dear isobel

Title: Morning Light Author(s): Catherine Anderson Purchase: Amazon Grade: C+

I read reviews of this book before I bought it and I decided that I would wait to purchase it until I had extra money because most of the reviews were scathing and I found very few intelligent ones that had anything positive to say. Usually that would turn me off completely but I own every single Anderson novel I could get my hands on so I decided to give it a chance. I ended up having the extra money, I bought it and I read it over the next few days.

I should have spent it on something more worthwhile. It’s no surprise that Amazon is offering this book for $4.10 now. It’s not her strongest and it’s a shame because it really should have been good. I liked the concept but the execution was extremely flawed.

The older brother from Sun Kissed’s heroine Samantha Harrigan (I just knew as soon as it was clear Sam had older bachelor brothers we’d be seeing them) Clint is the hero here and his counterpart is Loni McEwan, a girl with psychic abilities. She’s been dreaming about Clint her whole life and gets a shocking flash of a little boy she’s sure is his son lost in the woods and only Clint can save him. Of course, Clint is a stand up Catholic boy and doesn’t believe in psychics.

I was looking forward to the idea of having a hero be somewhat religious and unwilling to believe in the heroine at first. I thought it would be refreshing as a lot of authors just don’t touch on religion at all but they went from not believing to believing very fast and before you knew it, they were in the woods searching. Two days later, they’re engaged.

I have no problem with relationships that move fast. I’m a huge fan of Jennifer Crusie and almost of all her couples get together within a month’s time, if not less (two days is also her record I believe) but I guess I just didn’t believe that Clint and Loni were in love. I definitely think he wanted to sleep with her but I just didn’t get the lifetime love thing that fast.

Of course, that’s not the happy ending. Loni, like a lot of Anderson’s female protagonists, run off towards the end and the hero has to go after her. It happened in Phantom Waltz, Blue Skies, My Sunshine and probably one or two more I can’t think of. I believed it in My Sunshine. It’s my second favorite Anderson and in Phantom Waltz, I swallowed it because it made sense. I was tired of it in Blue Skies and by the time this one ran off, I was thinking, Jeez, just let her go. Find someone who doesn’t run when things get tough. Seriously.

More Anderson trademarks that have me weary are the old fashioned fathers like Clint’s father (I can’t remember his name off hand) and interfering families (Loni’s mother, sister and grandmother). It’s almost a repeat of half the books in the Coulter series and I’m hoping these aren’t around for the next ones. It just get olds after a while.

I was so disappointed in this but I hope that the next book from Catherine Anderson will restore my faith in her because she’s one of my favorite authors and I suppose everyone has a misstep. The book was still well written and there were pieces I liked like Clint’s relationship with his new found son so I didn’t hate it, hence the C+ grade. A book with a promising premise but a terribly flawed execution.

I never thought I’d be one of those people who’d enjoy ebooks. My favorite thing about reading is turning off the computer (but never the television!) and putting up my feet to read a tangible book. I like the different covers, I like being able to see the books lined up on my bookshelves — which was fine when I started to work and didn’t have a large amount of books.

Whenever I think about my lack of savings and money to spend, all I have to do is look to my right and see my huge bookshelves crammed with over 600 romance novels and another 150 random reference, history, mystery and true crime novels. I’m at the point where it’s going to be very difficult for me to continue purchasing without making more room, a fact that’s not entirely possible with the amount of room I have to work with. It’s actually a big factor in the reason I’d like to start saving to move into my own apartment (with the current debt to salary ratio, it’s not looking likely), I want more space to myself.

So with my diminishing available to store space, I started to look into ebooks. I found two sites that I browse regularly: Ebooks and Ereader. Ebooks didn’t necessarily require me to download anything extra, but they recommended Adobe Digital Editions, which uses less system resources and is a bit more light weight than Adobe Acrobat Reader. That’s fine. Their prices are about the same as bookstore prices and the selection is decent (not always what I’d like.)

Ereader does require separate software, which they provide for free. They have a huge selection of books that mostly unavailable to me in the bookstores or will cost me more money online and there are discounts in their newsletters, so I’ve bought about 10 books for about $40, which is a decent discount over what I would pay in the stores, full price with gas mileage.

All in all, I enjoy Ereader more. I will always try them before going to Ebooks. The selection and prices are better and I like the interface a bit more. But I like both sites in the end and I recommend anyone with my space issues look into the idea of ebooks as an answer. Because, hell, not buying books or selling the ones you have is never the answer. Selling my books! Would you sell your child?

On a site note, I added an events calendar to help me keep track of my favorite author releases, domain renewals, birthdays, bills, paychecks, etc and I added a quotes plugin. There isn’t a huge selection of quotes available but I’m working on it.

I realized tonight that Catherine Anderson’s newest novel, Morning Light, was released earlier this month. Usually, I’m more on top of releases from my favorite authors but I missed this one. I was looking at the reviews on Amazon and a lot of them were very critical of the book, even people who said that they were fans of the author.

I usually don’t allow reviews to influence me on my book purchases a lot. I usually find that when I enjoy the author, nine times out of ten, I will find each new book enjoyable. I can only think of a few exceptions where I can’t read all the books by an author (Johanna Lindsey is just someone who I only buy on the bargain rack and maybe not even then) but that’s changed a little in the last year as I started to cut back on my book purchases because I have way too many (I’m at just under 700 in my bedroom alone and it’s not that big of a room).

When Nora Roberts published High Noon over the summer, I didn’t rush out right away to buy it. Usually, I have her books on pre-order, but I read an somewhat unfavorable review in Entertainment Weekly and it made me pause for a moment. It was going to be a somewhat more expensive purchase than the usual $7 (in hardback at Barnes and Noble, it would run about $18 with my discount) so I decided that unless I had some extra money later that I would either take it from the library or wait for the paperback.

I was eventually given a gift card and it was at the top of my list to buy. I thought it was one of the strongest standalone novels she’s published in a few years and now I think the review was probably from someone who isn’t a romance novel addict like myself and the core of Nora’s fanbase so in my head, a review from Entertainment Weekly was a lot easier to discard so I could purchase the book anyway.

But the reviews for the new Catherine Anderson are less easier to ignore because they come from people who’ve devoured every previous novel, who like me, probably have her books on a easy to each bookshelf (not hidden or easily found spot like my Lindsey novels) so I can grab one for a reread at a convenience. I’m on a budget for my books these days and I’m not sure if I want to use the $10 for a book that was so poorly received by her own fans.

Then again, it’s only one source  of reviews. Maybe there’s another place where fans have fallen in love with it. I guess I just have to read the reviews thoroughly, see what they have in common and see if it’s something that might effect my enjoyment.

I think reviews are an important thing to consider when purchasing most things — sofware, computers, electronics and cars but when it comes to subjective forms of entertainment like movies, books, television and music, I think it’s really hard to say what may or may not be enjoyable for someone because someone else may love it. You can only list a software’s functions so many different ways, but how a book effects you? I don’t know. I do think I’m going to wait a little longer to buy it and look it into something else this month.

I hope I’m wrong and that the book is fabulous because she really is an author I enjoy and turn to in my moments of boredom.

Title: My Lord Conqueror Author: Samantha James Purchase: Amazon Grade: B-

I just want to preface this by saying that I enjoy Samantha James. I don’t worship her, I don’t hate her, I find her books generally entertaining and readable. I don’t rush out and buy her books when they come out but if I’ve got the extra money to spend and I see something new (or a reprint I didn’t already own) I always pick it up.

My Lord Conqueror is a book I’ve read a few times. It’s a run of the mill Norman invasion where the hero (Merrick) is a Norman lord who’s conquered some Saxon stronghold, and in this case, the heroine (Alana) is the bastard daughter of the keep’s former lord. It has all the earmarks of this type of romance — an unwilling heroine and a patient hero. She has visions and from the beginning of the book, she has a vision of Merrick standing over her with a sword as if he’s going to kill her. Since her visions usually come true, obviously this causes some anxiety on her part.

The story is tried and true, but no less fun to read. There’s a lot going on aside from the main romance (Alana’s legitimate half-sister, a few odd murders and occurences, a very minor secondary romance and more invasions) but I never felt like they distracted me from the main romance, which despite the predictibility, still flowed and seemed believable. By the inevitable declaring of one’s love, I did feel that the characters had earned that and felt it, which is nice.

For the first read through, I enjoyed the book. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it but I didn’t feel like I’d wasted my time reading it, which I think really determines a book’s value. It’s a book I put on my shelf and take down time to time when I’m in the mood to read a romance but I don’t want to have to concentrate on something I haven’t read yet. However, by the third read through, a few things do tend to jump out. Merrick calls Alana ‘Saxon’ no less than six times in the span of two pages and while you don’t notice it right away, once you notice it, you can’t stop. Which means I’ve probably ruined it for a few people, lol.

It’s not on the level of a Nora Roberts or a Jennifer Crusie read for me, but it’s also not a book I shoved back on my shelf to forget it (Catherine Coulter or Johanna Lindsey.) I do recommend it

I love Codesort, don’t get me wrong. In fact, Codesort and FanUpdate are my two favorite scripts, right behind Enthusiast. The world is a better place with those running around, so believe me, I’m thrilled about them.

Unfortunately, Codesort 2.0 is giving me some problems with using it across three domains. I run fanlistings on scott-clifton.com and robinpatrick.net in addition to those on much-ado.org. All three use the same Enth installation, so it shouldn’t be any issue to use the same Codesort and FanUpdate. FanUpdate is working like a charm. Codesort, however, is being extremely cranky and not allowing the codes to actually show. Grr. I’ve got a post in at Codegrrl and an email to the script creator. Hopefully I’ll get it squared.

In another news, I finally dug out my genealogy files and started getting back into them. My grandmother advised me to take a month off. I was only able to put it away for about three weeks. But still — an excellent attempt on my part. I’m going through them to make sure that they’re all current and organized before going back at it. I think I’m going to make another trip to Trenton later this week. Don’t worry, I won’t use my regular blog for my genealogy talk. I opened a new blog — dearisobel.org/family — just for that purpose.

It looks like one of my pet projects is finally getting off the ground — Crimson Glass Reviews. I’m looking forward to collaborating with some of people that have volunteered to help review General Hospital fan fictions. It’ll be great to wade through the deep level of…questionable quality stories out there and help direct people to the good stuff.