Monday, 7 November 2016

A-Z Book Blogger Tag


Lexxie at (Un) Conventional Bookviews https://unconventionalbookviews.com/  found this tag from 2013 at Jamie @ Perpetual Page Turner and shared it so I figured I'd take part for fun! If you are interested in doing the tag, join in but post a comment under this post to say you are joining in so I can visit your post!

Author you've read the most books from:
This is probably going to be Richard Laymon. I discovered him as a recommendation from Stephen King and as a college student I devoured his horror books. Loved One Rainy Night, After Midnight, Darkness Tell Us, Friday night at Beast House, In the Dark, Come out tonight, The Glory Bus, The Lake and Dark Mountain. Makes me want to go and read them all again right now!

Best sequel ever:
Too hard to pick one! Harry Potter #7 is up there, Patricia Briggs-Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson #7), RL Naquin's Monster Haven sequels made me laugh and cry, Arisen sequels by Michael Stephen Fuchs...too many to write down! 

Currently reading: 
I've just started book three of Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series-Hammered. Enjoyed the first two books and the short stories I've read in the series so far. Oberon is the greatest dog in fiction EVER!

Drink choice when reading:
Most of the time when I'm reading, I'm too busy with the story to be drinking or eating. I usually have Tango or Pepsi at my bedside along with Bitter Lemon which helps me avoid restless leg which I hate when I'm trying to read or sleep! When I'm blogging I like an iced  Latte Macchiato!

Ereader or physical book:
I'm always a great lover of the new paperback...the shiny cover, the new book smell, the rustle of the pages, and I love looking at my bookshelves to see them all sitting smiling at me! I do like my ereader though because I can read faster on it, carry multiple book titles with me, and use it to try new authors free. So both have their merits but I admit I am a big fan of the physical book which is why when I find an ebook I love, I try to get a paperback copy to keep.

Fictional character you probably would have actually dated in high school:
I don't really do the book boyfriend thing but maybe Sirius Black from Harry Potter.
 
Glad you gave this book a chance:
Harry Potter

Hidden Gem book:
For mythology-Ken Mooney 'Godhead', for YA MC monsters-Kendra C Highley 'Matt Archer Monster Hunter', YA dystopia-David Estes 'The Moon Dwellers', dinosaurs-Rick Jones 'The Valley', horror-JG Faherty 'Carnival of Fear', zombies-Arisen series by Michael Stephen Fuchs, preppers-Robert Boren 'Bug Out', apocalypse-Franklin Horton 'Borrowed World' and anything by Darrell Maloney, UF-Skyla Dawn Cameron 'Bloodlines' and Judith Post 'Wolfs Bane', fantasy-Dave Ferraro 'Dark Genesis' 

Important moment in your reading life:
It has to be when I first read Harry Potter. Working stressful jobs for years left me too tired and frustrated to read and I pretty much never picked up a book for ten years. I'd had no interest in Harry Potter but a girl I worked with raved about it and when I stopped work through ill health months later, I saw the first four books in a book club joining offer for £3 and figured I'd try it. That series reawoke my love for reading which has never gone away.

Just finished:
Book two in Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid series-Hexed. Great 5 star book!

Kind of books you won't read:
I am not a fan of sex scenes in books so I never read erotica or heavy paranormal romance. I used to read YA paranormal but got tired of tropes like instaluv, love triangles, mean kids plots so I mostly avoid them now. I don't read westerns, women's fiction, religious works, crime (except Deaver & Patterson), poetry, space setting books (except dinosaur planets), epic fantasy (except LOTR) and avoid most contemporary unless the plot really appeals.

Longest book you've read:
Stephen King's The Stand would be right up there at 1421 pages! I can't see me ever reading something longer!

Major book hangover because of:
I don't get book hangovers...I disengage as soon as I finish with a book and get straight on to the next one.

Number of bookcases you own:
In my bedroom I have six. Others through the house are for dvds and box sets.

One book you have read multiple times:
I read all my favourites more than once...wish I had more time to do it! I'd have to pick things like Stephen King 'IT' or Harry Potter for this one.

Prefered place to read:
I always like to curl up in my bed on a winter night to read. I can get warm and comfy and just read for hours!

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you've read:
There are a few good book quotes that I love and that suit me!
 
“If you cannot read all your books...fondle them---peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.” —Winston S. Churchill  

“If you have enough book space, I don't want to talk to you.”
― Terry Pratchett
 
“The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.”
― Joseph Joubert 

Reading Regret:
That I don't have more time to read! During the day I catch up on my blogging, housework etc so I only have time to read at night and I need more hours to get through this raging tbr I keep adding to! Also that some of the great indie ebooks I've read are never brought out in paperback!

Series you started and need to finish (all books are out in series):
Where do I start! Top would be the Morganville Vampires by Rachel Caine, Black Wings by Christina Henry, Tomorrow by John Marsden, Kitty by Carrie Vaughn, Black Sun's Daughter by MLN Hanover, Dreg City by Kelly Meding, Walker Papers by CE Murphy.

Three of your all time favourite books:
Stephen King 'IT', Stan Berenstain 'Bears in the night' and Michael Crichton 'Jurassic Park'

Unapologetic fangirl for:
Patricia Briggs, Michael Stephen Fuchs, Darrell Maloney, Robert Boren, Richard Laymon, Kevin Hearne, Kelley Armstrong, Jeaniene Frost, RL Naquin, Kendra C Highley... 

Very excited for this release more than all the others:
Any new book in my favourite series!

X marks the spot-start at top left of your shelf and pick 27th book:
ZA Recht-Plague of the Dead. Heh, great zombie trilogy!

Your latest book purchase:
RL King-Stone and a hard place

ZZZ snatcher book (the last book that kept you up way late):
I can't sit up through the night reading like I used to so the last all night read I had was many years ago when I read Dan Brown-The Da Vinci Code for the first time.
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Sunday, 6 November 2016

Book Review: Pteranadon Mall by Ian Woodhead


An ordinary day at work at the mall turns into a blood bath of hungry jaws and long, sharp teeth. A time machine goes awry and plants a horde of ferocious dinosaurs inside and all hell is about to break loose. A ragtag group survivors band together using wits and innovation as the only hope of escaping certain death.

Pteranodon Mall a fast paced prehistoric thriller with nonstop action and horror.

My Review: 
I blame myself. I do. I said I wouldn't read anything else by this author after that awful f bomb extravaganza zombie novel but I was seduced by the idea of pteranadons in a shopping mall-and boy do I wish I hadn't bothered.

We start with some kind of prehistoric sounding tribe on a spaceship, some of whom seem to be terrorists who are blowing up the ship. We switch to the MC Jefferson who hates his job, hates his friends and decides to get out of the mall at lunchtime to avoid them. He is locked out by a weird force field that makes him think he loves his job and friends, tells him to go to the pub where there might be a beautiful woman, and makes him vomit. But he forces his way inside despite this to find the friends he hates. As you do.

Then we get gross weird pervert janitor who finds a strange bird and hides it, hoping to sell it for profit. His enemy who owns a pet shop sees the bird and thinks about profit if he had one but then watches mall employees being controlled by a man shape covered in yellow feathers playing a kind of pipe. Great-the Mad Pied Piper Birdman of the Mall. Bloody hell. WTF is this???

We don't even see the attack on the mall because we were stuck with Jefferson trying to avoid his obnoxious friends and charity workers. I was expecting people running screaming through the mall as the pteranadons attacked, like the scene from Jurassic World, but no such luck. We saw nothing except weird stuff and more idiot characters. I just didn't find anything of interest in the opening chapters! No brilliant dinosaur attacks, no characters to care about, no cohesive story, no apparant plot, rambling writing style and poor dialogue.

This was weird and bad on an epic scale and it will certainly be the last time I go near this author.  
Read November 2016.
star rating photo: 1 star orange-1star.jpg
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Saturday, 5 November 2016

Book Review: Zombie Wars Online by Marla Braziel

 
When Matt logged onto Zombie Wars Online, he expected another fun-filled night of zombie killing with his friends. Under the spell of the Felote, a gaming apparatus that forces the player into a controlled REM sleep, reality faded away and a new life began. It was the perfect escape from the harshness of everyday life. But when a malicious hacker takes control of the game, a new nightmare begins, far worse than Matt and his friends could have ever imagined.

Trapped inside of the game, the players are confronted with real life and death situations. If you die in the game, you die in real life.

Content warning: Due to adult language, violent content, and a very vivid sex scene, this book is not recommended for anyone under the age of 18.
My Review:
Matt and his online friends play a Zombie game online which you connect to by a headset that puts you to sleep in the real world and allows you to be more or less alive inside the game. It has zombie missions, safe zones and areas where you can chat with and meet your friends face to face and hang out. But a hacker has now taken control, preventing people from leaving the game. Those pulled out by their worried families die for real. If a safe area has too many players, they are purged out...and die for real. As the hacker starts changing the rules in the game, the death toll rises and those inside have to start hunting down supplies to keep their characters alive while hoping their families look after their sleeping bodies to keep them alive there too...

I liked the concept of this zombie apocalypse as it starts with a game that everyone plays for fun. You can make new friends, go on missions together, hang out and fight zombies but if you die you are taken back to a neutral zone to regroup and try again. Until the hacker changes the rules. It starts with those playing a mission at a particular time becoming stuck in the game while those who have just died in the game at that moment get booted out and die in real life. News of this development panics the trapped players as the game owners try to keep the players safe and alive, but panicking players start flooding certain areas and it becomes overloaded, booting players out...who then die.

The hacker then starts to get past safety features, releasing zombies and other nasties into areas they aren't meant to be in, increasing your danger of dying. Supplies are dwindling so if you lack food, water and medical kits to replenish energy, you die. Soon the zombie missions are opened by the hacker to force survivors to battle through zombies to save themselves...

The characters are a bit mixed. Matt is a complete doormat who lets his friends walk all over him and I got mad at him for letting Hayley hang all over him when he isn't interested in her and he knows it is upsetting potential girlfriend Liv to witness it. Liv is one of the characters I did like because she is a nice genuine girl. Cade is an obnoxious asshat who I never liked. Zac and Brandon are ok. Erin I hated from the first minute I met him and Matt should have known better in letting him hang with the group. I liked snarky Shelby but Ruby was a bit too whiny for me at times.

There is an emphasis on gay and bisexual relationships in this book along with a graphic male gay sex/rape scene so if you are offended by or not interested in any of this, you better give it a miss. Gay sex in books neither bothers or entertains me but I honestly didn't like the way this scene was written in this book and didn't think it fit with the story. I did like what the scene led to though. The emphasis on the relationships within the game were about acting out online personas and flirting for the most part in the first chapters but as the plot progressed, I felt there was too much about their sex lives and not enough about the zombies.

I'd give the first half of the book 3.5 stars and the second half 2/2.5 so overall I'm rating it as a 2.5 up to a 3 in parts.
Read November 2016. 

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Stacking the Shelves #154


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 the way DISQUS does. So if you use DISQUS, I can't leave comments on your page so I can't really follow you back, sorry! I'm noticing that some blogs set with Google Plus are trying to force you to open a Google Plus or Facebook account before you can leave a comment. Well, I have no interest in rejoining Google Plus or joining Facebook so if your blog uses this set up, I won't be following it or commenting! And sometimes, I have problems leaving messages on blogs hosted by Wordpress-they try to block me so there might not be a message from me some weeks or you might get a double message sometimes! Blame them, not me!

Another successful week of reading and watching TV as I attack my November goals! I've had a mixture of decent reads and stuff I didn't finish but it lowers that tbr a bit and I'm fully back into my reading after a poor summer. I'm pleased about that! On the book side of thing I've been clearing out unwanted books and giving them in trade for amazon gift cards so I can buy other things! It's been a good week! And they are telling us that the cold weather is about to start...but they have been saying that for most of the month and it is still warm at night even with the windows open! Is it too much to ask for seasonal weather???!!!

DOWNLOADS:

  



PAPERBACKS:





Having enjoyed season one of Game of Thrones, I decided to splurge on the books and a couple of cool Stark T shirts! Started watching season two last night and will continue tonight! I think my 'Hope you die horrible deaths' list is growing...Oh nearly forgot to add the colouring book!


FOLLOW ME:

 
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Friday, 4 November 2016

Book Review: Hard Time by Alex Laybourne


Rookie officer Peter Malone and his heavily armed team are sent on a deadly mission to extract a dangerous criminal from a classified prison world. A Kruger Correctional facility where only the hardest, most vicious criminals are sent to fend for themselves, never to return.

But when the team come face to face with ancient beasts from a lost world, their mission is changed. The new objective: Survive.

My Review: 
A new prison system sends all the high security inmates off-0world to serve their time. If they are still alive at a certain part of their sentence they get parole, which means an armed extraction team from the prison have to go and collect him. The team are nervous about all the prisoners who are waiting there for a chance of revenge on the officers but when they arrive to be confronted by raptors in a hostile jungle environment, the guards realise that they are now in a dinosaur ruled world and survival is going to be their main focus.

I liked the idea of the story, sending prisoners to another world that they can't escape from, and it is understandable why this is the first man ever to be paroled from this world after serving twelve years. But I had a lot of issues with this story. Firstly, who is going to send their top team to a place like that with inadequate weapons and no warning about what they are going to face? That makes no sense at all and you are just sacrificing your men in the process. I found that a bit stupid. And with that technology, you couldn't drop the team much closer to where you know the guy is instead of having them trek to find him, putting him in more danger? I don't get that at all.

It gets off to an explosive start with the men arriving right on top of a pack of raptors which is carnage from the beginning. Now I love a dino gore fest as much as the next person but the main issue with this book is that it all felt so rushed and underdeveloped. We had raptors, seconds later it was huge crocodile, followed by pteranadons and poisoness creatures, then this predator and that predator and TRex and big raptors and Spinosaurus and...there is no break from constant dinosaur attack other than men attacking the team. It jumps from one to the next with no break, which means there is no attempt to build up the tension of things stalking you and maybe a few narrow escapes here and there, or a false alarm to give the reader a few minor scares. It felt like the author had decided on the 90 odd pages and was then determined to fit in attacks by every single dinosaur he could think off.

I wanted a bit more story and getting to know and give a damn about a few of the team before they became dino bait. I wanted to see actual story and proper world building, tension and fear as they move through the area-not just running from one dinosaur to the next to the next to the next. It took all the anticipation and tension out of the story, and left it as just people getting eaten. I felt that so much more could have been done with the story and I was left a bit disappointed by the overall delivery of what could have been a really good story, given all the ideas.

This is the second book I've tried by the author and I haven't greatly liked the way he puts the story together so I won't be trying any more. If you want a good dinosaur read try something like Viktor Zarkov's 'Jurassic Island' or Rick Jones 'The Valley', which is Jurassic Park meets The Running Man.
Read November 2016.
star rating photo: Two Star Rating 2stars.png
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