Between the covers book club

Hello there, lovely ladies 😉

What’s new in your part of the world this weekend? Let me tell you what’s new in ours…

Firstly, Dana Brunetti, the producer of Darker, posted the following pic on Twitter, a note from Erika after that day’s screening of Darker….

Things are looking promising for the movie if Erika herself feels the representation is “f*cking great”. Yay! Thank you, Susan for sharing 🙂

Then, thanks to Sharon, I had an interesting reading experience this week. Kindle has (very quietly) launched something called Kindle in Motion (KIM), a new e-book format that embeds GIFs* into the text of electronic books. This means that you get animated (or still) graphics within the pages, adding more…. uhm….bang for your buck – especially in our genre. LOL! I will review the book itself in the book club section of this post, but first, let me chat about my first experience with KIM. Overall, I liked it, probably not enough to go searching for these formats specifically, but there were aspects of it that I didn’t mind at all. Here are some screen shots of a few of the pages:

   

The first two are examples of the static pages where the pics are still. It’s pretty cool, especially the second one with the coffee ring. I can see how it can offer a richer experience to the reader, an added dimension to enhance the general feel of a book. The third is a screenshot of a page with an animated GIF. Naturally, because I took a photo, you can’t see the movement, but it displays like a tiny movie, showing the same clip of motion over and over again. Again, in principle, I have no issue with the idea. What I DO have a problem with is that now, the author’s vision of her characters HAS to be mine. In this particular instance, both the guy and the girl, though cute, is not at all what I would have envisioned. Considering one’s imagination is the thing that really makes reading shine, with this format, you lose that unique ability, making the option questionable. Luckily, Kindle was smart enough to offer these books with the option to read without the new enhancement. See The Digital Reader for more info as well as a great clip to show the actual motion. Let me know what you think, girls!

*”GIF, or Graphic Interchange Format, is a file extension for an often animated raster graphics file and is the second most common image format used on the World Wide Web after JPEG. GIF uses the LZW compression algorithm and is owned by Unisys.” – Source

Lastly, and not at all related to reading or FSOG, but nevertheless a worthy piece of news: check out The Local reporting on a FREE red wine fountain in Italy…

What a fantastic idea. I call for one on every street corner! LOL!

This week I read:

   

                                      

A vary varied week, as you can see.

Angel by Dani Wyatt caught my eye because I’ve been looking for a good DD/lg story for a long time. This one, sadly, was not it. The writing was poor enough to send it straight to my DNF pile.

Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley, book three in the Colorado Mountain series, was great. I LOVED Lexi and Ty’s story, but as mentioned last week, if you’re after a fast paced read, this is not the one for you. Thank you, Sharon for sharing this gem with me.

Then, The Matchmaker’s Playbook by Rachel Van Dyken, book one in the Wingmen Inc. series was an absolute treat. This is the one that boasted the Kindle in Motion feature, but that is NOT the reason for my happy dance. I adored the male lead and his smart mouth with a ready answer for everything, a reminder of one of my other favorite characters, Mal Ericson of Stage Dive fame. I liked it so much that I’m going to go with my BOB on this one. Yay!

Again, I have Sharon to thank for spotting Ian and his animated face on the cover.

Lingus by Mariana Zapata was next on my list. I can’t comment on the story, I didn’t get far enough to make a decision, but I have it on good authority that it’s sweet. What I didn’t enjoy was the caliber of girl featured in the book. This is a deeply personal preference, and in all likelihood, not something that would bother others. I’ll leave you to make up your own mind where this one is concerned.

Currently I’m reading:

Beautiful by Christina Lauren, book five in the Beautiful Bastard series.

In closing, I’ll share a time honored remedy that made me laugh. Here’s an old ad for a boner spoon…

Why it’s a spoon, I have no idea, but if you suffer a horndog husband, this might do the trick. A quick tap of the boner spoon will, like the ad says, “soften even the most optimistic ardour”. Whahahaha! Made my day thinking of prim wives keeping a spoon for this purpose in their bedside drawer.

That’s all for today, girls. As always, it’s lovely hearing from you.