What have you been reading?

Every Shabbat, I read. 

I'd like to tell you about two books I read this last Shabbat: Squirrel Girl Universe and Death & Sparkles. 

Squirrel Girl Universe is basically a cross between the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (my favorite superhero) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (my favorite book). 

Squirrel Girl and friends try to stop a super villain in the process of sending New York City to the farthest corner of the universe, and only partly succeed. This lands them and the villain far, far from home. Koi Boy gets help from a space whale, and that's where the adventure really starts. Squirrels, funny footnotes, space whales: what's not to love? 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Death & Sparkles is a middle-grade graphic novel designed to appeal to kids who love jokes about farts and butts, and despite myself...I did find it funny. 

As the last unicorn, everyone wants to be Sparkles' friend, eat the candy he makes, and buy the products he promotes. Death comes to collect Sparkles' soul during a death-defying stunt and ends up with Sparkles' horn stuck up his butt. They soon become fast friends, and in the end Sparkles learns the meaning of true friendship. While I'm not the audience for this book, I have to admit I found it fun. 🌟🌟🌟🌟

And those were my Shabbat reads this week.

Disney Pixar's Soul: a review

Saw Soul, and while I like all Pixar movies, this one is at the bottom three of the list for me. 

Pluses: it's so beautiful, especially in 3D, and Tina Fey is hilarious. I liked Moonwind and the Jerrys, too, and their interactions with Terry were fun. I also really liked 22 and could understand what she was going through. Heck, I'm at a loss as to why she wasn't the main character. I would have loved to see her story from the start.

Negatives: I couldn't relate to Joe or his selfish quest, which I'm just now realizing is an issue I have with the main character of another Pixar movie, Cars. In addition, for a movie centered around music, it's weird that I can't remember a single piece of music from it. I recognize the music from Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Brave, so I know Pixar can do better in this regard. 

Don't get my wrong, it's still a good movie. It's just not as good as it could have been.

"Why My Love Life Sucks is a book that from the very beginning, is engaging and enjoyable..."

"Why My Love Life Sucks is a book that from the very beginning, is engaging and enjoyable. Gilbert is so very likeable and what he has to go through is at times funny and touching.  Shevi Arnold wrote a great book!" ~ Coffee and a Book Anytime

Yes, I did write a book specifically for geeks like us. We are all Gilbert in my book, and that makes us all geeking awesome. Thanks for noticing. You rock!

You can check out the rest of this review by clicking here. 

Another Geeking Awesome Review for Why My Love Life Sucks!

"Great ball of fun with vampires wrapped up very nicely with a great cover and catching title. It is worth checking out, trust me." Thank you, Jenn Renee Read, for your review of Why My Love Life Sucks. 

You are geeking awesome, you know that, right? 

I'm so super psyched right now I could just scream... 

YayYYY!

You can read the rest of the review by clicking here.

Why My Love Life Sucks Goes on an Xpresso Book Tour at the End of April!

I'm so excited. My latest novel,Why My Love Life Sucks,  is a funny story about geeks, gadgets, girls, vampires, and the most unlikely of friendships--and it will be going on an all-reviews tour at the end of April thanks to Xpresso Book Tours! 

Here are the blogs that have signed up and the dates they will be posting reviews: 

April 29th

-Jennreneereas  

-Dizneeee's World of Books

April 30th

-Coffee & A Book Anytime 

-Words Create Scenes 

May 1st

-Little Lovely Books

-wordpaintingsunlimited 

May 2nd
-The Next Chapter
-Spiced Latte Reads  

May 3rd
-Krystal's Enchanting Reads
-As Palavras Fugiram   

May 4th
-Teen Blurb

If you're one of the book bloggers who has agreed to review my latest novel, thank you! Give yourself a round of applause, because you are geeking awesome. 

If you're not, would you like to join the fun?  If this book sounds like something you might like, email me at shevia at hotmail dot com with your preferred digital format (for Kindle, Nook, Apple device, or other) before April 29th, and I will be happy to send you a free digital copy in exchange for an honest Amazon review. 

Geeking out from all this awesomeness, 

Shevi

Best review ever!

I'm so excited! I got the best review EVER! Here's just one part of it:

"Do you believe in Magic? I think after reading Toren the Teller's Tale, you will absolutely believe in Magic. The way this story is set up by the author is absolutely mesmerizing." "Even with a black and white Nook, this book is a visual pleasure. I love you Shevi Arnold, and I adore Toren The Teller's Tale."

Thank you, thank you, thank, thank you!

Yippee! I just read the nicest review for Dan Quixote: Boy of Nuevo Jersey!

I don't know who J.C. is, but I thank you so very, very much!I hope your eldest enjoys it too.

http://theothersideofthepage.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/359/

"So, I guess to sum it up there are a lot of great messages in this book, delivered in an amusing story without being preachy or too in your face. I think it would definitely appeal to the middle grade reader, and even as an adult I found things to like. I will probably read this with my eldest in the near future."

The Kindle with ads isn't that great, but not for the reasons you might think

I've had an Amazon Kindle with ads for about a week now, and I'm still on the fence about it. So far I only see a few pros to owning this ebook reader, and quite a few cons. Oddly, the ads are not among the cons. So here's my pros and cons list:

Pros

• The liquid paper--Compared to the back-lit iPad,iPhone or iPod Touch, the liquid paper is easier on the eyes and it means you can go a long time between charges. But do you know what's even easier on the eyes and doesn't need to be charged at all? An actual book. 
• The price--At $114, this is one of the cheapest ebook readers. 
• The Amazon Kindle store's selection and pricing for ebooks--Amazon has the greatest selection of ebooks at the lowest prices.
• The ads--The ads appear when the Kindle is shut off. When you turn the Kindle back on, a small strip at the bottom of the menu lets you click on a link to learn more about the product or offer. The ads don't bother me in the least, and when they offer something good (who wouldn't want a $10 Amazon gift certificate for buying a $5 ebook from the bestseller list?) I kind of wish there were more of them. Right now my only complaint about the ads is that they're repetitive and I can't tell the Kindle to stop showing me ads for some car and some beauty product. My guess is that in the future, the ads might be better tailored to the actual user. This would benefit both the Kindle owner and the advertiser.
• Get any book you want within seconds--It's literally like holding a bookstore in your hand, but unfortunately this isn't a bookstore you can check out easily, no bargain bin or covers to look at or anything. (See below.)

Cons

• The user interface--the placement of the buttons can be quite frustrating. There are buttons on each side of the screen to move you forward and backward. Press the top button, and you move back. Press the bottom button, and you move forward. This only applies to navigating books. To move back a page anywhere else, you need to press a tiny back button on the keyboard. Why? Why not have the same buttons take you back and forward a page no matter where you are? And why not just put one back button to the left of the screen, and one forward button to the right of the screen, which would be more intuitive? The main button you use on the keyboard (the one that lets you move up, down, left and right within a page) is tiny and difficult to manipulate. This is true of all the buttons on the keyboard, but because this one button is so important, its tiny size and the way it's situated so close to the Menu, Back, Delete, and Enter keys can be quite frustrating, making the simplest tasks take unnecessarily longer.
• The on-board Kindle store--Unless you're interested in the bestseller list only and you don't care about price, the Kindle store as you can access it from your device is pretty much useless. You can't look up books by rating or price, and very often when you look something up by topic, the first things on the list are rubbish created by writers who have created lots and lots of ebooks in order to boost their ratings in the Kindle store. Sometimes they'll add something to a public-domain work (like drawings), so they can charge for an ebook you can get for free elsewhere online. This effectively makes the on-board Kindle store a joke, and the laugh is on the person trying to use it to find a book he or she might want to buy.
• The price of some ebooks when compared to used books--If you want to read books on your Amazon Kindle, you're stuck with whatever the price is on Amazon. Sometimes that's a good thing. Many indie publishers charge $0.99-$2.99 for an ebook. However, most of the larger publishers charge $9.99, and sometimes more. So unless you have money to burn or really need to get that bestseller as soon as it comes out and you're willing to pay retail for it, you're probably better off getting a used (sometimes even new) paperback for a much lower price.
• Everything the Kindle offers beside books--While some of the apps are nice (Mahjong, for example, looks lovely), the interface makes them unbearably frustrating to use. The worst is trying to access the Kindle store through Amazon's website. Sure, it's great that the device can access the Internet, but does it have to do such a terrible job of it? Frankly, I think Amazon needs to get rid of that feature until they find a way to make using it frustration-free.

In the end, the pros win out over the cons, but the cons show that Amazon still has a long way to go if it wants to get a Kindle into every reader's hands.