Jamie's Book Blog

Remember a while back I made that post about the upcoming Wonderland Magazine interview of J.K. Rowling where she was talking about how Harry probably should have really ended up with Hermione and that her and Ron being together was a bit of wish fulfillment? Well I finally just found the full interview. You can view it by either clicking on the title above or here:

http://www.mugglenet.com/jkrint-wonderland-020714.shtml

or at J.K. Rowling's site:
http://www.jkrowling.com/en_US/#/news-events/press-and-media-archive/wonderland-interview

The one from J.K. Rowling's site is a download at the very top but is much smaller and harder to read than the first one. 

It was a pretty good interview and the one doing the interview was Emma Watson so that was a fun bonus. It really gives you a good look into her choices as far as Ron/Hermione and why she ended up going that route along with some of her thoughts about it. There's also a lot of other good stuff in the interview. I'd nearly forgotten all about this. I was going through some of my old posts when I ran into my original post about the upcoming interview so I went and tracked this one down and just now found it :D

I loved this book but Arrggghhhh! that ending killed me  It’s no secret that Elle Casey is my favorite author and there’s so many reasons why. One of the biggest though is that I always have so much fun reading her books. I don’t care what they’re about, whether they’re a romance or a YA fantasy, they always have one thing in common: they are SO much fun! Just One Night Part 2 was no exception. I love this serial and I’m really glad that she’s writing them every couple of weeks because I would go insane if I had to wait any longer than that for the next one. Especially after the ending in this latest episode.

Just One Night is the tale of the sexy but lonely Jennifer and the smart, no nonsense British businessman William. They meet in the first book when Jennifer puts out an ad for a no-nonsense one night stand and after rejecting most of the callers because they set off her “crazy alarm” she finally gets a call from William. The two meet, have a magical time together and it ends with Jennifer leaving unexpectedly. In the second book we find out that Jennifer’s wishes she had taken her BFF Mia’s advice and not even put out the stupid ad because she can’t stop thinking about William. She really puts her heart out there most of the time and falls hard for people who don’t deserve her so while she’s wallowing in self pity Mia drags her off to a dinner party hosted by her sleazy boss. She brings Jennifer as a way of keeping away from her boss’s unprofessional advances and there they run into William. Unbeknownst to Jennifer, William too has been unable to stop thinking about that night. He can’t get Jennifer or her body out of his mind and after the dinner party they head to a club along with William’s player of a brother and things quickly heat up.

William and Jennifer never did get to finish their one complete night together and it’s obvious that both of them are highly attracted to each other. The club scene is sizzling hot and it’s been very obvious from the first book that both of them belong together. They have so much in common not to mention their complete physical attraction to each other. The tension from the first book is doubled in this one and the smoking hot scenes are an inferno this time, it completely goes into total meltdown. So now that they’ve been reunited they can finally live happily ever after like Cinderella and Prince Charming right? Well not exactly because this loosely based fairy tale also has a wicked witch and boy is she a piece of work. That’s not the actual words I’d like to use but I’m trying to keep things PG lol. OMG this ending was sheer torture and I know it’s bound to upset a lot of people which is just a testament to how much people are truly invested in these characters and this story. It’s really awesome that Elle Casey is adapting the continuing story based on reader feedback so we all get a hand in shaping this story. As soon as I get through with this review I’m heading over to her site and letting her know what I thought along with where I hope the story will go in the next book. So not only is this a great story but it’s also a lot of fun and something we can help influence. I love a good serial and I am eagerly awaiting each new episode.

This was another well written episode. The plot’s pacing was perfect and I adore both of the main characters along with Mia. I love the fact that it’s got a bit of that fairy tale feeling to it and I also love it that Elle Casey’s books always brighten up my day. You just can’t ask for anything more than that so I’ll close with a big smile on my face and the knowledge that I get to do this all over again in a couple of weeks 

Jamie's Indie Movie of the Week!

Hello and welcome to Jamie’s indie movie of the week. This week’s movie is one that I've been trying to hold onto for as long as I could. I just couldn't wait another moment though and had to share it. This one is not only one of the best indie movies I have ever seen but it’s also a lot of fun. So let’s get right to it. Today’s movie is an instant classic called John Dies at the End. Huh? WTF! What kind of movie gives away the ending like that. How about one made by the famous director Don Coscarelli, Jr. He’s the man who directed such classics as: The Phantasm series, Beastmaster and Bubba Ho-Tep. You remember how badass Bubba Ho-Tep was right? If not then I’ll have to include that one very soon in my Indie Movie of the weak feature. And I know you must remember those awesome 80′s flicks, especially the Phantasm series. You can’t call yourself a true horror fan unless you’ve seen them. They’re the one’s with that creepy tall guy, those evil little goblins and those sweet silver sentient sphere’s that bust through doorway’s and have all kinds of wicked instruments inside of them. They have blades and smack into people and then drill into their bodies.  They were totally sweet and they went something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08kyNhk48Ig Note: On my site I have both videos posted where you can watch them but I don't know how to do that here or even if I can so I've included the link here. You're always welcome to come view my post but there's no need if you don't want to.
http://jamiesbookblog.com/jamies-indie-movie-of-the-week/

Pretty sweet right? Well John Dies at the end is from the same director. It started out as a comic horror novel webserial before being turned into a novel. The Director bought the rights to the film adaptation and I’m hoping he makes the second movie since there were two books. The second one is titled This Book is Full of Spiders. I completely dig the titles to these especially John Dies at the End. The movie is pure genius and is about Dave and his friend John. Dave goes to a party to help John’s band and they meet this Jamaican dude who is selling this weird new drug called “soy sauce” and after taking it John begins to see all kinds of things. The rest is pure cinematic brilliance. Is John and later Dave having a bad trip or is there so much more going on? This is a hard one because I want to tell you every single little detail on why this movie is so awesome but I can’t because this really is one that you have to experience for yourselves.

The movie has a 6.5 star rating at Imdb.com and can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1783732/

But forget ratings. This movie deserves 100 stars out of 10. That’s right, 90 more stars should be invented just for this movie. 25 of them would be for the name alone :) Ahh, I had such a good time watching this movie. I really don’t even know what to compare it to because it’s so odd, so out there and so freaking ingenious. John Dies at the End is in my top five favorite movies of all time and pretty much everyone I have forced to watch this have come away with a new favorite movie :) The acting is good, the special effects are awesomely creative. If you get the DVD, it has features on the making of the movie as well as the special effects which is a must watch. They do everything the old fashion way with this one and it gives it a special sort of magic. The plot, well the plot is just something else. You really just have to see this to believe it and as far ruining the end. Hey, it’s not my fault John Dies at the End. :)

OMG this novella is so good. I'd seen some reviews for it and bought it since it was so cheap and wow, those reviews were right. The writing is so good.

Ember is a very unique take on Cinderella and Prince Charming. Ember is a witch and she actually gets along well with her step mom and step sisters. Prince Charming was blessed or cursed depending on how you look at it from birth and everyone who sees him falls under his charm. Everyone loves him He can win battles just by walking out on a battlefield and after going against her mother's advice, Ember looks upon the prince and falls under his power. She becomes a witch and does everything she can to be free of his pull and of course she just happens to be the one woman that the prince wants because she is the only one who doesn't want him.

I am about 75% through it and it is sooooo good. Seriously, if that cover doesn't make you want to buy it then grab the sample and you'll see right away how good this story is. Plus it's only .99 cents. I'm so glad I chose this one to read next

Such a wonderful book. Not the best one (in my opinion) on the Tao Te Ching but a nice addition to my library :)

I wanted to write something deep and thoughtful about this, but I'm too tired.  So instead you get something a bit more blunt.

SPA claim that readers are the ultimate gatekeepers, right?  That's what Hugh Howey said and others have echoed.  It was all the rage on the KDP boards, especially after Chuck Wendig disagreed.

What did they think readers as gatekeepers would do when something wasn't up to snuff? 

I mean... even though they all clearly have the blinders on with respect to their own writing, their egos alone should have them anticipating the panning of someone else's book.  The evil green site would clearly love for readers to hate on certain authors with whom they disagree.  So what, exactly, did they imagine readers-as-gatekeepers would do with the books we found lacking? 

Writing a negative review seems like a pretty obvious expectation.  Boycotting the unprofessional authors seems like a no-brainer, too.

And yet, when the gate came down and some of them were not allowed to pass, suddenly readers were no longer gatekeepers, but bullies.    Because people who have been reading and loving books for years could agree that standards were not being met.  You know, much like four out of five dentists can agree that one dental product is better than another.

So, really, what did they think a gatekeeper would do? 

Here's a newsflash for them: I don't want to be anyone's gatekeeper.  Not that they asked, which is pretty much par for the course.  They want to publish, so now every reader on the planet gets to shop for books in an unfiltered slush pile. Gee, thanks.

But if I am going to be a gatekeeper, I'm going to do a good job.  I'm going to flag authors who mistreat readers.  I'm going to flag books that aren't edited.   I'm going to flag authors who trade reviews.  And since they're the ones who put me in this position, I sure as hell don't expect to be called names because I actually did a good job of it.

Yes, some readers are going to be easier to please than others.  Some are going to be easier to please than the people in charge of submissions at the big six.  But that doesn't mean that those of us who actually have standards are being bullies.  We're being gatekeepers.  And when I'm on duty, and you can't be bothered to edit, or to appreciate readers, or to act like a professional, then you shall not pass.

If you don't like it, then the thing to do is either do better, or go find a different gatekeeper.  Maybe someone who's asleep on duty, or a little less diligent.  Don't complain that I won't look the other way and let you sneak through. 

Today is the first day of Spring and it's a beautiful day where I live. It's a bit warm but just right if you're in the shade. I hope it's nice where you're at. Get out and enjoy the good weather if you're able to today. As soon as I get through feeding the dogs and cats then I'm going to take advantage of the beautiful weather by sitting outside and reading a good book. :D

Photo From: Moyann Brenn/Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28145073@N08/9053938667
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en

Today's nostalgic moment is going to be a little different. Each week I like to talk about all of those magical moments throughout my life where a book has just held a special place in my heart. Maybe that book helped me through a hard time or maybe I could relate to a certain character at that point in my life. Some books were just really good and stood out. Some kept the loneliness at bay while others kept me sane. There have been a lot of these magical moments in my life and I hope there will be many more to come but this week I started thinking about that very first magical moment. "When was it?" I asked myself. I had thought it was the Wolf's Hour by Robert R. McCammon but obviously it wasn't. I realized that different stories have been magical to me throughout my whole life and that even before I could read the written word I still loved looking at books. So I racked my brain and tried to go back and find that very first book that I absolutely loved. A book that I would read over and over again and one that never failed to enchant me and then it hit me. Of course, how could I forget that? I can't say that these were the first books I ever read but I can say without a doubt that they were the first books I ever truly loved. And those books were Little Monster's by Mercer Mayer.

Little Monster's Bedtime Book was my absolute favorite of the series. I'm not 100% why to be honest but I think it was the book cover. Even though I didn't realize it, my young mind knew the importance of a good book cover. One that will draw your eyes to it immediately and make you want to buy it. A great book cover will make you take a chance on an unknown author, will make you just have to have it without even sampling it and my younger self was always drawn to this book cover. Maybe it was the purple and blue colors - blue's always been my favorite. Or maybe it was the cozy bed that Little Monster was in or maybe it was his dad telling him a story. I don't really know. I just know I liked it back then and I have no doubt that I would still enjoy it if I read it today.

Little Monster's were truly magical in the way in which only a child can truly understand. As we grow older we start to lose that magic ever so slowly. As we learn about limitations we lose more of that magic. Every time we're told to act our age and grow up we lose a bit more. For every new rule we learn we lose a more and more. Not that there's anything wrong with growing up nor is there anything wrong with rules and limits. We all need them but the world is limitless to a child. As we grow up the world becomes smaller, we start to understand how things work and much of the world's magic is replaced by logic and understanding. I don't wish I was young again but at times I do miss that magic and sense of wonder.  I miss the endless possibilities. I miss my toys and stuff animals which took on a life of their own back then. I miss being able to fly everywhere I went if I so wanted to. I miss my bicycle that could transform me from an ordinary boy into anything from an ace fighter pilot to a Transformer rolling out. 

But all is not lost. We don't completely lose that magic or our imagination. It just changes as we're forced to take on the responsibilities of adulthood. Every time we see a good movie or a specific scene in a movie and get that tingle up our spine we're reliving that magic. Every time we open a good book and get "that feeling" we are reliving that magic. We relive that magic through our children and through the youth around us. We relive it in little moments everyday without even realizing it. It's all around us and all we have to do is look for it and let our imagination roam. Every time an author writes a good book they're tapping into that magic and every time we read a good book we're reliving that magic.  And who knows, without these first books, these colorful pictures that we loved so much then we might never have grown up to love reading as much as we do. We might not have ever found this particular way of recapturing a bit of that magic and so every time we open a new book and get that feeling we will be adding to those memories and adding to that magic and for me it all started here with these books.

Wow, when I first started this post I intended to make it short quick. I planned on just talking about how much I loved this series but something else came out instead. Something that I feel is more honest and captures the magic and memory of these books. I've been so busy lately that I've forgotten to stop and take a moment. A moment to let my mind wander and allow myself to feel that magic that still resides in each and every one of us. That magic that we thought we had lost but is still right there, right around the corner waiting for us to notice. So I'll end this by asking each of you to take a moment out of your busy schedule today, just a brief moment to search for that magic. A brief moment so that you can once again experience a world without any limitations, a moment of endless possibilities and wonder. Just a small moment to be that child again and to allow yourself to feel that magic that still resides within you.

http://jamiesbookblog.com/nostalgic-moments/

I still think this is the cutest kitten in the world. So cute :D

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Almost Adept was a fun, light read and I liked both of the main characters. Eriale has nearly unlimited power but she's still very much a young adult and it shows at times. Kealan on the other hand is a bit older and a veteran of the Grumesh war and it's become his job to lead the remainder of his people to safety after his country was conquered. There's not much his remaining people can do besides flee and hide. His job as a courier helps them tremendously in that regard. He was also the son of the treasurer of Grumesh and has used most of his countries hidden fortune to help smuggle out the families of the warriors and nobles who are hunted mercilessly by the Roodiman's.

I really enjoyed this world. I loved the setting and the people. I liked the conflict between the two countries. Well it wasn't much of a conflict, it was more like a few ex-warrior's trying to hide but it was fun. I also really liked the magic and I'm not normally a fan of "unlimited" types of magic. Normally I just don't care for the kind of magic that you see so often in high fantasy. I prefer a magic system with plenty of checks and balances and while at times I felt the magic just made things way too easy for Eriale, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it. When it's done well it can be a lot of fun like with David Edding's The Belgariad. I would have liked to see a little more self sufficiently on Erial's part and was glad when she lost her bag which just made it too easy for her during the first leg of her journey by providing her with an unlimited amount of food and coin so I was glad to see it go. Then she just starts using her magic to steal whatever she needs which in any other book I doubt I would have liked, especially after she herself had been robbed but the people she stole from totally deserved it so I was laughing with glee every single time she stole something. I was also clapping every time she used her magic to get back at someone who had done her or others wrong. I mean what's the point of having nearly unlimited magic if you can't use it to have a bit of fun and revenge?

But the magic wasn't completely "unlimited". It did have it's drawbacks. She couldn't just use it forever without tiring out and there was also the very real danger of becoming a blood mage and I thought the author did an excellent job with the villain Udolen. He was one nasty piece of work and everything I'd expect from an evil mage.

In the story Eriale has to lose her virginity to become an Adept. It's just kind of explained as "a magical thing". I've got my own theories and one of them is it has to do with being comfortable with who you are and with all of your sides, including your sexual one but I don't really know. For the most part it just bugged me a bit. I mean I loved how open and blunt Eriale was about it so that part was actually quite a bit of fun and I enjoy reading about a more open society that just doesn't think sex is some evil taboo. The conversation between Eriale and her parents was priceless and the first time she mentioned it to Kealan had me laughing so hard. So in some ways it was pretty fun but it just didn't make a lot of sense to me to be honest. I mean she already had the power of an adept so why does she have to lose her virginity just to be called an adept? If it's because so she'll be content with all sides of herself that's cool, but what if she didn't like men? What if she just didn't like sex? There's just too many what if's for me and I'm just not really 100% sure why she even had to lose it in the first place. So at times it was kinda weird and at other times it could be fun. Sometimes it just felt like it was getting in the way of the story but all in all it wasn't a huge factor to me to be honest. I still enjoyed the story very much.

Overall I had a really good time reading this one. The authors writing style was peasant and easy to read. The characters were enjoyable and you could relate to them and the storyline was great. I liked Eriale, she was witty, smart, and made some childish mistakes which is understandable but she was also a good person and most importantly a strong person. I loved the fact that she wasn't just some damsel in distress. At times she seemed a bit too happy or optimistic but then I realized that a lot of that was because becoming an Adept was her whole life and she obviously looked up to and admired her father so naturally she would want to make him proud. I really want to talk about the ending and my thoughts on it but I can't without ruining it but I think it was a wise decision on the authors part to end it how she did.

I would definitely recommend this one. I think this was the authors second book and I'm looking forward to reading more by her. I would love it if she revisited this world some day. I'd love to know more about the mage's guild and the different society's as well as see more about court life. Even if it was with different characters I'd just like to spend more time in this world.

I'm nearly through. I feel so horrible because it's taken me so long to read this one but it has nothing to do with the book on why it's taken me so long. I just haven't had time to read at all lately. I've been so busy working, transferring my site plus doing about a gazillion other things. I usually get a few minutes here and there to jump on BL and look at a few posts, mess with my site a bit and that's it and I totally messed up on transferring my site. I forgot to enable a plugin so half of my author info needs to be refilled again :(

On a bright note I'm really liking the book and a bunch of stuff is about to happen in the story :D I don't want to give it away. I've had a fun time with it so far, I just feel horrible it's taken me so long to read it :(  

Note from Jamie. I was wanting to reblog to show this list of spammers but it's  not showing the links. Regardless you can check out his original post to see them. This is the second person I've seen getting hit by these spammers. Not cool.

I just spent the last 20 minutes going through the Groups and reporting all the "business, property consultant and energy" groups that are obvious spam groups.

Westhill seems to be the worst offender however.

I'd like to know why Booklikes isn't policing this? I just spent 20 minutes and dealt with about 15 groups. Why isn't a Booklikes employee spending 20 minutes a WEEK and dealing with this? It isn't that hard and the spammers/bots aren't trying very hard to hide.

[insert loud swearing here] I don't want to be a Librarian! (or whatever the equivalent is going to be here) If Booklikes isn't going to give us the power to police the site then they need to do a better job of policing it themselves. 

I'm just grumpy...

I ran across one really messed up book on Amazon and below it were all of these so I thought I'd post for your viewing entertainment. I'm seriously thinking about creating a Lol WTF reading list now :/ 

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone :D 

He pretty much summed up the whole series in 99 seconds lol.

Haha, I just found this guy on Youtube and he has a lot of very unique videos like his Paper Beatbox which I really like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nofOILw7Wx8

Here's the first one I saw which was pretty hilarious: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiZ5a1XByV4

I keep thinking that's better than 99% of the stuff on SNL at the moment.  I'm not sure if he consideres himself a comedian or just an entertainer but either way I hope he'll keep working at it. Some good stuff :D