books books books books books
May. 7th, 2013 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
localfreakI am Having A Week. I've had rows with Tesco's customer service, the pollen count is insane and there's a lot of pressure for a big family (suprise) event that reminds me why I both absolutely love being in a big family, and at the same time why it's a pain in the neck! (Someone should observe us and then write a big HP fic replacing us with Weasleys, we're probably more chaotic!)
So rather than whinge incessantly about how stressed I am I'm going to write about books.
I recently bought three e-books from Riptide Publishing online. The conversion rate of dollars to pounds in my favour, but also because the other month when I was not spending anything and also in the middle of lent so had no fanfiction to distract me, I went through every book I thought I might like on the site and read the extracts!
The first one I read was Portside by Elyan Smith okay so the twist was never going to be any sort of twist to me, and I can’t compare it to the others because this read a lot more like a short story, but it was very good. It is the kind of writing I really like, that touch of hope amidst a hopeless, and sadly familiar world. It was a bit odd, really in a way because ultimately it’s about one guy’s quest for having the confidence to actually go for the sex he’s been dreaming about, but on the other hand, as I identify with all to well, there’s no magic wand, everything is a compromise which makes it hard, despite the pure focus on lust, to categorise it as wank material. Mostly good though. Overall, I liked it but it is more a short story than a novella in my view.
Next I read Second Hand by Marie Sexton and Heidi Cullinan and Covet Thy Neighbour by L.A.Witt
True to my usual form I expected I would like the latter more than the former. In truth the reverse occurred. Both of them are very much boy-meets-boy stories, which is all very yay and both are lovely in their own ways.
I thought I would like Covet…more because it handled the idea of an atheist, who has grown to be very wary of Christians, falling for a Pastor and then fighting against that because of his own fears, at the same time the Pastor’s reasons for arriving are mired in a mess of experienced rejection and homophobia. It was interesting, good, but the whole background I found very hard to relate to which surprised me a little- but like the mega-churches I didn’t know existed till trashy TV (there’s a teen-ish BBC programme in which badly behaved teenagers get sent to live with parents somewhere else in the world to experience their levels of discipline which I absolutely love mostly because you really do learn so much about how other people all over the world live) told me of them. It really highlights that when I say I’m a catholic around here in my part of the world, it means something quite different to people in other places in many ways. But I digress, I did like it, the romance was sweet, hot and very pretty but I found the characters a little thin and their secrets and problems rather too exposition-y- we get told a lot of information in one big bad-ass heart-to-heart between characters rather than being allowed to learn gradually and that was a shame.
Second Hand on the other hand (haha) the characters felt so much more fleshed out- a lot more meat on their bones. I loved he big family, the hoarder mother (of course) but I just really liked the characters. The lost man who has been fooling himself for a long time waking up out of a daze of domesticity to find he is pretty unhappy with his life, the soft hearted but sharp tongued pawn shop owner. Theirs was a love story that I thoroughly enjoyed read it. With both of these book actually I wished they were twice as long! Everything was over too fast for me. So in conclusion, I liked both of them, but I really really liked Second Hand. A LOT. I just wanted moooorrrreee.
So rather than whinge incessantly about how stressed I am I'm going to write about books.
I recently bought three e-books from Riptide Publishing online. The conversion rate of dollars to pounds in my favour, but also because the other month when I was not spending anything and also in the middle of lent so had no fanfiction to distract me, I went through every book I thought I might like on the site and read the extracts!
The first one I read was Portside by Elyan Smith okay so the twist was never going to be any sort of twist to me, and I can’t compare it to the others because this read a lot more like a short story, but it was very good. It is the kind of writing I really like, that touch of hope amidst a hopeless, and sadly familiar world. It was a bit odd, really in a way because ultimately it’s about one guy’s quest for having the confidence to actually go for the sex he’s been dreaming about, but on the other hand, as I identify with all to well, there’s no magic wand, everything is a compromise which makes it hard, despite the pure focus on lust, to categorise it as wank material. Mostly good though. Overall, I liked it but it is more a short story than a novella in my view.
Next I read Second Hand by Marie Sexton and Heidi Cullinan and Covet Thy Neighbour by L.A.Witt
True to my usual form I expected I would like the latter more than the former. In truth the reverse occurred. Both of them are very much boy-meets-boy stories, which is all very yay and both are lovely in their own ways.
I thought I would like Covet…more because it handled the idea of an atheist, who has grown to be very wary of Christians, falling for a Pastor and then fighting against that because of his own fears, at the same time the Pastor’s reasons for arriving are mired in a mess of experienced rejection and homophobia. It was interesting, good, but the whole background I found very hard to relate to which surprised me a little- but like the mega-churches I didn’t know existed till trashy TV (there’s a teen-ish BBC programme in which badly behaved teenagers get sent to live with parents somewhere else in the world to experience their levels of discipline which I absolutely love mostly because you really do learn so much about how other people all over the world live) told me of them. It really highlights that when I say I’m a catholic around here in my part of the world, it means something quite different to people in other places in many ways. But I digress, I did like it, the romance was sweet, hot and very pretty but I found the characters a little thin and their secrets and problems rather too exposition-y- we get told a lot of information in one big bad-ass heart-to-heart between characters rather than being allowed to learn gradually and that was a shame.
Second Hand on the other hand (haha) the characters felt so much more fleshed out- a lot more meat on their bones. I loved he big family, the hoarder mother (of course) but I just really liked the characters. The lost man who has been fooling himself for a long time waking up out of a daze of domesticity to find he is pretty unhappy with his life, the soft hearted but sharp tongued pawn shop owner. Theirs was a love story that I thoroughly enjoyed read it. With both of these book actually I wished they were twice as long! Everything was over too fast for me. So in conclusion, I liked both of them, but I really really liked Second Hand. A LOT. I just wanted moooorrrreee.
