Book Reviews on Amazon

I love, love, love to read book reviews, especially the 1,2, and 3 star reviews. I love a good critical review of a book. What I don't love is when a reviewer who absolutely hates a book just has to knock those who like the book. I get that you may hate the book and cannot believe anyone could like it. At this point, I just shut down and can't hear the constructive criticism from the reviewer who slams other reviewers. It's like a door slams shut.

Just a bit of advice to reviewers out there: 
Don't belittle or attack the character of other reviewers.
Don't attack the integrity of the author or publishing company.*

It's totally okay to say you don't understand how anyone could ever love, much less like, the book in question.

*Disclaimer: 
I am not saying that authors, publishers or their various agents never buy reviews. I know some do. It's just tacky to attack them without substantial proof.

Tip for Kindle Readers Who Like To Read Series Books

I love to read books that are in a series. Some of my series are quite long 15-30 or more books in series. I like to buy several of the books at a time. The problem is I am not always able to remember which book comes next. I solved that problem by creating a Word or Google document with the reading order, then e-mailed the document to my Kindle e-mail address. No matter where I am I can easily find the name of the next book and start reading.

1. Create a Word or Google document with the reading order for the series. PDF, RTF, TXT work as well.
2. Create a new e-mail.
3. Enter your personal Send-To-Kindle e-mail address; this ends in @kindle.com. 
4. Add document as an attachment
5. Put Convert in the Subject line if you want the document to read like a Kindle book. Leave blank, if you like the original form better. (Try it both ways to find out which is easier to read.)
6. Download to your device. I use Wi-Fi only to download my personal documents like this. If you have 3G or 4G, it could end up costing a Service Fee. I'm cheap and Wi-Fi is also faster :)

I tend to create a different Personal Document for each series. This why I am not having to thumb through several to find the series I am interested in reading. 


If you have never used the Personal Documents/Send-to-Kindle address, you can learn about it here:
http://amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200767340

If you need help, you an always call Amazon Kindle Support at 1-866-321-8851. Those folks love to help with this stuff!

Interesting lists

Your Picks: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books
https://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
And

Fantasy Worlds In Literature
http://www.cool-story.com/story/208/Fantasy-Worlds-In-Literature/

The Big Read

I found this meme over at Work of the Poet.  

Apparently back in 2003 BBC was trying to figure out what the top read books were.  The various lists that were complied are:  Top 21, Top 100 and Top 200 which is actually a continuation of the Top 100.

The list for this meme is the Top 100.

As you know how things go on the internet, it's morphed into a blog meme and lives on forever.  I've perused a few blogs with this meme and it appears to be still morphing so I'll add my spin on it. 

The rules are: 

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated. (not limited to school reading)

5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

6) Books in normal type are the ones new to me.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie


I admit that a couple of the books I read and can't recall much of the content.  Those were the ones I read back in high school.  A couple I have thought about rereading and just might.  A couple of the books that I crossed out, I have tried to read and could not get into and a couple I simply do not like the author's writing style.

Again that book list is found here.

My books need to learn to be quiet so I can sleep at night.

They keep calling me to pick them up. I read a while to quiet them, but as soon as I put them down they start calling my name again. I stayed up until 5am reading...again. It's becoming a habit that I am even doing on nights where I work the next day. I really need to learn to stop at a decent hour. Luck for me that today was just a day fun. I was blessed with the opportunity to meet my family for lunch (sisters and nieces) and to go shopping.

I've read about 30 or so books this year alone. Since I went back to work last August I have been reading like crazy. I used to read constantly, but lost the habit for a few years. I seemed to have picked it up again with a vengenace. I am finding myself craving time to read and ignoring food, sleep and people just to read. Can you read too much in one day? lol

I'm linking the latest on the floods.
NWS expects crest today

Something I learned back in '97 was that the Red River and many smaller rivers run north up here. That was so foreign to me as they never mentioned that could happen in school.
Floodwaters push north

I agree with Mike Jacobs opinion article linked here.
2006 brings a different kind of flood
He's so right about the atmosphere and the gov't. It's nice to see that something was learned from the previuos disaster. I can't help but hope that those rebuilding New Orleans are as affective.