Room 9 and Other Stories – REVIEW

Title: Room 9 and Other Stories

Series: N/A

Author: Amy Cross

Type: Short Stories

Genre: Horror/Supernatural/Paranormal

Format: eBook

Pages: 378

Owned/Borrowed/Given Etc: Kindle Unlimited

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Blurb: A girl checks into a haunted motel room, determined to prove that ghosts exist. But what’s really waiting for her in the notorious room 9? A man meets an old friend who claims to be haunted by a figure from their past. But when that friend does, who will the ghost haunt next? A town struggles to face the horrors of its past. But no matter how hard the local people try to forget, the victim of a terrible crime is determined to avenge her own death. Room 9 and Other Stories contains the new short stories Room 9, The Ghost of Daniel Dowd and The Horror of Blackforke House, as well as revised versions of The Disappearance of Rose Hillard and The Fan.

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I choose this as part of my 3 month Kindle Unlimited subscription and also because I’m loving the format of short stories at the moment. An added bonus is that this book falls into one of my all-time favourite genres – horror, supernatural and paranormal. Although, the stories in this book lean more to the paranormal side than the horror.

I’ll split this book into individual stories as I have very different feelings about them all.

The Horror of Blackforke House (⭐⭐)- This should’ve/could’ve been a fantastic trope of a story. The standard, well-known, well-loved haunted house story. However, it left me wanting something to happen. It just ended without any satisfactory conclusion. This was definitely the worst in the bunch.

The Fan (⭐⭐⭐)- This was a middle of the road story for me in the book. It was worth a read but it felt like I’d seen/read this storyline so many times before in many different ways. The title is pretty self-explanatory, a celebrity and a fan have an encounter. Not much else happens that you wouldn’t expect in a book of this genre.

The Disappearance of Rose Hilland (⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐)- This story is what made the book worth reading. It made the book achieve a three-star rating. The Rose Hilland story is vile and has some disturbing moments but it builds up fantastically and brings about the thrilling conclusion in an amazing and actually quite surprising way. This is a five-star story on its own, and could easily have been published by itself if the author could make it longer.

Room 9 (⭐⭐⭐)- Hotel rooms and ghosts. Think 1408 (Stephen King) but nowhere near the same level. Still, given that it was much tamer than I expected, it was still a good story.

The Ghost of Daniel Dowd (⭐⭐)- This would be the second worst story in the book in my opinion. By the time I had finished reading the story after this one, I couldn’t even remember what had happened. Even now, I only have a brief recollection of a man and a ghost but that’s about as far as it goes.

Total Stars: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (15 out of a possible 25)

I would recommend this particular book by Amy Cross. I have read a previous book by the same author, in the same format and it was rife with editing/typing errors. This book had a couple of really noticeable ones but nothing like I had seen prior to this book.

Monthly Reading Summary – May 2019

May Reading

Frostbite: The Graphic Novel (Vampire Academy: The Graphic Novel, #2) Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Vol. 1 Otherearth (Last Reality, #2) Stories on the Go: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors Riverdale: One-Shot #0 Riverdale #1  Riverdale #2 Riverdale #3 Riverdale #4 Max Ride: First Flight #1 Max Ride: First Flight #2 Max Ride: First Flight #3 Max Ride: First Flight #4 Max Ride: First Flight #5 (of 5)

 

May was a slightly better month in terms of the number of books I read but in terms of “total pages” I definitely did not meet up to some of my previous months. This does not trouble me too much though as a large number of my books were actually comic issues with approximately 30 pages each.
One of the books that I read had 101 short stories in, and each story was by a different author. Hence why my author total for this month is unusually high.
I did make a start on a comic series that I’ve never read before – Riverdale – but I gave up after issue four as it just wasn’t for me.
I’d definitely recommend the Twilight graphic novel if you are a fan of the original books, as it was the same story but with AMAZING graphics.

May Stats

Total books read: 14
eBooks: 11
Paperbacks: 3
Hardbacks: 0
Graphic Novels: 12
Part of a series: 12
Total authors: 106

Running Totals
from Goodreads stats page (based on 2019 readings)

Pages read: 10542

Summary – Did I meet my goals?

#1 – Read three library books borrowed on 23/04/2019 – DONE
#2 – Create a random book generator of some description for all my owned and unread books (that is going to be a hard task as I have over 900) – DONE (See the post here)
#3 – Buy no new books – FAILED
#4 – Not to borrow any more library books until I have read 5 from my owned collection – DONE

I only failed on one this month – Go Me! I just can’t stop buying new books!!!!!

June Goals

#1 – To actually start to chip away at my TBR pile
#2 – To read some more of the graphic novels and comics I have listed (not necessarily from the TBR pile)
#3 – To try and keep on top of my blog with more regular posts

My Book Logging Spreadsheet

If you read my last post about my TBR spreadsheet then you may have been anticipating this post. Or you may not. Either way, this is my spreadsheet for logging books that I have read. Essentially, it is my own version of Goodreads.

I took inspiration from the millions of places online that offer book logging spreadsheets and concocted my own. I even learnt a few new things about which formula to use for various functions. If I haven’t bored you to death with details about spreadsheets, please read on and find out what I did with this one.

MY BOOK LOG (This copy is view only due to it being my copy) – Click the link to see my copy in real time. I’ve backdated it as much as possible from the beginning of this year.

Onto the new spreadsheet details:

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Picture One (above) and Picture Two (below) are pretty self-explanatory. They contain details about the books that I have read.
TITLE – The title of the book
AUTHOR – Who wrote the book
GENRE – The book genre. I have provided quite a few in the drop-down list, the main genres of course and added an “other” for those that don’t quite fit anywhere. I’m well aware that “romance” and “comedy” may never get used but the option is still there
FICTION OR NON-FICTION – To confirm if the book is fiction or non-fiction
DATE STARTED/DATE FINISHED – Are the dates I started and finished the book
MONTH READ – The month I finished the book
PAGES – Total number of pages in the book
FORMAT – Whether the book was paperback, hardback, eBook, audiobook etc
YEAR PUBLISHED – Publication year of the book if known
M/F AUTHOR – The gender of the author. “Other” is also an option if required
STAR RATING (OUT OF 5) – How many stars I would give the book

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This section of the main page (below) has an option to tick/check/select a box if the book was a DNF (I am a terrible DNFer now that I realised I shouldn’t struggle with a book) and a section for additional comments.

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The second page on the spreadsheet is the stats page. It takes details from all the information input on the first page, and providing I don’t go over 2000 books, it will automatically update as more data is input.

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The final section or page on the spreadsheet has the charts/graphs on. As with the stats page, these will automatically update providing none of the column/data cells from the stats page are moved.

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MY BOOK LOG BLANK – This is a blank copy for you to use.

PLEASE “MAKE A COPY” OF THE DOCUMENT AS NOT DOING SO WILL MEAN THAT YOU ARE UPDATING YOUR INFORMATION ON THE ORIGINAL BLANK.

I’ve been 100% geeking out over this, managing to combine 2 out of my 3 obsessions is amazing. The only thing I’m wondering is how long will I stick with it.

My TBR of Owned Books

You may, or may not, already know but I am a hoarder. A book hoarder to be precise. I’m sure there are many of us out there and you all will understand. 

I buy books. I download free books on my kindle like there is no tomorrow and charity shop books are a definite yes for me! After all, why pay full price if you can get a slightly used copy for 50p.

After realising that I probably already own too many books for me to ever read in my lifetime, I decided I needed to try and read some of the books that I have already bought before buying any new ones. So far, I’m failing miserably at not buying books but I am trying my best.

On many websites, I had seen people that had a “Book Jar”. Basically, a jar, filled with pieces of paper. Each paper has a title of a book on it, pick one at random and read that. I liked this idea but I didn’t like the thought of writing out the titles of all of my 1000(approx) books that I owned. Then, I’d have to remember what format the book was in and locate it before reading.

I wanted somewhere that I could keep tabs on all my owned books (eBooks AND actual books). I know Goodreads has this feature available but I have a thing for spreadsheets. I always have. I have a spreadsheet for the bills and incoming money which I keep track of so I figured that I could use something similar for my books. Hence my “Books I Own TBR” was born. Between that, and a second spreadsheet – which I will be posting about at a later date – I have spent the best part of the last three days working through and creating spreadsheets. With formula and charts. Gotta keep those stats monitored.

This is my spreadsheet, up-to-date with all my currently owned books. The beauty of it is that I can continue to update it if I do happen to get any more books.

BOOKS I OWN TBR (This copy is “view only” as it’s my copy.)

The spreadsheet has two sheets which I will explain below.

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This is the main “sheet” or data. As you can see, it is pretty self-explanatory. I wanted to keep it really simple as I knew I would have a lot of books to add to it. Importing that Amazon library was not an easy task due to them not offering a function to export or download a list of all owned kindle books (or if they do, I couldn’t find it! I manually input all the details as I didn’t have a suitable PDF to Excel converter either).

TITLE – The Title of the book
FORMAT – For my purposes, this includes only 2 options – Paperback and eBook. I figured if its a hardback (which is rare, it wouldn’t matter if I logged it as a paperback – I’m not that fussed with regards to this category)
LOCATION – Again for myself, the location includes options for everywhere that I would own a book so it has Kindle, iBooks and Shelf to choose from
READ? – This bit is pretty snazzy. When I’ve read a book, I tick the box! That’s it. The red cell will change to green when the box is ticked too so that’s even better
DATE ADDED – This is purely the date I added the book to the spreadsheet. Some of those books I have had on my kindle since 2013 so I didn’t fancy going back and confirming the exact dates

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The second part of the spreadsheet, on a second sheet, is my favourite bit. Its the statistic page. Formula’s are in place, graphs have been created and it will automatically update whenever I update the book list.

I have created a blank version of this sheet, with all the formula etc in place, if you would like to use it or share it please do but please credit either myself or my facebook group – Book Club.

BOOKS I OWN TBR BLANK

PLEASE “MAKE A COPY” OF THE DOCUMENT AS NOT DOING SO WILL MEAN THAT YOU ARE UPDATING YOUR INFORMATION ON THE ORIGINAL BLANK.

Reading Habits Form

Due to my recent discovery that I can use google sheets to log, summarise and analyse my reading habits, I wanted to try it out on a larger scale. I decided to run with a google form, through my book club on facebook.

I’m asking my readers to join the facebook group here and then fill in this google form (which is on this post, and also in the group announcements) for all the books that they read between now and the end of this year (2019).

-You can fill in the form multiple times, for as many books as you want but it must only be used once per book

-None of the questions are compulsory so just fill in as much detail as you can

-NO PERSONAL DATA IS COLLECTED OR REQUIRED to fill in the form – its purely information about the book – I won’t even know who logged which book

 

101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors – STORIES ON THE GO – Review

Title: 101 Very Short Stories by 101 Authors – STORIES ON THE GO

Author: 101 Different Authors

Type: Fiction

Genre: Every genre imaginable

Format: eBook

Pages: 464 

Owned/Borrowed/Given Etc: Owned – Kindle eBook

Rating: 3/5

Blurb: This anthology aims to be a showcase of recent indie writing. 
Hugh Howey launched the idea on Kboards, a forum for Kindle readers, but also the meeting place of an active community of indie writers. 
The result is this anthology of 101 very short stories by 101 authors. 
To make it more attractive for you, the reader, we set ourselves a limit of a thousand words. You should be able to read each story in under five minutes — on your desktop computer, laptop, or tablet at home or in the office, but also on your smartphone, on the go, while you are commuting or waiting at a coffee shop for your significant other to arrive. 
We included as many genres as we could. We hope that maybe, with only five minutes of your time on the line that would otherwise be wasted anyway, you’ll be tempted to venture outside your comfort zone and try out some new genres and new authors.

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This review is going to be a little bit different due to the fact that there are 101 different stories by 101 different authors and all of the different genres. Instead of a full book review, I’m making small notes after each story and I will summarise what I thought. As the stories are limited to one thousand words or less, I will not be going into too much detail because it would be really easy to spoil the story for others.

As a whole, I’m giving the book 3/5 purely because, as with most story collections, there were some good ones and some bad ones. It did take me rather a long time to read, around 40 days, but it was manageable as the stories were five-minute reads, some of them even quicker.

There was a good chunk of the stories that I opted out of reading, this was either because of the genre (I can not read pure romance stories of any sort – they are not my thing) or because the story didn’t grab me within the first few lines.

One of the stories, I had already pre-judged before reading. This was called “The Witching Well” by Sarra Cannon. I did this because I am an avid fan of Cannon’s work so I figured I was going to love it. I was correct. 

Stories I Liked (in no particular order)

Purple Passion by Lanette Curington
Buck Hunt by Livia Harper
Wild by Selina French
Choose Peas by Ellisa Barr
Thursday at the Ritz-Carlton
The Oak Tree – EelKat’s Twisted Tales by Wendy C. Allen a.k.a. EelKat
The Little Chill – A Three-Minute Mystery by Lindy Moone
Last Words by David J. Normoyle
Masked Attraction by Jamie Campbell
The Birds of Winter by Amelia Smith
Buttrock by Nicolas Wilson
Beyond by Keith Rowland
Embracing Sorrow by Ruth Nestvold
Mechanical Advantage by Quinn Richardson
Indy-San by Misti Wolanski
The Witch in the Woods by Nadia Nader
Death’s Door by R.M. Prioleau
Living Bride by Joel Ansel

 

 

OtherEarth (Last Reality #2) – Review

Title: OtherEarth

Series: Last Reality (#2)

Author: Jason Segel, Kirsten Miller

Type: Fiction

Genre: Science Fiction

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Owned/Borrowed/Given Etc: Borrowed from the library

Rating: 3/5

Blurb: Simon saved his best friend, Kat, from the clutches of the Company and their high-tech VR gaming experience, Otherworld. But it was at a steep price. Now he, Kat, and their friend Busara are on the run. They know too much. About the Company’s dark secrets. About the real-life consequences of playing Otherworld. And about Kat’s stepfather’s involvement in everything. The group is headed to New Mexico to find Simon’s old roommate, who is a tech genius and possibly the only person who can help them reveal the truth about the Company before it’s too late and the line between what’s real and what’s fantasy is erased… forever.

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I borrowed this book from the library following my read of OtherWorld (Last Reality #1) by the same authors. I had to reserve it AND wait for it to be transferred from a different library to my local one. I paid a grand total of 75p for this pleasure. The cost didn’t really bother me, it was definitely cheaper than buying a copy of the book – especially since I wasn’t really sure whether I would like it or not.

Set in the same video-game/virtual reality world(s) as the first book in the series, we meet Simon and Kat again, along with some other key characters from the first story. This book picked up EXACTLY where the first book left off. This is not something that always happens in sequels, often you find that there has been a certain length of time passed between books but this did not. It was super easy to dive back into the story, continuing along the journey with Simon. Following him from the real world to the VR world and wondering what they were going to do in order to overcome the predicaments facing them. After reading some of the reviews on Goodreads, it seems I was not the only one able to easily continue with reading the story at the beginning.

Pulling up into the home run, where all the major action normally takes place, this book did not disappoint. We had plenty of action and lots of major plot points seem to be coming together. I got very excited thinking of everything that would be happening and then BOOM!!! It threw me off a bridge. So dang confused. I’m hoping 100% that the third book due out later on this year will bring everything round to a close. Make sense of the bits that have left me thinking WTF.

**If you have NOT read this book, please DO NOT read any further**

 

CLICK HERE TO READ SPOILER

Simon has been in and out of OtherWorld so many times, he has no idea what is real and what isn’t. There are plenty of hints given to this effect throughout the story, particularly by his Grandfather. Busara confuses me more and more as the story goes on, her main reasoning behind this is kind of explained as we draw to a close BUT that final chapter is the one that completely left me dumbfounded. It’s rare I feel this way about a book but man I was left feeling completely betrayed. Was the whole book a simulation, or just part of it? At what part in the story did it become a simulation? Why was it not obvious to readers such as myself (and I’m normally quite good at guessing twists)? I don’t even know where that leaves us now?
I’m feeling quite nonchalant about the whole series right now, especially as it’s fresh in my mind (I finished it about an hour ago). Is this what we want from a cliff hanger? I like a book that leaves me wanting more, a need to read the next book to see what happens next but I’m just not feeling that at the moment. I am waaaayyyy too confused right now.

Frostbite: The Graphic Novel (Vampire Academy: The Graphic Novel #2) – Review

Title: Frostbite: The Graphic Novel (Vampire Academy: The Graphic Novel #2)

Author: Richelle Mead (Adapter), Emma Vieceli (Illustrator), Leigh Dragoon (Adapter)

Type: Fiction

Genre: Fantasy

Format: Paperback

Pages: 156

Owned/Borrowed/Given Etc: Borrowed from the Library

Rating: 3/5

Blurb: WHEN LOVE AND JEALOUSY COLLIDE ON THE SLOPES. WINTER BREAK TURNS DEADLY.
A Strigoi attack puts St. Vladimir’s on high alert, and the Academy whisks its students away on a mandatory Holiday ski trip. But the glittering winter landscape and posh Idaho resort only provide the illusion of safety. When three students run away to strike back at the Strigoi, Rose must join forces with Christian to rescue them. Only this time, Rose – and her heart – are in more danger than she could have imagined.

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Before I start my review, I’d like to point out that I HAVE NOT YET read the Vampire Academy novels. I figured I’d try these before starting on the full-on books.

Knowing nothing of the story previously, I felt like I managed to get a pretty good idea as to what happens. It’s like a teenage saga. A group of teenagers (regardless of their species) hang around and get into all sorts of teenage trouble. The Dhampirs (half-human, half-vampire) are trained to protect the royalty of Vampire families. That’s pretty much all of it summed up in a nutshell.

I have issues with the illustrations in this (and its prior volume). Not that I don’t think Dragoon is an amazing artist, but they just don’t sit right with me in this instance. I couldn’t even really begin to tell you what it is, the characters don’t look like I imagine them to be when reading the words. That is with the exception of Rose. She is the only one in this story that seems to “fit” in with how the story works. 

That being said, I do like the story. I am definitely interested in reading more of the volumes (unfortunately, none of the libraries within my area have a copy of Shadow Kiss in Graphic Novel format and I am not all that keen to want to buy it). I think I may move onto the novels and take it from there, but I will have to start again from the beginning to make sure I get the full extent of the story and the detail that goes into a novel compared to the Graphic versions.

Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1 – Review

Title: Twilight: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1

Author: Young Kim, Stephenie Meyer

Type: Fiction

Genre: Fantasy

Format: Paperback

Pages: 224

Owned/Borrowed/Given Etc: Borrowed from the library

Rating: 4/5

Blurb: When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With his porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edward is both irresistible and impenetrable. Up until now, he has managed to keep his true identity hidden, but Bella is determined to uncover his dark secret…

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I’m a Twilight fan through and through. I always have been and probably always will be (I can’t confirm whether my 80-year-old self will still be interested in these type of stories but I’m hoping I will be).

There’s not really much for me to say about the story as its exactly the same as the books but the illustrations are absolutely fantastic! Young Kim has done a perfect job of bringing the characters to life. Whilst they resemble the characters seen on the big screen, they 100% match up with how I envisioned them when reading the books.

If you are a Twilight fan, then I would highly recommend reading this.

Monthly Reading Summary – April 2019

April Reading

Diary of a Mummy Misfit Maximum Ride, Vol. 4 (Maximum Ride: The Manga, #4) Maximum Ride, Vol. 2 (Maximum Ride: The Manga, #2) Maximum Ride, Vol. 1 (Maximum Ride: The Manga, #1) Maximum Ride, Vol. 3 (Maximum Ride: The Manga, #3) Cherubs! Otherworld (Last Reality, #1)      

     April feels like a really bad month for reading for me. Whilst I still managed to read seven books, I left the month feeling like I haven’t really read anything at all. This was probably because five of the seven books that I read were Graphic Novels and they rarely take more than a day to read.
In my defence, for two weeks out of the month, I had the children at home for the Easter Holidays so most of my days were spent spending time with them. I’d pretty much say I can forgive myself for the lack of reading when it comes to spending time with the littles.

April Stats

Total books read: 7
eBooks: 4
Paperbacks: 2
Hardbacks: 1
Graphic Novels: 5
Part of a series: 2
Total authors: 4

Running Totals
from Goodreads stats page (based on 2019 readings)

Pages read: 8971

Summary – Did I meet my goals?

#1 – Read three library books borrowed on 30/03/2019 – DONE
#2 – Read at least ONE completed Graphic Novel series that is new-to-me – FAILED
#3 – Read two or three from either my Kindle or paperback collection – FAILED
#4 – Buy no books in any format – DONE

This month was an improvement on last month, so there’s always that

May Goals

#1 – Read three library books borrowed on 23/04/2019
#2 – Create a random book generator of some description for all my owned and unread books (that is going to be a hard task as I have over 900)
#3 – Buy no new books
#4 – Not to borrow any more library books until I have read 5 from my owned collection