1/5 Stars: Meow, by Skye MacKinnon

If I could give this book a negative star review, I would.

It was horrible. I read 25% of it and gave up – and that’s saying something. I don’t give up on books very easily, and I am typically able to at least complete them before judging. This book is the exception. It’s poorly written, (very) poorly edited, makes no sense, and is just plain bad. I received the book free and even that didn’t convince me to make it through to the end. Do yourself a favour, read something worthy of your time. This isn’t it.

1/5 stars

1/5 Star Review: Starry Night by Debbie Macomber

I’ve been a Debbie Macomber fan in the past when I wanted something lighthearted to read that wasn’t going to involve too much brain power. The books were simple, sweet, and I have a collection of them sitting on my bookshelves.

I purchased this book expecting the same – and it was nothing like previous books I have read. It focused on an unbelievable tale, and repeated the same story over and over. I couldn’t connect with the main character (woe is me, I’m beautiful and thin and smart too and I have to write the society pages when I really want to write about what’s going ON out there) nor did I connect with the love interest (I hate the world, I’m angry at my Mother – I hate this lady who just showed up – gasp, she’s beautiful, I love her, I want her, nope, don’t want her after all, gasp, love her!)

What REALLY irked me though, was the judgmental ideas sprinkled throughout the book about “kids who spend all their time playing video games instead of exploring outside” – the love interest writes his book ‘Alone’ because he felt that too many people were playing video games and having screen time instead of exploring.

There is a way to write about exploration and the excitement of exploring that doesn’t talk down or judge your potential audience. It felt very off putting, very forced, and it made me uncomfortable to read it worded that way. We do not need to judge people like that.

Thoughts on the Kindle Paperwhite

This Christmas I received a kindle paperwhite from my other half, much to my surprise. I had an older kindle that I used pretty much every single day, and was incredibly excited to have it upgraded. There was nothing wrong with the older model, but I really disliked having to light up the entire bedroom with various reading lights in order to read in bed. It had wifi but was not touch, and had a large keyboard along the bottom portion of the reader. Still, it served me well.

The new kindle paperwhite is a touch screen version. There is also a light built into the e-reader and it has about 15 different settings so no matter what sort of lighting you’re dealing with you should be able to read. It also doesn’t come off as obnoxious so you shouldn’t wake up or disturb anyone who may be around you. It is about the same size as my old kindle, and the price was reasonable. I also love the new Goodreads integration, very easy to set up and jump right in.

One issue I do seem to have is the power supply. The device is advertised to last up to 8 weeks with wifi turned off, so I decided to test that out. Mine only seems to last a few days before I need to charge it back up. This isn’t a deal breaker for me since I’m rarely away from a place that I can charge it up, but I’m wondering if it’s just my kindle or if this is a common issue. Since the device is more powerful than the previous one I would expect that it consumes more power, but I wasn’t prepared for how fast it seems to drain.

I also found it came with a lot of bloat but it was easy enough to remove. I don’t need instructions written in 15 different languages, or the dictionary. I use Calibre to keep my e-reader library organized, and it also does a great job of converting different ebook formats.

Besides my PC, the kindle is probably the most used device in my house. A lot of people talk about how they miss the scent of ‘real’ books, the feeling of the pages and the weight in their hands but personally speaking I am glad to free up some room in the house. Books collect a lot of dust, and I just don’t have the room for the amount of stuff that I read. One thing I would like to do is to start collecting signed books. So far I have zero books in that collection but it has always been a dream of mine.

Do you use an ereader? Have a favorite? Let me know in comments!