All The Things

What's your favorite kind of chocolate?

It's been a while in the works, but I've been working on an Android app for Booklikes, since the site isn't very...ahem...friendly, on small screens.

I originally wanted something to just do two tasks:

1. Add books to my shelf
2. Track my reading challenge

I never intended it to be anything more than that, but then....well, some technical stuff later and it's more. It will almost certainly never be something that goes on the App Store or anything of that nature, it's purely for my own personal use. However, if people show interest, I'd be willing to release it to the public too. (It is open source, meaning anyone can compile it, but I mean I'd release it and try to provide a limited amount of support.)

I like to keep Booklikes about books so I'm not going to write anything more about it here, if you're interested you can follow the OpenBooklikes tag on my blog, where I'll probably put anything related.

Cheers!

I've been audiobooking quite a bit lately and I've really enjoyed Kimberly Alexis as the narrator for this series.

Unfortunately, this is the last one she did so I'm back to reading them in paper form since I read some reviews for the new audiobooks and people were....underwhelmed.

As for the book itself, Obsidian Butterfly is one of my favorite books from this series, with all the background about Edward and the introduction of other vampire/bounty hunters, including the super creepy Olaf. 

DNF.

I'm going to have to pick this up to read in print.

Unfortunately, the voice actor just didn't work for me - several of the characters were so annoyingly portrayed that it pushed me right out of the book. :( I was interested in the story but when I found myself fast forwarding thru several characters, I decided this audio wasn't for me.

Basically, I'm always at work.

Most recently, many of the books I finish are on audio. I find that I don't feel like I can sit and read when I should be doing other things but I've missed my fictional worlds.

The J. D. Robb "In Death" series I cannot recommend enough. The narrator, Susan Ericksen, has an excellent way with the different characters, and you know instantly who is talking. The last couple of days, I've been listening to "Game of Thrones" on audio and Roy Dotrice actually has a Guinness Book World Record for most voices done (Not a surprise, once I thought about the series.) He does a fabulous job as well.

Don't get me wrong, sometimes there's just a narrator that has a take on a character that just doesn't work or is just dead boring. I don't think audio is for everyone or every book but I'm glad I've had the opportunity to get back into reading this way and I wanted to share. 

Today is Tolkien Reading Day!

This special day has been launched by the Tolkien Society in 2003 and is held annually on 25th March. Tolkien Reading Day's mission is to encourage fans to celebrate and promote the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien by reading favorite works.

What will you be reading today?

10 Interesting Facts About J.R.R. Tolkien

1. Full name of J.R.R. Tolkien is John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (pron.: Tol-keen; equal stress on both syllables), Ronald to family and friends. His surname is of German origin and meas foolishly brave, or stupidly clever - sometimes he used the pseudonym Oxymore which refer to the name's  origin.

2. Tolkien was born in South Africa where he was kidnapped. When being a toddler in South Africa Tolkien has been "kidnapped" by one of the African servants. The servant thought Tolkien was a cute and a beautiful child and he wanted to show a toddler to his family. Tolkien was returned to his family next day. Tolkien grew up in England where he, his mother and brother moved when he was four. 

3. One of the vivid memory from South Africa was a huge hairy spider that bit Tolkien when he was a child, this experience could be an inspiration for deadly spiders in his later writing.

Image via Tolkien Gateway

4. Tolkien was talented for languages. He mastered Latin, Greek, Gothic, Welsh, Finnish... It is said he knew over 30 languages and created several of his own.

Image via Tolkien Gateway

5. The character of Gandalf was inspired by "Berggeist" (mountain spirit) created by the German artist Josef Madelener. The postcard with the illustration of an old man in a strange hat was spotted by Tolkien in Switzerland in 1911 during a student trip.

6. In 1920s Tolkien co-founded the Viking Club - the society where he, his professor colleagues and students read old Norse sagas, translate them into Old English and Gothic, entertained and drink beer.

7. Tolkien wrote illustrated letters to his children as if from Santa Clause. This resulted in The Father Christmas Letters published in 1976.

Images via Letters of Note

8. The first sentence of Hobbit was invented by Tolkien while grading student's papers. When he spotted a blank page where and answer to a question should have been provided he wrote "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" as an impulse.

Images via Tolkien Gateway

9. Middle-earth comes from the Old English language middangeard what was an ancient expression for the everyday world between Heaven and Hell.

10. Hobbit was published thanks to a 10 year old boy's review, the publisher's son, who convinced his father that the story was good enough for children aged 5 and 9.

J.R.R. Tolkien - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.

He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972... more

J.R.R. Tolkien's Books

 

    see all books

 

sources:

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

http://tolkiengateway.net

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth

I hadn't had the time or opportunity do much on my blog here other than read others' posts, so it was time to update. I've now mostly completely caught up to what I'm currently reading. Hot diggity. :D

http://petemorin.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/request-to-fellow-fiction-writers-please-stay-away-from-the-crazy-glue/

This cracked me up! Yes...yes we do.

I like Debbie Macomber's books. They are a fun, light read for me. I definitely want to know what happens next with Mark and Jo Marie!

I enjoyed Jo Marie's story and those of her guests except - I'm not able to easily switch from first person narratives to third person narratives. Since the viewpoint switched around, from Jo Marie to guest and back again, I had a harder time staying engaged with the story.

* This was an ARE provided by the publisher.

Reblog everytime :-)