Bookcrossing - live to share, share to live

I joined BookCrossing on my mum's birthday 8 years ago. How time flies! I don't have a huge amount of books registered, I'm not a voracious reader as some other people. I read pretty constantly, I am a fairly fast reader, but I get distracted by life a lot. Depending on how stressful work is and what else keeps me occupied, I read anywhere from 20 to 60 books a year. At least I did since I started recording the amount of books I read. The last two years were very low indeed, so I am making a effort to commit more time to reading this year. I would be very happy if I could manage to read a book per week.

Anyway, not the actual point of my story. I--finally, after 8 years with BC--made it to a BC meeting! In a place that is only half an hour from where I live. Took me only 2 and half years to get off my butt. Stuttgart actually has three OBCZ. There's another meeting next Tuesday at the second one and another one at the third one in the last week of the month. I doubt I can manage next week, but maybe I'll go to the one after that. It was pretty nice, I met new people, I released 16 books and managed to get away without taking any new ones with me...

I decided to sell the Sony Reader again! I like that it's so versatile, but the crappy glare and bad contrast of the screen bugged me too much. I just put it up on eBay. I chose to let the offer run for 10 days. I hope I will get close to what I spent. Wouldn't it be a bummer if it ended the auction with a really low bid? This is my first time selling something on eBay, so it's exciting and a little frightening.

And last but not least my ( read booklist with links behind cut for safekeeping )

On the Prowl by Patricia Briggs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally caved in and got the precursor to the Alpha & Omega novels. My excuse is that I wanted to try out my new eReader. And as expected I really liked the first story, although I already roughly knew what to expect from the story. I guess that is the nice thing about book series. You make friends and it's familiar and nice to meet them again.

The second story by Eileen Wilks was pretty good as well. Interesting idea of the borders between realms breaking down and talents emerging. The heroine should appeal to fans of Patricia Briggs or Carrie Vaughn. There were some odd changes in tenses a few times, throwing me off. But the plot and characters made up for it.

I read two books in the Cassie Palmer series by Karen Chance, so the world in the third story was not new to me. The story was ok, but did not really captivate me. Until the ending, that was unexpected and fun. But all in all the story lacked a red thread. The ending didn't feel as if it belonged.

Story number four was supposed to be great for fans of Laurell K Hamilton, if the blurb is to be trusted. But believe me, Anita Blake this was not. Neither early nor late Anita. The style felt antiquated and stuffy, the sex was lacklustre, it felt like a summary of another book and you were fiercly hit over the head with an ad for the next book in the series. I skimmed this very quickly.

So, #1 was nice and comfortable, #2 might be a potential new author for me. #3 was ok, but nothing great. #4 did nothing for me.

(PS: Read as a .pdf on the Sony Reader Touch)

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In other new my WLAN router arrived today! Took me about an hour to set it all up. The stick was plug and play, very simple. For the box I followed the instructions on the CD and ended up with the router plugged in between the modem and the PC. Some head scratching followed and some swearing at the screen, then I unplugged the whole thing and connected the router to my modem and it worked 5 minutes later. I happily pulled that nasty network cable from above the footboard and around my kitchen door. Much better! I need to buy something to plug up all the holes the nails left behind.

My iPhone is insanely fast connected to the net by WiFi and I could finally register my Kindle. Downloaded a book preview from the Kindle store and it was pretty much instant delivery. I'm a happy camper! I really like the Kindle. But I'm pretty sure I will keep the Sony as well. The glare is a bitch, but I realised that .pdf-files display much better on the Sony. Plus I found some sites were books are cheaper than on Amazon.