NetGalley and Scribd

I was recently introduced to NetGalley by a fellow Blogger on Twitter. She just happened to mention it, and I immediately turned to Google to get more info on it. Within minutes I created my personal account at NetGalley, and uploaded my review policy. It took me a couple of seconds to understand that perhaps I qualify as a "Professional Reviewer" - and it still makes me blush to say it!!

The other great site I will be linking to in a book giveaway next week, is Scribd. I was requested by an author to promote their currently free book on Scribd, and that giveaway is coming up on Monday.


I'm looking forward to getting a few ARCs and ebooks via NetGalley, and it is a party in my head right now - Free Books!! w00t!

Teaser Tuesday #25 - Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynn Jones

This week I'm on a Diana Wynn Jones readathon!

I borrowed Howl's Moving Castle from my library after watching the anime movie it was based on by Studio Ghibli. The book was so charming, different from the movie and still a wonderful read. Since then, I've read two other books by her - House of Many Ways and Fire & Hemlock which were really fantastic. Both were fantasy, but didn't recourse to the usual mix of mythology we see out there. From Year of the Griffin, Chapter 1:

“Hush!” said the griffin, probably whispering, too. It sounded like a very small scream.
“It may mean something magical.”

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Do visit my Blogger Spotlight on Karen from The Slowest Bookworm
Fun Posts in December:
Review: Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee
Review: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
8 Publishing Trends of 2010

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
 

Blogger Spotlight #4 - Karen @ The Slowest Bookworm

WELCOME TO BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT!
Featuring Karen - The Slowest Bookworm


My eReader:  Ooh yes.  I have a Kindle (pic attached)
I'm reading now:
The Riddlers Gift by Greg Hamerton
A Typical Day
My day usually starts with me having an argument with my alarm clock at somewhere between 6 and 6.30am.  Sadly, the alarm clock always wins and I drag myself out of bed and get ready for work.  I work for the local council in an admin post and start at 7.30am.  I enjoy my work and have great colleagues, but I’m always glad when home time comes around at 4pm as it means I get to spend some time with my 4 year old son who has just started school and is learning to read :-)  After we’ve eaten our evening meal and the young one is bathed and tucked up in bed, usually get a bit of housework done and my lunch ready for the day after, then I get to settle down on the sofa with my cat and a good book/my Kindle and RELAX until hot chocolate and bedtime.  

Did I consider other readers?
Yes and No.  I shop quite a bit on Amazon.co.uk and every time I opened the home page there it was, The Kindle, shouting at me to buy it.  I did do just a tiny bit of research (for about 10 minutes), but I’d got my heart so set on a Kindle that it won hands down.

The thing I like most about it?
I love all the features on my Kindle, but the top thing, which is why I wanted one in the first place, is the ability to increase/decrease the size of the font.  As I’ve got older my eyesight has gone from near perfect to well, not so perfect and I’m not impressed!  The Kindle helps me forget I’m not a teenager anymore!  I also love that I can make the line spacing bigger.  I find I'm not reading the same line over and over again now - I know, I'm getting OLD!

Review: Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee

Carousel Tides by Sharon Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Grade: A

Why I read it:

Carousel Tides piqued my interest when I read the first 10 chapters for free at www.Baen.com.

I have read nearly all the Sharon Lee and Miller books before, and enjoyed them immensely. Being eager for any more Liaden stories, I explored Webscriptions on Baen (this lets you buy the ebooks and packaged bundles of stories directly from Baen) - and signed up for an account.

Plus: I loved the heroine, Kate, and her changing attitude to her obligations at home. She is a magical powerhouse, but has elected to actively resign from her powers and position, instead attempting a normal life. We don't hear much about this, but her search for her missing grandma brings her back home.

The shield between the many worlds is wearing thin, and Kate is needed to stand Gaurdian for our world.

Characters: A very interesting, likeable character for Kate, I wanted more of this novel!

There were plenty of twists in the tale, adventures were had, and folks were rescued!

Minus: Not too many here - perhaps, a minor crib would be the story needed more depth to the secondary characters.

I would Recommend it to: Liaden fans (naturally), Urban Fantasy readers, Nora Roberts readers and my girlfriends who read romantic suspense. Also, folks who like strong female heroines.

View all my reviews

Book Blogger Hop #16- Jan7-9th

This is a weekly PARTY hosted by Jen at Crazy For Books. It's a chance to discover new blogs and to garner new readers for your blog as well.

Thanks for visiting!

"A Book that influenced me?"

Never really thought about any specific book in the recent years, but my first "big impact" book was The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. I read this multiple times through  my teens.

What's your story? 

Teaser Tuesday #24 - Runemarks by Joan Harris

Joan Harris' fantasy debut Runemarks surprised me with its depth of Norse mythology references, and its brave, young and immensely likable heroine Maddy.

She turned to glare at Maddy, her fierce little teeth bared like a ferret's. "You open this door right now", she said.

You really, really, don't want me to."

I just finished this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fanciful stroll through characters like Odin, Loki and the Norse Underworld tale.

Review: Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is the first book I've finished in '11, having begun Foucault's Pendulum over a month and a dozen books ago. 

Why I picked it up:I've heard Eco's work being praised, and this particularly was referred to as "the Thinking person's Da Vinci Code". Upon reading the first few pages, I was sure they had done a disservice to Eco by referencing Dan Brown's flat plot.

Why I finished it: Partly the gorgeous language, pithy sentences, and the sense that life, the universe and everything(!) would be explained.

I struggled to read this book - I could only finish about 50-60 pages each time; there are tons of references and minutae around early Paris and the Templars, Rosicrucians etc. This makes the reading slow and hard to keep up with. I ended up feeling a bit like an iceberg: I could understand maybe 10% of what was said, the remaining 90% was obscured from my view!!

I'd still read another Eco - perhaps something more accessible.

I'd recommend this to: Folks who've read The Name of the Rose (purportedly easier), Literary Fiction readers, Conspiracy theorists!

View all my reviews at Goodreads

8 Publishing Trends of 2010

This blog runs about 2 posts a month on Publishing, and here are trends I've noticed from my research:

1. Amazon sells more eBooks than Hardcover books:  This was one of the earliest trends this year, based on Amazon's Q1 results. This trend accelerated in the later part of the year, selling 3 times as many books in the first half of the year, compared to 2009. Bringing me to..
   
2. Ebooks sales doubled from 5% of the overall books sold to closer to 10% of the books sold (Association of American Publishers). Ereader owners also read on average 3 more books each month than before.
3. E-readers Proliferated:       New e-readers entering India and Multiplying like Rabbits. Some estimated Christmas Day Kindle sales to be around a million units (Jeff Bezos said that this day sales was the largest ever in Kindle history). Kindle now is the #1 best-selling product on Amazon, surpassing Harry Potter #7. 
4. Reading on Mobiles and other Devices:       Reports from Apple iStore show that iBooks is one of their top downloads. B&N Nook has a desktop reading device, and of course several other great independent Mobile/notebook readers like Stanza are widely used.On Christmas, Apple's iBooks e-reader is the #1 most-downloaded free iPad app, while Amazon's Kindle app is #9.
5. Censorship: Several times this year, Amazon was in trouble for deleting books from Kindles, and for (perhaps accidentally) dropping GLBT books from their listings. 
6. Closing of indie bookstores: While my favorite bookstore in Bangalore still exists, news reports suggest a struggle to survive elsewhere. While Independent stores are probably the hardest hit, we should remember that Borders and other mainstream stores shut several outlets this year. Google eBooks launched with options for local retailers to sell, hopefully this helps keep folks in business.
7. Rise of YA: Inevitable, sustained for over two years and massive - this trend has resulted in more teens reading, and also a rise in adults reading Young Adult books.
8. An Aptara Survey of 600 publishers does a great dive into the impact of ebooks on Publishing: The main eBook production challenge facing publishers is eReader/content format compatibility issues, the same as in our first survey. Even with a nearly universal eBook format standard (EPUB), today's highly fragmented eReader market makes quality eBook production a moving target.
   

I referenced this list in parts, to flesh out some of my points, from Julie's Book Hooked Blog.

2011 Trend Spotting: Content is King: View
What do you think? Do you have any you would like to add?

Two important Words: "You" and "Because"

This is my first article about blogging - I don't know if this would be a regular feature here (That depends on you!)

Most of us want to be better bloggers and keep readers interested, and here are two ways how:

• Use "You" in the title: Keeping more "you"s than "I" in your blog post makes it more interesting, because then the reader is the focus of the post
• "Because" is another word that research indicates is a 'trigger' for readers/listeners. The reason why is not as important as making sure that there is a reason given.

For more info: Two Most important Words in Blogging

Oh hey, one last thing - a study of 150,000 blogs discovered (to no surprise) that the most commented on blogs had two words in common:

'Giveaway' and 'Jobs'

What are the blogposts you comment on?

Review: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

My Summary: The story begins with the bartering of a young orphan theif - Locke Lamora. Trained as a thief before he is 5, the boy couldn't remain circumspect and stick to small, regular-paying thieving routines. Having pisssed off the wrong people, Locke now faces being sold or killed.

Luckily for us all, he is sold to Chains,his eventual father-figure and teacher with a grudge against the Nobility of Camarra. Locke begins working as a Gentleman Bastard, a tiny group with a Robin Hood-esque sensibility against the rich crime lords in the city. 

Plus:  A couple of great characters, lots of intricate plots and good buildup towards how and why Locke and the GBs exist. This is a truly swash-buckling tale, and it reads very differently from most of the Fantasy out there.

Minus: The story does tend to get very tangled towards the  middle, and the plot wanders. Give yourself some time and patience here, it all comes together at the end! A lot of cursing is used, however.

I first read the The Lies of Locke Lamora last year and I was taken aback by the almost European 18th century world and Locke's audacity. As we move through time and back again, we see Locke's training develop and him grow into a mastermind of disguises. Re-reading this book unveils forgotten tidbits and layers of mystery in the storyline, a great set up for Book #2:Red Seas Under Red Skies.

I would recommend this to: Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind) fans, Malazan fans, Brandon Sanderson readers, Jim Butcher readers. Folks who enjoy fantasy - the kind that emulates another society, with great characters.

Buy: The Lies of Locke Lamora from Amazon