Greetings on another lovely Monday!
My hubby got back from his trip to Sturgis on Friday and it’s business as usual today and back to work for him. The poor guy did not want to go in. I don’t blame him at all. He had a great time on his trip so that was nice.
My Squee for the week: I inherited a Kindle! No, no one died and left it to me in their will but Nikki (of So Cal Blogger fame) got a new Kindle plus she has a NookColor and other gadgets so she gave me her “old” Kindle! Is that awesome or what? I think it is. There are a lot of things that I love about my Astak EZreader like all of the many, many file formats it accepts and the removable sd card that makes creating separate folders for each author a wiz…but the Kindle is so damned fast! I created folders or “collections” as they’re called on the Kindle but the books still stay in the main directory even though they’re in the collection…which makes many pages to have to go through to find what I need.
I took some time this weekend and reformatted a ton of books to go on the reader (most originated in epub or pdf so I changed them to mobi) and they looked great on the Kindle. I re-downloaded all of my netgalley books straight to the Kindle and that was really nice although I have to say the formatting wasn’t quite as up to par as I thought it would be. I purchased my first book from Amazon (Wild and Steamy by Brook, Crane and Myles for only .99) and it was uber easy and super fast which I loved. I don’t know how much I’ll be buying straight from Amazon but if I do it will definitely satisfy my instant gratification need. lol
Any of you out there with Kindles I’d love to know any tips and tricks you’ve discovered.
I got a bit more reading in this week than last:
First up was The Strongest Shape by Tessa Cárdenas. This was good m/m/m story that I really enjoyed. You can read my review here. 3.75 out of 5
Next up was a free read by Sloan Parker called Swept Away. This was a short story about 2 men who had been together for 15 years and every year they spend their anniversary the same way. Between jobs and stress the two men, Eddie and Mike, have been too tired to spend any quality time together but Mike decides to change things up a bit and give Eddie a trip he’ll never forget. This was a very sweet story and quite romantic. 4 out of 5
My next read was The Perfect Play by Jaci Burton. This is book 1 in the Play by Play series and it was a good one. The story is about NFL quarterback Mick Riley who is chasing event planner Tara Lincoln and she’s definitely avoiding him after their hot and steamy night of sex. Mick wants to date her and Tara wants to build her business and take care of her 14 year old son. The chase is worth the read and the revelations about both Tara and Mick were eye-opening. I did have a couple issues with Tara and her jumping to conclusions but overall a good book that’s worth the read. 4 out of 5 (A Book Binge read)
Next was another free read from Sloan Parker called A Lesson in Truth. David is in love with his advisor who is 15 years older than he. They’ve been best friends and David thought he and Michael were moving on to the next level but when Michael says it has to end David takes things the wrong way. This was great sexy little short story that had romance as well. Good stuff. 4 out of 5
My next read was When Beauty Tamed the Beast by Eloisa James. I haven’t read but a couple of James’ books but I’ve really liked what I’ve read. This one was a great retelling of beauty and the best with a, dare I say, crotchety young doctor and the woman who tames him. You can read my review here. 4.5 out of 5
Crying for the Moon by Sarah Madison was my next read. The story was about a vampire, Alex, who is trying to get away from the typical vampire life. There are things that a vampire can do to extend his life but they take his soul and he wants no part of it. He moves to the mountains and hangs with his werewolf friends. He meets his neighbor, Tate, and though he tries to discourage the friendship it, along with romance, blooms despite his attempts to stave it off. It was a good story about friendship and love. 3 out of 5
My Tracy’s TBR Challenge read for the week, On These Silken Sheets by Sabrina Darby, is actually the book I read for my monthly TBR Challenge I’ll post my review of this book on Wednesday.
Last on the list for the week was Anna Doubles Down by Missy Martine. This was a novella that I read for The Book Binge about a girl who visits a ghost town with her friend and ends up time travelling to 1871. She is ends up in a saloon with 2 beautiful men who are more than willing to keep her forever. But Anna thinks she’s only there to save the town from losing its mill in a fire and then she’ll head back. She doesn’t plan on falling in love with 2 men but that’s exactly what happens. This was a cute book that was short and sweet. The two men, Zeke and Beau were together for 10 years before Anna showed up. After reading so much m/m I wondered why they’d want a woman in the mix but they did and it worked for them. 3 out of 5
My Book Binge reviews that posted last week:
Never Cry Wolf by Cynthia Eden
The Chase by Erin McCarthy
Happy Reading!
Woot on your new ereader!! I've been trying to figure out what to do with my pokey ol' Astak Reader. I guess for now it's my backup ereader, just in case… But yeah, when I switched to the Astak Mentor (same base unit as the original Kobo), I was SHOCKED at how fast it was.
I liked Crying for the Moon more than you did. 🙂
Hi Tracy – I'm a long time Kindle user and actually, once you've sorted your books into collections, you can make it so that you don't still see all of the books in your main directory. The trick is that at the very top, where you can choose whether to display all of your books by "Most recent first", "Title", "Author", or "Collections", if you choose Collections, the kindle will sort all of your books into the collections you've assigned them to and will then display ONLY the collection name plus any unassigned books. Within each collection, when you open it up, you can then choose to display it by Author, Title or Most Recent First.
Also, I'd recommend that you check at the Kindleboard Forum at http://www.kindleboards.com. The people there are very helpful and if you have any questions or problems and you post there, someone will probably respond to you within the hour. They also have a thread where people post about free books and bargain books (in the Book Bazaar section).
Finally, there are two great websites that I use to keep up to date on all of the free and bargain books. They are http://www.booksontheknog.blogspot.com and http://www.dailycheapreads.com. I've picked up tons of great books that way. Happy KIndling!
Tracy, congrats! I love, love my Kindle! JenM already gave you some excellent advise, so I won't repeat. 🙂 Except that well… now you'll have to watch that budget, because it's SOOOO easy to just load and load and load those books, lol! My budget went south those first few months.
I'm looking forward to reading one the books you read last week, the Eloisa James. I have it in my TBR and am glad to see that 4.5 from you. 🙂
Chris – Yeah, I knew the Astak was slower than others but I had no idea HOW slow until I started using the Kindle. Surprising…in a good way.
I'm definitely keeping my Astak around as a back up.
Yeah, you did like Crying for the Moon better than me. I thought it was good though. 🙂
JenM – I did that but I could swear that the books were still in the reg. directory AND the collections. I'll have to go double check and see how I screwed up – because obviously I did! lol
Thanks for the all the great Kindle info! I'll check out these websites soon.
Hilcia – Thanks! I know I'll have to be careful about the budget. I imported about 115 books to the Kindle (the same ones I had on my other reader) so I'm set for a while until I get the overwhelming urge for something. lol
The James was GOOD! I really liked it – hope you do too.
Well, if you subscribe to this blog:
http://blog.booksontheknob.org/
You'll get notified about all sorts of Kindle freebies.
Oh lucky you Tracy!! I'm thinking of buying a Kindle… but inheriting is much better!! 🙂
Poor your hubby. Yeah, who wants to work, really ^_^; Nobody that's who!
Good books there 🙂 Overall, I thought the Jaci Burton was good and no wonder so many enjoyed it!
I finally broke down on the Eloisa James. You're one more good review that says my decision was good LOL.
Awesome news about the Kindle. But like Hils said – be careful. That 1-Click can be dangerous. 🙂