WTF, Jennifer?

I seem to be caught in a cycle of sorts. For several weeks I’ll post regularly, feeling good and all bloggy. Then, life or fatigue happens and Literate Housewife goes quiet. This time around, my wonderful trip to Richmond kicked me in the ass. Then we had our first Shaken, Not Stirred Twitter chat and viewing party. It was great fun, but didn’t leave me any time or energy for writing a review. Then I realized that I hadn’t lined up a My First Time post for Monday. Drat! Yesterday, my sinuses kicked in and it was just easier to listen to my audiobooks. Still, I woke up this morning with the knowledge that there again was no new post up and ready. My first thought of the day: WTF, Jennifer?

I’m under no external pressure to post more regularly, but I am starting to find this pattern to be frustrating. Life is what it is. I can’t and really don’t want to change that. Perhaps it’s time to get a little more creative. I usually post reviews, the occasional guest post, and – in cases where I get pissed off – respond to things I’ve read on-line. Right here and right now a review or a rant requires too much structure. So, in order to finally post something, I’m going to try a little stream of consciousness:

The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam by Chris Ewan (@chrisewan), narrated by Simon Vance (@SimVan) and published by AudioGo (@AudioGo)

I finished my first Chris Ewan novel last night with my eyes closed waiting for my second dose of decongestants to take affect. The main character is Charlie Howard and he is a doll – well, a naughty doll anyway. I’m not a reader who consumes a lot of crime fiction, so I can’t speak about the genre’s conventions. I just know that he is more complex than I had expected. His sense of humor is wonderful and understated. Because of the humor, though, I think I was anticipating that he’d be more bumbling, a little like Stephanie Plum. He’s no such thing. He is delightful.

I do have some outstanding questions/thoughts. I don’t think that they’re actually spoilers, but…

Question 1: Why does Charlie use a fake picture on his books? I could understand if he used a pen name, but he doesn’t. Don’t think I didn’t pick up on that Charlie. I may not have your thieving skills, but I honed right in on that and I want to know why.

Question 2: Will Charlie and Victoria ever meet? If so, will she forgive him for the fake picture? Either way, what kind of a relationship will they have in person? Good friends with a professional distance or will that spark between them ignite?

Question 3: Will we ever see Rutherford again? I hope so.

Question 4: Amanda Parker recently got arrested in Amsterdam. I wonder what Charlie and Amanda would have talked about when they were both behind bars?

eBook Readers

I love my Kindle. I don’t spend enough time with it. I’ve taken to listening to The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein (narrated by Xe Sands (@xesands) and published by Dreamscape) on it. I love being able to listen to my Audible books on it because it’s battery life beats the crap out of my Droid. Still, I want to actually read on it more often. Problem: many of my upcoming eGalleys cannot be loaded on my Kindle. Neither can the 25 cent eBooks I bought during Unbridled Books’ sale. I knew this going in. At that time, I didn’t fully grasp the hows and whys of my eBook/eGalley reading. This doesn’t make me love my Kindle less. It’s got me thinking about adding to my eBook collection. I’ve not done enough research yet, but I like the fact that the Nook Color can be used as a tablet as well. I think that the Nook would accommodate Google and Adobe eBooks/Galleys, so that might be the way to go. I’d love to have a little tablet and reading books from the other sources there would give me the same feel. I guess I’m as promiscuous with eReaders as I am with books. To think I was brought up as a good Catholic girl…

BTW, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children is an interesting read, but very dark. These characters are not in any way, shape, or form comfortable. Still waiting for redemption. Think I might be waiting for a long time.

Website Updates

I have recently contacted my blog designer to discuss a little modernization. I’m looking make some changes, such as going to a two column layout, adding nested comments, adding a nod of some kind to audiobooks without completely changing my existing brand. Mostly, I want to make my blog a little more flexible. Perhaps allow for widgets above and below, etc… Karen asked me to come up with a list of things I wanted to do and we were going to meet yesterday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that list written up (see opening paragraph about my life) so I’ll have to wait until some time in July to get the ball rolling. I am excited about it, though.

Anniversaries

Yesterday was both Danny and my parents’ wedding anniversaries. Danny’s folks have been married for 64 years now. Mine have been married for 42. That’s quite a legacy. I still think it’s neat that our parents share the same anniversary. June 28th is definitely a good day.