the changes and a small number of customers will be lost, but their most important customers, the business ‘road warriors, are the ones they want to keep.  Not the occasional flyer/stayer.  The hotels and airlines even had ‘elite’ levels that automatic perks that the occasional traveler envied, but didn’t begrudge.  They always had the ‘status’ based on usage, or because the paid all that extra money for First Class.  (You could buy membership lounge privileges for a fee.)

PBS had some ‘road warriors’, people who shipped hundreds of books a year and sat with high credit balances.  PBS assumed, wrongly, they would just suck up the fees to keep the service – except they forgot something.  Their choices were divisive and members saw clearly that what had been equals were no longer.  That ‘community’ was betrayed and divided into classes.  It certainly did not help their case to publish a newsletter that had a cover story that sounded like it was written by some high school drama student who thought all those ‘mean members’ has no idea how much they HURT with their complaints and acrimonious emails.  If ever a company needed to hire someone to show them how to manage a customer crisis, this was it, but no, they carried on like a ‘Dear Diary’ entry – missing only the little heart shaped dots above the ‘i’ – but including of ‘!!!!!!!!!!!’ so we couldn’t miss their terrible suffering.  I had to just stop taking the whole thing seriously as a business and just say, ‘Fine, I’ll deal with the games because I enjoy them and to hell with the rest of the teen angst revisited.’  (I was afraid of getting pimples!!!!!!!  <——– See, lots of ‘!!!!!!’ so you know it’s IMPORTANT!)

Well, Armageddon nears.  Since mid-Summer, the rate of books shipped per week has slowly but surely dropped as people like me who were rolled from Gold Key to automatic Standard membership decided not to renew, or members grew weary of the lack of offers and stopped even going to the website.  It’s called abandoned accounts.  But the big hit will happen those first two weeks in February.  That’s when the bulk of paid members first joined.  It sits there like a big, black cloud on the horizon.  PBS tried getting members to lure friends into joining by offering ‘PBS money’ or some equivalent of pocket change in cash that would cover the cost of a coffee a Starbucks.  The offer was loudly and humorously mocked off the PBS forums.

I have already been told several game moderators will not be renewing their membership using the ‘ebook excuse’, which may, or may not, be true.  We’ve lost a number of game hostesses that way too.  I also know publishers are reducing the number and depth of discounts on mass market books, and I see that every month as the number of books I pre-order drops, so the number of print books is dropping too.

Another hit is the lack of discounts for online shoppers for mass market books.  Now Amazon does offer ‘best price’ guarantee, so should you pre-order a book and the price drops between the pre-order and the release date, you get the lowest price.  Books-a-million does NOT.  Also, their discount offers are less frequent, aimed more at in-store shoppers (which means selling existing stock on hand) rather than online shoppers (many using pre-order).  Plus they avoid all the cost associated with shipping.  Not ONCE this holiday season did I get a ‘big deal’ offer of 30% off as I have in the past.  20% was the highest any offer went.  Hardcover and trade size paperbacks still have good deals associated with them Amazon, better than BAM even with their discounts.  Hardcovers are often being sold for less than the ebook price.  All of this means there are simply now fewer books to trade on sites like PBS.

Now let’s look at one last nail in the coffin that is online book swapping – the cost of an ereader.  Amazon Fire has a $50 ereader with very limited storage capacity (so if you buy that extra storage disk, you find YOU CAN’T STORE BOOKS THERE) which means using the Cloud to read your books, but it’s cheap and even has a web browser built-in.  Mine is getting returned, it just wasn’t right for me, but they do offer good value if you get free – RELIABLE – wi-fi.  SO now you have a $20 fee to exchange used books with HOPE of maybe getting a book you want back, the cost of wrapping and mailing that book, and the time all this takes running headlong into a $50 ereader with a colored hi-def screen and web browsing capability. hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm

The final sad sign of the death of PBS is the School Donations program.  Since 2012 PBS has run an annual drive to get new children’s books into the hands of schools with a large portion of under-privileged students and tiny book budgets.  They are located everywhere from Indian reservations to the inner city.  I’d donate a hundred or more credits every year, plus additional cash to defray costs, none of which was tax deductible.  I never cared as getting books to kids is important to me.  PBS supplied anywhere from 16 to 24 schools a year.  Ths year they managed to complete 6 and they have 5 more active in need of cash.  Those 5 extra all have the credits, because people don’t care about them if they plan to leave.  Cash?  That’s different and even though the total cash needed is small, just a few hundred per school, they can’t seem to get it.  Over 100,000 members and not ever 1,000 are giving a dollar each.  In 2014 they completed 18 schools.  The signs are clear.  The good will toward PBS has scraped rock bottom.  The resentment lingers and even programs like this suffer.  There is no ebook phenomenon here, just members saying a very loud, “SCREW YOU!” to PBS.  I’m pretty sure the PBS powers that be are doing a sad little ‘Dear Diary’ entry about this too, complete with a frowny face and tear splatters.

It is sad.  Sad that a company was managed so badly that its own generous customer base turned Scrooge to others.  Unfortunately, that includes me.  The credits and money I normally donate – nope.  Nothing.  I do NOT trust PBS.  And there is the bottom line.  It’s the one that is rearing its ugly head as renewal dates approach.  Members no longer trust PBS to be honest about ANYTHING.  Not providing those books they promised the schools, or even being in business 6 months from now.  They broke that fragile bond last year and have done nothing to repair it.  There is no evidence of ‘We hear you’, just childish nonsense or self-righteous condescension.  They have wrapped themselves in the cloak of martyrdom – of the classic teen response of ‘You just don’t understand!’ – followed by sullen sulking and misplaced anger.  Not the way to win trust and loyalty.  And certainly NOT how you run a business that understands its customer base.  The utter lack of professionalism is just mind-boggeling.

So, is THE END nigh?  Personally, I think in 6 months, maybe sooner, maybe later, PBS will be no more.  If you’re thinking of joining or renewing, do so with the understanding that one day that ‘page inaccessible’ message will be permanent.  The membership price isn’t high, but don’t go spending a lot in mailing out books that you’ll likely get empty credits for – credits that will be lost when the site folds, because the permanent ‘page inaccessible’  day is not far off.  RIP

 

Making Cents – Thanks to Dear Author

No, that’s not a mistake on my part. When it comes to print and ebooks, most readers have definite price limits.  I often comment of the value of both print and ebooks vs their purchase price.  I have also said numerous times that I have decidedly mixed feelings about Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited as I feel authors should receive some payment for their work – and I have no idea what, if any, royalty they get from Kindle Unlimited downloads.  While a part of me still feels that authors are shortchanged by a behemoth like Amazon, I also had to revise my opinion after reading an editorial in Dear Author.

Dear Author is primarily a romance book blog written by a team of very knowledgeable and educated women.  Anyone who knows anything about books knows the largest selling genre – by a WIDE margin – is romance.  The buyers are almost exclusively women.  Dear Author is a very popular blog with heavy traffic that is widely recognized as one of the ‘movers and shakers’ in the industry.  They have branched out some into mystery and espionage and fantasy, but the vast majority of their reviews are romance of all types.  But they also offer insights on publishing trends and industry issues.  One of their columns this month concerned Amazon Kindle Unlimited and the controversy around it – naturally much of it coming from authors themselves.

Read the column by Jane here.

Jane makes several excellent points – some I hadn’t considered and a few I did.  I had a dear friend who was a dedicated and voracious romance reader.  I used to joke that when we went into a bookstore she went looking for the steamy bodies in romance and I went looking for the dead ones in mystery.  But I read a much wider range of genres than she did as she rarely strayed from romance while I went for fantasy, non-fiction, urban fantasy, action thrillers and we’d cross at romantic suspense.  She did get me into some romance, but I could not budge her beyond romantic suspense except with a few ‘crafty cozies’ with knitting and other crafts as the unifying theme.  While I had a bigger budget thanks to the fact I held a higher position in the company, we were BOTH price conscious.  I was just more willing – and financially able – to buy something if I really wanted it.  Now on a more fixed income, I look more closely at value than I did then.  And yes, value has driven me to buy and read more ebooks.

While my friend died several years ago, no doubt leaving her sons hundreds of books to clear out, her health kept us from visiting bookstores and used bookstores for years before that.  The explosive growth of Amazon put paid to my store shopping, except by accident.  While my friend did live long enough to see the beginning of the evolution of ebooks as a major player, we were still mostly reading the books in PDF format, not as NOOK or Kindle – and nearly all were small press ebooks bought online from the publisher.  What we were BOTH pleased with was exactly the point Jane made in her editorial, the books were relative bargains.  While mass market paperbacks were rapidly climbing in price, there sat the early versions of ebooks at half or less than the cost of print.

In the last 6 years or so, the growth of ebooks has opened places like the Brooklyn Public Library to people who live in California or North Dakota or just down the street from the actual library.  For $50 a year, you have a vast library of ebooks at your command.  No doubt your local library has a similar plan, but maybe fewer titles.  Many local libraries are more willing to buy ebooks patrons request too.  And there is the beauty of ebooks.  Value and convenience rolled into one.  At 2AM the library might be closed, but you can borrow an ebook.  Or I can shop Amazon and grab something and start reading it minutes later.

And that brings us back to Kindle Unlimited and the arguments authors use against it.  Namely that their work is ‘devalued’ by making it free.  Once I read Jane’s editorial, I began rethinking my attitude about Kindle Unlimited (and I am NOT a member of that service) and how it was or was not different from the far most cost effective Brooklyn Public Library, other than you can keep the download?  Do libraries and used bookstores ‘devalue’ books?  Used bookstores have been around as long as there have been printed books.  That doesn’t stop people from buying the umpteenth reprint of Jane Eyre or King Solomon’s Mines or Tarzan.  Now the heirs of Agatha Christie might retain rights, but who has rights to Voltaire or Thoreau?  So, I must revisit my own thoughts of services like Kindle Unlimited.

As time passes, I find a larger percentage of my reading is now ebook, around 40-50%, well up from the 10% of just a few years ago.  I read mostly on my laptop, but I did buy myself a small Kindle Fire as a Christmas gift this year.  I was unwilling to pay for an iPad or similar tablet as I wished to use it mostly to read books in bed.  In the great ebook debate, I find I am smack in the middle.  On one side are two good friends, one in California and my doctor in NJ who read almost exclusively ebooks.  On the other side sit people like my brother and sister-in-law who want ONLY print books.   All are voracious readers and all like different genres.  And there I stand squarely in the middle.  My old eyes get tired reading LCD screens, yet my friend in CA loves the fact she can scale the fonts to accommodate her vision, not exactly an option with print.  My brother and SIL like the ease of print and dislike dealing with expensive technology that breaks easily and takes time and effort to learn.  (Yes, they are rather proud Luddites.)  I read on a laptop for a totally different reason – I multitask too much for a tablet.  At the moment, I have 5 tabs open in my browser, a word processing program with 3 documents open, and an e-reader program all open at once, and that’s pretty typical.  I can’t do that on a tablet.

I did find Jane’s comments both enlightening and balanced.  Thinking of Kindle Unlimited as a ‘value based’ option, something that has a strong appeal to any voracious reader, and looking at the arguments against it by authors ………. well, Jane made very valid points.  Kudos.  I like it when someone presents an argument that makes me reassess my opinions and I was glad to revisit my evaluation of Kindle Unlimited with a different perspective.  I might not be a great romance fan, but I am certainly a voracious reader and like everyone, I want value for my money.  Kindle Unlimited might not work for me right now, but I am now willing to keep checking to see if that value pendulum swings my way.   Thank-you, Jane.

And the World Mourns Again

When the Russian plane crash happened in the Sinai a few weeks back I was concerned that it signaled a new round of terrorist attacks.  I said as much to my brother after the muted, but believable ISIS claim of responsibility.  We decided maybe we both read too many spy thrillers and expected the worst.   Sometimes I hate being right.

The events in Egypt seem more removed despite the victims being tourists and the death toll being higher.  But France, especially Pais, is a place where many of us have visited.  For all our often strained relations with France, we remain allies.  There is a sense of familiarity, shared history, one we don’t share with Egypt and the Russians.  Paris is a city famous for its style and food, – called the City of Lights.  Paris is a place where many of us have strolled city center and had a cup of coffee or glass of wine at a sidewalk table.  There is a sense of kinship, of common ground in shared history and core cultural values.  The feeling, ‘It could have been us.’ is stronger.

France has the misfortune to have the largest number of citizens that have left the country to train with extremists in the Mideast, and then returned to France.  It’s a problem of growing concern throughout Europe, but France has born the brunt.  Now it has suffered a reminder that no one is ever safe from those prepared to die for a cause.

Is this the last attack?  I doubt it.  These small groups of radicalized young men (and sometimes women) exist everywhere – and the risks increase as more refugees flee the war in Syria and other countries these radicals hide within their ranks.  The group responsible for the Paris attack were not recent refugees, but largely French citizens returned from the Mideast where they trained with ISIS.  Who was responsible Egypt might never be learned.

So once again the world sits mourning, counting the dead and wounded, over 350 dead between the two countries and as many wounded – a large number critically.  I have no answers.  No brilliant insights or solutions.  I can only hope we learn that you cannot reason with the irrational and say once again ………….

Some Months ………… SIGH!

You know, some months are great!  October is one of my FAVORITE months of the year – May being my other favorite month.  Not surprisingly, I have come to HATE winter with its short, cold days and bad weather.  Still, even favorite months can have sad memories – my sister-in-law died of cancer on Oct 12, 1999.  A month later, Dad died.  That was a rough year, but over time the sadness dulls and the sheer beauty of a fall day can bring a smile.  You never stop missing people completely but as time passes and you face a beautiful, warm October day, you can say, “It was just like this the day my SIL died.”  Then you smile at all the good memories and feel a certain melancholy over how life takes things away yet gives something back.

I guess fall is a metaphor for the eternal cycle of life – and reminds us IT’S FOOTBALL SEASON!  Yes, I am one of THOSE people, the ones that watch college and pro football.  Why I became the football fan and not my brother, who could care less, I’m not sure.  But I am.  I’m not insane enough to sit in an open stadium in freezing weather like the folks in Green Bay, but I do watch TV and cruise from game to game if one threatens to be a blowout.  I started my last entry for the blog 3 weeks ago and, well, ahem, yes, I got distracted and was just a teeny bit late getting it done.

I am in an NCAA Football game (Doing a very mediocre job this year, though I won last year) and an NFL Fantasy game on my bookswap site (currently #1 in overall place).  I am also in a fantasy baseball game there – and somehow have managed to be the 4th highest overall scorer despite missing 4 weeks of sheer guesswork on winner selection and bonus questions and missing bonus picks for Divisional Winners prior to the season.  Plus I have no clue about what the hell I’m doing.  I must confess, I have NEVER willingly watched baseball.  Since my dad died in 1999, I haven’t SEEN A SINGLE GAME.  It’s BORING.  OK, Mets fans may quibble with me right now, but come on, I’d fall over snoring at one of those things.  Strangely, I seem to do well at guessing and apparently my ability to research stats pays off in bonus points.  (I did have to research ERA and how they are calculated for one game, so I guess there is a small learning advantage too though I promptly forgot everything I learned – BECAUSE IT WAS BORING!)  In a bizarre quirk of fate (Trust me, it was NOT skill or knowledge!), I actually WON the baseball game last year.  I’m sure there is some kind of lesson there but damned if I know what it is.

Baseball is the only game that makes golf look good – sort of – though that’s another sport that is likely more fun to play than watch.  I play golf.  OK, I play MINI-golf at places called Pirate’s Cove (your choice, Bluebeard or Blackbeard course) and Congo River (Stanley or Livingston course).  That’s the limit of my attention span.  And I played softball as a kid.  It’s one of the reasons I have come to know endodontists, oral surgeons, and family dentists so much better than I ever wanted to.  (HINT: Do NOT catch balls using your face to trap them.  It never works out well for your face.  Especially your teeth.)

So that’s why the last entry in my blog took so long.  My TV had been off for so many months I didn’t realize all my phone and internet trouble was the cable itself.  I got a new modem, but still had issues – the color on my TV was waaaaay off in pre-season.  I had to get my cable company in to run a new cable to the house because the signal was so low it affected the phone, computer and TV ……. but I made sure it was done BEFORE the regular season started.  I would like to remind you I AM in FIRST place in the football game – a game I WON last year.

So October makes me recall more than Mr October (AKA Reggie Jackson) and the heartbreak of the NY Giants losing like amateurs.  Again.   I also can revisit the caps, root canals, extractions, implants and other exciting things that are fall memories.  And today I get to see my favorite oral surgeon.  And here’s another hint – the really hard peanut?  Spit it out.  Yeah, not a nut.   Yup, October can be hell – especially on the old checkbook.

9-11

I remember 9-11-2001.  It was a day like today.  Sunny, blue skies, mild temperatures.  I saw the Twin Towers on my way into work.  I did most days when the air was clear.  I had arrived home on a night fight the weekend before and we had a rare southern approach to Newark and we saw the Towers all lit up and I turned to the young woman sitting next to me and said, “It looks like home.”  Little did I know, I’d never experience that again.

I was sitting at my desk working on a report on the computer when one of my engineers walked in with the oddest look on his face and said, “A plane flew into the Twin Towers.”

I thought it was a bad joke.  “I just saw them.  They were fine.”  I started checking the internet and there it was.  I went up to the roof and there were maybe 10 people there, all wearing the same expression of disbelief and fear.  Many had friends, spouses, family who were First Responders or worked in the Towers.

I just stood silently and watched.  No one seemed to want to say anything, even me.  There were no words.  From where I stood north and west of Manhattan, the two towers seemed to overlap slightly, their windows like mirrors in the bright sun and a mushroom cloud of dust and smoke above.  Then the first tower collapsed and a city I grew up seeing nearly every day disappeared in a cloud of dust.

It was one of the strangest days of my life.  The shock and the immediate aftermath as we all realized it was no tragic accident, but a deliberate act of terrorism, left us speechless.  I sent my guys home.  The phone lines were so overloaded, they couldn’t even call out.  I stayed for awhile, but the company finally closed the plant – a first for anything but a county declared state of emergency.  Those still there of the nearly 4,000 people headed home, many worried about family in NYC.

That day 2,753 people died.  Since then, 3,700+ survivors and first responders died, mostly of cancer from inhaling the dust.  Just   2 weeks ago, the woman in the famous ‘Dust Lady‘ photo died at the age of 42 from cancer.  Thousands of our service men and women have died in the Mid-East, more have been forever injured.  The toll extends well beyond those who died at the Pentagon, Twin Towers and in a field in Pennsylvania bringing down Flight 93.

It was day that altered the course of many lives, even for those far removed from the event.  But was also a day when people, many ordinary working people, stepped up and helped.  I know I’ve shown this link before, but it’s worth watching again.  Boatlift 9-11 narrated by Tom Hanks.

Lest we forget.