Review of several e-books

I had a bit of a foray in to Amazon the other day and found several free e-books (thanks to the freebie page at  http://www.everythingbooksandauthors.com) and read them quite quickly. Most were short stories but one,‘Georgiana Darcy’s Diary’, is probably more of a novella. Since I took the time to read to them I thought I should probably review them.

Georgiana Darcy’s diary: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice Continued

Anna Elliott, with illustrations by Laura Masselos

2011

Wilton Press

It’s 1814 and the war with Napoleon is coming to an end, Elizabeth and Darcy have been married a year, Georgiana is 18 years old and still living at Pemberley with them, and their Aunt De Bourgh has organised a house party. She’s trying to marry Georgiana off too some suitable gentleman.

Georgiana feels the need to start writing a diary again, and starts writing about her life. Sick of the fawning fortune hunters, Georgiana is in love with her cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam. Unfortunately rumour tells her he is engaged to someone else, and when he returns to Pemberley to recover from a wound taken at Toulouse she is determined not to give in to her feelings.

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young lady of rank and property will have packs of money- or land-hungry suitors yapping around her heels like hounds after a fox.‘

In the interests of not giving the whole plot away, all I’ll say is the denouement of the storyline is fairly obvious. I mostly liked the story but was slightly unsatisfied by it. I would be interested to read the other two books in this Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, Pemberley to Waterloo, and Kitty Bennet’s Diary.

3/5

 

Cait the Cat Burglar (55 Portobello Road)

Christine London

2013

 

Cait is a waitress, stranded in London as she tries to earn money to send home to her sick mother and sister in America. Bribed and threatened in to becoming a thief by the sinister Rothwell, Cait tries to steal the work of an Australian musician. The first time she fails miserably. There were croquet hoops involved.

At work the next day her target comes in for a meal and Cait finds herself questioning her resolve.

 

This short story is entertaining, although I found it a little too soppy for my taste and too much ‘fairy-tale ending’. I’m not sure I’d bother to read the series of books that this short story is a part of.

2/5

 

How to talk to girls at parties, A short story

Neil Gaiman

2006

Headline

Originally published 2006 and republished as an e-book 2013 with an exclusive first chapter from Neil Gaiman’s new book, ‘The ocean at the end of the lane’, due out mid-June. Vic and Enn are going to a party Vic heard about from his friend Alison, unfortunately they end up at entirely wrong party with interesting consequences. It’s a fun little story, but then I like Neil Gaiman’s work, having read a couple of his books. He’s a truly original writer.

4/5

 

A Little Bit of Everything for Dummies 20th Anniversary Edition

John Wiley & Sons, Inc

2011

This book is exactly what it says on the cover, a sample of their published work since the first …For Dummies book in 1991. Covering everything from Windows 7 to Puppies to Sex, this book is an interesting one to flip through.

3/5

 

And that’s the lot for now.

Bye,

Rose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight I shall mainly be reading…

See you on the other side.

I know I said there would be a couple of book reviews today, but I’ve changed my mind. New Discworld to read after all.

And now I’m going to return to it.

Bye

Rose

Coming soon, a spate of book reviews

I’ve just had a phone call from the library; they’ve got (finally!) the latest Science of Discworld. I’m going to collect it this afternoon. When I get back, and before I start reading it, I’m going to review a couple of e-books I downloaded yesterday.

The first ‘Georgiana Darcy’s Diary’ by Anna Elliott is a continuation of the Jane Austen classic ‘Pride and Prejudice’, and the second is a celebratory edition of the ‘For Dummies…’ series marking their 20th anniversary.

Bye for one,

Rose

I’ve got quite a few books to review

I found my way to a website called http://www.everythingbooksandauthors.com/ this morning, and on their ‘Special Offers & Freebies’ page there were a few books that I thought looked interesting. I’m going to read them all and review them.

I love having the Kindle for PC app. I have so many books on it, most of them free.

Bye

Rose

Star-gazing girls of Georgian England

Collecting Childhood

A while ago I came across this Solar System sampler in the Museum’s textiles store. It was uncanny – the arrangement of concentric rings was so familiar and immediately recognisable, but so strange when seen as a piece of Georgian embroidery.

The sampler is a piece of linen 35cm tall and 35cm wide, with the title ‘The Solar System’ followed by five lines of text. At the centre is a large diagram of the six innermost planets orbiting the sun.

View original post 1,638 more words

Repelling sex pests the UKIP way

Oh how I love this blog, such sarcasm and snark!

If you tolerate this then your daughters will be next

Top woman’s lifestyle magazine Cosmopolitan, which is surely every woman’s bible for all the dilemmas life rudely thrusts in our faces, says that cat-calling should be taken as a compliment. Cosmo’s Features Intern states that “sometimes a bit of attention, even if it’s in the form of a jeer from a middle-aged man drilling a hole in the street, can feel quite nice.”

But what if, unlike Cosmo’s Features Intern, you find the practice of strangers voicing their personal evaluation of your body and sexual attractiveness infuriating and intimidating? Well, you had better modify your behaviour, demeanour and dress: if a man harasses you, it’s your fault, because men are simple beings that are incapable of changing their comportment or controlling their sexual urges (although, funnily enough, when it comes to actual groping they often manage to control such urges until there’s no one around to see, Lib Dem…

View original post 891 more words

What to Listen to: Daft Punk and Beyond

the contextual life

The legendary electronic duo Daft Punk released their latest album, Random Access Memories, last week with great fanfare. Regardless of what music has come out so far this year and what’s still to come, this album is destined to be in my top three at the end of December (if I were of the list-making sort). Not only did Daft Punk tease the album for what felt like forever, its soul and funk-heavy tracks show a mature progression. Because everyone under the sun—and a number of rocks—have reviewed it I’m using this space to recommend a few lesser known electronic musicians who will be an excellent addition to any Daft Punk fan’s collection.

Commix / Call to Mind
In 2003, London-based duo George Levings and Guy Brewer signed to Metalheadz, the renowned drum and bass label founded in 1994 by DJ duo Kemistry & Storm and producer Goldie.

Call…

View original post 392 more words

How commonplace books were like Tumblr and Pinterest

That;s an interesting idea

tomstandage.com

Shared journals were an early form of social media, and the mass-media era may have been a historical aberration. These were two of the claims made by Lee Humphreys, a communications and media researcher at Cornell University, who gave a talk this week at Microsoft Research’s Social Media Collective. I agree with her on both counts, of course, though I would trace the sharing of journals back further, to the commonplace books of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Humphreys has examined in detail how people in the 19th century would share their diaries with visiting families and friends by reading aloud, in order to tell them what had been going on in their lives. She has also analysed the diary entries of Charlie Mac, a soldier in the American Civil War, which he copied out and sent home as letters to his family (and anyone else they wanted…

View original post 541 more words

Sarah Brown, 19th Century Supermodel

History Hack

Four years after the Moulin Rouge opened in Paris in 1889, it hosted an event which was so scandalous that four of the performers were prosecuted for outraging public decency.

The Bal des Quat’z-Arts featured a procession of floats, banners and models dressed as famous historical characters from Ancient Rome and Greece. The famous Cancan dancer La Gouloue (‘The Glutton’) was there in the guise of an ‘Indienne’.

But the highlight of the show was undoubtedly the artist’s model Sarah Brown as the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, held aloft by men clad only in white loincloths.

Her performance has since been described as ‘the world’s first striptease’ although descriptions of her costume vary wildly – some say she was completely naked while others describe a black velour g-string, stockings and a black shirt. Georges Montogueil, writing in Paris Dansant (1898), says:

The parade covers a long space. Here is part of…

View original post 681 more words

Black Veil Brides release lyric video for unreleased track.

Last year Black Veil Brides released their third album, ‘Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones’ and on11th June they are releasing their Ultimate Edition of the album containing three unreleased tracks plus a DVD of the film ‘The Legion of the Black’ . In addition they are releasing their Ultimate Black Box Edition that has the same contents as the Ultimate Edition including the CD with alternative artwork plus three the new songs, Legion of the Black DVD, an expanded booklet, and a solid black BVB rosary.

A lyric video for one of the songs, ‘Revelation’ , has been released on youtube. The video shows a young man going in to a Hollywood record shop and purchasing ‘Wretched and Divine’ before taking it home and playing it on a record player.

The song fits with the story told on the album very well, but I can see why they left it off the main release, it is fairly superfluous and adds nothing to the main storyline (yes, I have listened to the album, in fact I’m listening to it again now. I quite like it) and the lyrics are a little repetitive, but is still a decent song. The product placement in the video distracted me slightly, but only because I was wondering whether it was accidental or deliberate; I think it must have been deliberate, on consideration.

Here’s the video for you to decide for yourselves what you think.