Tuesday, 5 January 2016

Booky Resolutions are wasted on Chuckles!


It's that time of year where people are asking you about New Year resolutions. To be honest I never bother with the things. I've never really seen the point on deciding that the first day of January is the day to change all your bad habits! But that's just me and I guess it works for some people so good luck to them. Me, I change things when I feel I need to change them, whatever day of the year it is!

However I make an exception for booky resolutions! Every year I decide on a pile of things I need to do this year. These were my 2015 resolutions:

1-Read 200 books for the Goodreads Challenge
2-Catch up on a pile of series that I started ages ago
3-Get my tbr under 500 books

Now lets look at my success. Instead of 200 books I read 265. Yes, happy with that. The series catch up was a complete failure. I think I caught up and finished TWO series which is not a raging success! I MEANT to but never quite got round to it...As for the tbr, these are books I already own in physical or digital book form and does not include wishlist. I did actually get below 500 with a few months to spare but then I lost control and bought books in Amazons autumn sales, Black Friday sales, Christmas and New Year sales so I started the New Year on 617 books to read. That was very depressing!!!

Am I going to do resolutions for this year? Course I am and here they are!

1-Read 200 books for the Goodreads Challenge
2-Catch up on a pile of series that I started ages ago
3-Get my tbr under 500 books AND KEEP IT THERE!

 Ah well, I'm nothing if not optomistic I guess! I think I'll do ok with the 200 books read total. I would love to get close to 300 to be honest but I'm not pushing myself. The other two, I live in hope with little expectation...!

 So are you doing booky or non booky resolutions this year? Were you successful in last years efforts? Feel free to gloat or sob below!
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Don't Rain on my Zombie Parade!


Anyone who visits my blog on a regular basis, especially my Stacking the Shelves post on a Saturday, will know how much I love my zombie books. I have lots of them on my tbr and I never tire of finding new ones and enjoying a range of horrible zombie goodness!

So why do so many people ask me how I can keep reading that zombie stuff? 

Yes, I get a lot of people contacting me through Goodreads and by email, who seem to look down on people who read zombie fiction. I get a lot of that attitude 'but these zombie stories are all the same kind of thing.' 'Don't you get bored with it?' 'Shouldn't you read things that are more acceptable like the classics?'

OK first of all, I don't like strangers telling me what I should or shouldn't be reading. I read what I like to read and that is mostly apocalypse dystopia, action packed low romance urban fantasy and gory horror. These are my favourite books and I don't feel the need to justify myself for liking them. One Christian woman who wanted to be my penpal told me I was going straight to Hell for reading Stephen King. I wasn't taking that crap from anyone so I gave her a right serving about how christians aren't meant to judge people and are meant to be tolerant etc...I got a grovelling apology but it was the end of penpalling with her.  What gave her the right to behave like that in the first place? I read for entertainment and pleasure and I have no intention on wasting time on genres I don't like. Besides I don't JUST read those genres! I also like some mountain disaster non fiction, biographies of people I find interesting, the occasional thriller or contemporary or a book where the story just appeals to me.

So why don't I get bored with zombies? Well the books I read feature different types of zombies (fast, slow, intelligent, only out at night etc). Some feature the military or preppers, some are ordinary people trying to survive, some are in the UK where there is no access to guns, some are inside walled cities, some are cross country treks. The reason for the apocalypse varies from flu jag to bioweapon, miracle drug to sun flare. There is still variety in the zombies and the plot. I'm not keen on zombie armies being controlled by a psycho human leader, zombie humour, zombie books taken over by romance or smart zombies who talk and use guns. Being able to pick up a lot of zombie books free or cheap also helps! Anyway there IS variety in zombie books!

I like to then ask these people if they get bored by reading YA and other romance where boy meets girl, loses girl and have a HEA. They then say hotly 'no, the plots and characters are different in amongst the romance!' Then they look at me grinning and think 'ah right, get your point.'  Yes zombie books all feature zombies but that is kind of the point of reading it! Just like reading romance books means you expect romance. If you love the genre it doesn't get boring!

I get so bugged by people thinking I should expand my reading horizons because they don't like the genres I read. Um, nobody is asking you to read my books! I get that lots of people find horror scary or not to their taste and there is nothing wrong with that. I get that some people might not understand my interest in these books. That's ok too. But don't contact me and get critical of my tastes when I wouldn't do that to you! Go and annoy someone else! I'm 42 now and I have done my experimenting with genres thrrough my life and I like to now stick mostly to what I enjoy. I get tired of defending my book tastes to people, hence this post.

I don't judge people who read stuff I don't like. I don't question their choices. I just like to imagine lots of people reading what they love and passing on that love of books to the next generation. So grab a book, any book, get reading...

...and don't rain on my zombie parade!!!
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Book Review: Infected by Doris Qualls

In an attempt to find a cure for the aids virus, scientists painstakingly create a new and deadly virus that turns humans into deadly, zombie like creatures. 25 year old college student Breanne Jacobs and her cousin Zoe do their best to prevent becoming victims of bloodshed. Once the virus is unleashed in the world, Zoe will do whatever it takes to protect those she loves.

Love erupts in a dangerous time but can it last? In control of their own destiny, Breanne and Zoe try to make decisions that will keep not only themselves alive, but can they also protect the ones they love?

My Review:
This is very poorly written and I lost interest in the story quickly. It sounded good in theory: scientists think they have found a cure for AIDS,but something goes wrong and it mutates into something deadly. The idea was sound but the execution was dreadful.

It opens with a lot of background on Breanne and Zoe. We get told all about the death of Breanne's father, her mother abandoning her to the care of her aunt and cousin Zoe, and how at community college together, the girls are sharing a house. It's only a few pages of background but it has things you could care less about when the apocalypse is unfolding-ie a few tiny snippets of Breanne attending a class she hates for about 6 lines and how attractive and nice a female classmate is. We get more on that than the actual unfolding outbreak. A news reporter says there is going to be a cure for AIDS in the next few days. The girls scoff. The next day, we get told that the virus has mutated, infected people, is airborne and people should stay indoors. Whoa, slow the heck down! I seriously doubt an announcement about the cure would be made to the media until after tests were complete and the sudden 24 hour 'this is now a disaster' was way too quick and unrealistic.

A few lines later, three weeks have passed, the girls have no food and we're dumped with them at the grocery store checkout where a 'strange man' attacks them and they run off. We go straight to Zoe's POV as chapter two then starts a week later with a report that clinics are open to isolate the infected. Zoe mentions that a week ago the world was fine which is not accurate-we are a full month after the disaster started by now so the author isn't paying attention to her own timeline. At this point I stopped reading.

There is no attempt to build the plot or to develop the characters. We are told what the author wants us to know but there is no cohesion or flow to the story, linking the events. We just jump from point to point and get given the next update, which is not satisfying. It is all tell and no show! Where is the build up of tension as they have to get out the house and go for supplies? Why is there not more on the attack in the shop to get the story moving? Where are the zombie reports and footage on the news a full month after infection begins? There is nothing to excite or interest the reader as the plot flickers along like a dying lightbulb. There is very little conversation between the two main characters so we don't get to know them or their relationship. In fact all we know about Zoe is she has tattoos and makes good chicken noodle soup. The scene now jumps to the girls suddenly realising they haven't heard from family in this whole outbreak and driving off to find them. Can't the author show us anything instead of just a few lines about what happened to Chris??? And why did it take so long for them to remember their family? Talk about holes in the plot...you could drive a SUV through them!

This is not a zombie novel. This feels more like notes jotted down for a story that have not been expanded or completed yet. It lacks any flow of plot or excitement or tension, and I don't really care about the characters as we don't get a chance to know them. There is no action and I find nothing in this to recommend it to anyone. Add to that it has about 60 pages and you realise it isn't going to get better. Give this a miss.
star rating photo: 1 star orange-1star.jpg
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Saturday, 2 January 2016

Stacking the Shelves #115


Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! Click on the link under the book to find its page on Goodreads or Smashwords. 

Please note that I always leave a message on your STS/SP if you visit me, but if you use DISQUS or a similar third party I will not be able to leave a comment on your page. I don't allow any company access to my social media accounts and I certainly don't allow them to edit and take over my accounts. So if you use DISQUS, I can't visit you! And sometimes, I have problems leaving messages on blogs hosted by Wordpress so you might get a double message sometimes! Blame them, not me!
            
So it's the start of another year and my first STS of 2016. All the books are bargains that I grabbed in the Amazon sales over the festive period. There is nothing like a huge pile of festive zombies to get your teeth into! I got so many that it will cover the next THREE STS posts! Yeah I went a bit mad but who can resist a zombiefest? That covers my reading for the whole of next year...On the reading side of things, I've been reading a pile of biographies so I can do that and still watch the darts and cricket on TV. I can multitask with non fiction as you aren't going to lose the thread of a story which can happen if you read fiction and watch TV. It was a productive time and I have a few more to read before I get back onto the fiction when the darts finish.
 
DOWNLOADS:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BOUGHT PAPERBACKS:
 
 
 
 
 
COLOURING BOOKS:
 
 
 
 
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Friday, 1 January 2016

Chuckles has fun at the sales!


From the week before Christmas until New Year's Eve, Amazon packages were arriving at my house on a regular basis! The books that I got are goung to be in my next Stacking the Shelves post tomorrow so I figured I'd I'd show you what I decided to buy on the non book side of things! Bear in mind that I save up all year for the Black Friday and Christmas sales so I'm not like rich or anything!

My dad gave me money to spend for Christmas so this is what I got from that money:




The items below are what I bought myself in the sales with my dwindling savings! I forgot how much I loved Cheese Moments until I got this multipack buy!




I also treated myself to a HUGE bargain which was the entire series of Prisoner Cell Block H which I used to LOVE watching! It was on sale at a third of it's retail price but it did wipe out my savings! Not going to display each individual box though!


So what did you guys get in the sales or what did Santa bring you? Please do NOT put spoilers in your comments or they won't be published!
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