Divergent

Looking for a good book?  Did you like the Hunger Games?  If so, try reading Divergent!  It’s a pretty easy read about a dystopian society with a young female heroine.  Imagine this…the country is broken up into 5 factions, each based on a particular virtue.  You are born into one and at age sixteen, based on an aptitude test, you can choose to leave your faction forever and transfer to a new faction.  “Faction before family” so you never get to see your family or friends again.  What will young Beatrice do?  Read Divergent, the first part of a trilogy, to find out!  I’m in the middle of the second book of the trilogy right now and am still enjoying it. 

Netflix for Books? Hardley.

My "summer of reading" that I started about 4 years ago has lived on and I continue to read every day...so I have read a lot of books.  They just stack up in my house and then I give them away to charity.  I'm also have a hard time finding books I want to read.  I buy them all from Amazon and they usually arrive the next day so it's very convenient.  I've been stopping books half way through though and giving up on some lately since I wasn't enjoying them.  If I'm falling asleep after reading two pages, it's not the book for me and I gave up on the Kindle a while ago since I didn't like reading on it. 

Then I thought, I wonder if there is Netflix for books?  That way I would save money and space in my house as well as not feeling like I've wasted anything if I got a book I didn't like.  So I searched the internet and there were two places that provided this service.

1. Booksfree.com has plans starting at $10.99 per month and deals only in paperbacks

2. Bookswim.com has plans starting at $23.95 and has paperback and hardbacks

I chose booksfree.com because they were cheaper (I chose the $13.99/month plan to have 2 books at a time) with the downside being that booksfree.com only has paperbacks so I would still need to buy new releases I really wanted, or just wait.  Excitedly, I started putting items in my queue and they were processed for shipment right away. 

Here are my thoughts on the service so far:

1. Selection: Pretty good.  Some of the random stuff I read is not on their list, but they claim a customer can put in a request and they will buy it.  I knew when I signed up that new hardbacks were not available, so I don't hold this against them.  All the books have links to Amazon with descriptions and reviews

2. Shipping speed:  Pretty bad.  I realize the site says it will take 5 to 10 days for books to arrive, but I live only 7 miles away from where the books are shipped from and it took 8 to 10 days for the books to arrive.  I don't know exactly how long because I did not check my mail box during or after the snow storm last week (my mail box is on the street and I didn't want to walk down the long driveway to get to it in the snow).  This is where I think they need improvement to be compared to Netflix.  Netflix accommodates people's desire to get things quickly.  Amazon quotes 2 day shipping, but books usually arrive in 1 day.  I don't like having to wait once I decide I want something.

3. Book condition: Could be better  I received 2 books.  One called French by Heart that is relatively unknown and not many people read it probably.  It is in decent condition, but has that old book odor to it like it's been packed in a box for way too long.  The second book was Twilight which, of course, everyone has heard of and probably read before me.  This book is in horrible condition (see photo above).  This book can be replaced for $6.59 on Amazon.  They should consider replacing highly requested books so that they stay in good condition.  I'm used to reading new books from Amazon so this will be an adjustment.

 I'm not sure if I will remain a customer or not.  I will give it one go around with sending books back and getting more, but this is definitely not a "Netflix for Books".

Where do you get your books from?

The Hunger Games

Imagine that each state had to give up one boy and one girl each year to fight in the ultimate reality show where only one comes out alive.  Oh and everyone else if forced to watch it on TV.  Welcome to The Hunger Games.

This is an incredible book that I can't imagine anyone not liking!  I bought it for my husband when we went to Mexico to make sure he would stay entertained since he doesn't sit still well and all he wanted to do each day was get under the palapa so he could keep reading it.  Perfect!!!  Once he was done he kept telling me to read it.  I read another book first but once I started The Hunger Games, I did not want to put it down.  It pulls you in right away and keeps it up all the way through.  I won't tell you too much, but trust me that you WILL like this book. 

The Hunger Games is the first book in a trilogy.  The second book, Catching Fire, was a good book, but not as good as The Hunger Games.  The final book, Mockingjay, comes out next week and I've already pre-ordered it on Amazon.

Dear Kindle: I Want to Love You...But I Don't

I really wanted to love the Kindle I got for Christmas...but I just don't. I'm not usually a techie gadget kind of person, but since I fell in love with the iPhone I thought I would try some others.

Here are my issues with the Kindle:
1. Availability. New releases are not available for a month or two after a book is released. I don't want to wait until June to read Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang so I ordered the hard copy.

2. Price. The price is not much lower than getting a regular book. The hard cover price of Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang is $14.03 and the Kindle is $12.63...so only a $1.40 difference in price. I get free two day shipping from Amazon so there's no savings there either. Seriously, only $1.40???

3. No back light. I mostly read in bed and our bedroom lighting is a little dim so it sometimes strains my eyes to read.

4. Interface. I have a hard time navigating this thing unless I just turn pages forward and backward. I keep wanting to touch the screen like the iPhone. It's hard to find a particular page if you don't know exactly where it is.

5. Graphics. The pictures and charts are pretty much illegible. The first book I got was a reference type book on blogging and there were many screen shots and graphics that I couldn't read at all.

6. Little commitment. It's too easy to give up on a book. If I'm not into a book I just get a different one. I've bought 3 Kindle book and only finished one of them...and that one was the blogging book that I wish I had in hard copy so I could go back thru it and find the sections I wanted to reference.

There may be other features on it that I could like, but haven't tried or don't know that they are there. One of the places we are going on vacation in May doesn't have phones or TV's in the rooms so I could see using this to get a newspaper, but the resort gives a daily fax of major stories or I can just look on the iPhone for news.

Is there something I'm missing??? Anybody like it?

This Candy Sucks

It was a guilty pleasure, but I really enjoyed reading LA Candy by Lauren Conrad of The Hills. Her second book, Sweet Little Lies: An LA Candy Novel, just came out so I was eager to read it. What I enjoyed about the first book was that it gave an inside look at how reality shows work. I stayed up late 3 nights in a row to read it, I enjoyed it so much. I thought Sweet Little Lies would be just as good, but was I wrong. It is basically a book version of a typical reality show where people lie and scheme and get in fights. It was really annoying. If I had another book to read, I would have just put this down. Luckily it is very easy reading so I finished it pretty quickly. No late nights with this one though...it wasn't worth giving up my sleep time. There is still one more book to come in this series. I doubt I will get it.

A Trip Around the World

360 Degrees Longitude: One Family's Journey Around the World

The Highman family had been planning their trip around the world for over 10 years. They scrimped and saved and the kids grew up always knowing they were going to travel the world. The mom and dad had high tech jobs in the Silicon Valley that they quit, they took the kids (ages 8 and 11) out of school and traveled around the world for a year. They home schooled the kids and brought books for them to read about the places they visited. I loved this book, but would never want to take a trip like this because it seems like too much work and too much sleeping outside. They spent $120K on this trip and most of it was spent in camp grounds and hostels. Oh...and they rode tandem bikes across Europe as their form of transportation. Not everything goes right for this family and they had to make some changes along the way, but they had a great time and never wished to be home. I'm surprised the kids were able to keep up with the physical activities they did and kept from being too bored by reading a lot. The trip started in Iceland and ended in Belize. Since I love traveling so much, I love reading about other people's travels. I know it's a good book when I feel like I'm on the trip with them, and I definitely did with this one. I highly recommend it!

Book Reviews

I read a lot of books. For the most part I only read right before going to bed to help me unwind. I'm going to start posting short book reviews of what I read in case anyone is looking for a new book or ideas for their book club. I'm excited to start using my Kindle, but I have one more real live book to read before I switch to the Kindle. Books just stack up and then I give them away so I think the Kindle will be good for me.

Any suggestions for what I should read next?

Love the One You're With

I recently finished reading "Love the One You're With" by Emily Giffin. I have read her three prior books ("Something Borrowed", "Something Blue", and "Baby Proof") and enjoyed them so I knew I would like this one as well.

Ellen had been married to her best friend's brother for only three months when she ran into an old flame, Leo, the one that made her heart pound like no other. Her relationship with Leo had been intense and passionate so when she ran into him in the middle of the street in New York, all those feelings flooded back. Leo arranged for them to work together (he is a writer and she is a photographer) because it turns out he never got over her. I won't give it away, but Ellen was tempted by Leo as her own marriage was falling apart. I know my description has made this sound quite shallow, but there are a lot of things going on that make Ellen consider wandering and wondering if she married the right man.

What I like about Giffin's writing is that no character is all good or all bad. They seem like real people who struggle and don't always make the right decisions, but they deal with it and move on with life. What I didn't expect from this book was how emotional it made me since I could relate to two main themes through the book...Ellen lost her mother at a young age and her husband moved her to a new city for his job.

This quote from the book sums it up:
"Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all."

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner

As I previously wrote, I really enjoyed the book Bringing Down the House about the card counting MIT students. I watched the movie "21" last night that was based on the book. I was really excited to see the movie since I loved the book. I was so disappointed by the movie though! I thought the book read like a movie so if they just followed the book it would have made a great movie. The movie was sooo different! Pretty much the only thing that stayed true to the book was that there was a team of MIT students who counted cards. Almost everything else was changed. The movie wasn't very good and I didn't care about any of the characters since I knew the plot in the movie wasn't what happened in real life.

Bringing Down the House

I am currently reading the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich about the MIT students who took Vegas for millions by counting cards. Everyone who knows me knows how much I love Vegas and gambling so it is the perfect book for me. It talks about blackjack strategy and a little about the history of Vegas as well. I wish I were smart enough to pull something like this off. I do not know if I would actually do it or not, but I wish I had the mathematical mind to do it. The book reads like and action film so I'm moving through it pretty quickly, but do not want it to end!