Once again I have proved to myself why I should be careful before adding book titles to my 1001 List willy-nilly as a book I might have added fails to bear up under scrutiny. I had been all set to add James Bradley's The Resurrectionist to my list when I decided to re-read it figuring, as it is a short book, it would not take me too long. Unfortunately, though I enjoyed it first time around, on second reading I found it all to be a bit disappointing!
The story begins in Georgian London with Gabriel Swift apprenticing to a renowned Anatomist only to fall foul to the pleasures of Opium and Dice and who then finds himself falling in with a notorious Body-Snatcher or Resurrectionist when it becomes time to pay his dues. His Master expels him from his Apprenticeship and things all go a bit foul. Then the story jumps to Australia in its closing chapters as Swift attempts to start a new life and leave his demons behind....
What starts off promising ends up being a bit of a shambles. The book is good but as a complete whole feels fragmented and a bit disparate from itself at times. It is a shame as I recently recommended this to someone who has it on their TBR pile and was considering picking it up! That said, I seemingly enjoyed this more first time around. It is just a shame that it did not match up to my high expecting standards upon a second read!
In case some of you may not have known, last week was my birthday. Mrs.Sparky bought me a Touch-Screen Smart Phone that I am slowly getting to grips with with my fat and clumsy fingers, her mum bought me John Connolly's latest Charlie Parker thriller and I used the rest of my money to buy a Kindle!
I had been umming and aahing about buying one for some time but an E-mail from the Martyn Lewis Money-Saving website finally convinced me! Amazon has just released a new Slim-line version of their Kindle with no Keyboard so have slashed the price of the original models but also have begun selling refurbished Kindles at a bargain price too! Seeing as how the refurbished models still come with a years warranty, I went for the refurbished (I'm not proud!) and I love it! Though I do feel a little bit of a traitor to my Tree books, frak it!
Downloading a book to your Kindle takes sixty seconds tops, it has an in-built dictionary so no more looking up words you don't know and even has a web browser that works off of your Wi-Fi so that you can access the web! I went for the wireless option not the 3G so I cannot access the web anywhere but I don't think I will need that option at any rate. On Thursday, I was all over Facebook shouting out to the world about my new Kindle and cannot shut up about it at home either. I am so excited!
The good thing is that there are plenty of books that you can download for free. Many of the classics are out of copyright so you can get hold of them easily enough but there are also pages on Amazon of free indie authors whose novels are available for nought too! My good friend Lainy (whose Blog "So Many Books, So Little Time" {shameless plug}so encapsulates my whole philosophy when it comes to reading) has already recommended one particular E-book for me and so far, I am loving it! But I have also downloaded another couple of freebies!
All of which means that soon I have decided to start a new irregular feature: Sparky's Kindle Korner in which I will be taking an irrelevant look at some of the stuff you can download from the net for your Kindle and telling you whether or not it is any good! My plan (a work in progress) is to not give it any kind of usual rating but instead mark it in one of two categories: if I rate it Kindle that means it is a good read worth downloading, but if I rate it Kindling it means it is only good as fuel for a virtual conflagration!
Good idea or not? Thoughts would be appreciated.......
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