Book #1: Fractured Fairy Tales January 13, 2015

The first book I read for my 50 book challenge was Fractured Fairy Tales by a multitude of authors. It covers my “A Book of Short Stories” challenge, finished on 01/04/2015.

This book was a sproadic buy that I found on Facebook, I’m pretty sure it was free when I got it on Amazon. It’s an anthology of short stories all based on fairy tales, twisted by the authors.

Overall the book was okay. I give it:

It kept me entertained and I read through the each story, but there were parts that I had to stop and question the story. One or two of the stories felt like blatant copies of the original stories, even names were the same, which bugged me a lot. There were also some aspects where character’s actions didn’t stick to the character, for example on the first book The Maid and the Outlaw the father was loving and caring, but suddenly seemed to not give a shit about his daughter.

Even with some character issues I would have given it four stars but what finally pushed me to a three start was the sudden change about four or five stories from the end. At first the novels are very friendly, playful, some cheery, but then suddenly there is extreme violence, rape, sex, and gore. I wasn’t expecting it, and it turned me off from the stories.

Hell, the last one was just blantant sex and confused the hell out of me. It irked me that there was no warnings really, except on Bloody Red and The King’s Wizard – Sword in the Stone, but even those you don’t SEE that they’re 18+ until you get to that part of the book. What if you bought this for your pre-teen child and they just started reading…you would have no idea.

Anyways…the stories were interesting, like I said I was entertained, just those few things turned me away from giving it more than a three stars.

2015 Book Challenge January 6, 2015

This year a few members of my group, The Dragon’s Rocketship, have decided that we want to participate in a 50 book challenge for the year 2015. We created a new group, TDR Book Challenges, to help motivate each other to complete the task. The book challenge is based off a picture that was posted in the group by one of the members.

Here’s the picture:

Each book fits into a category from “A book with more than 500 pages” to “A book with magic” or “A book that made you cry”, etc. Some people are trying to see what books fit into more than one category, some are re-reading books they know fit the description, while some (including myself) are attempting for 50 books they already own but haven’t read.

For example, Twlight by Stephenie Meyer (which I have yet to read, and honestly not sure I want to, I heard such bad things about it…but to each there own) could fit under a multitude of categories: A book that became a movie, a book with nonhuman characters, a book by a female author, a book with a one-word titel (Eclipse), a popular author’s first book (New Moon), a book from an author (I) you haven’t read before, a book a friend recommended (co-workers, not necessarily close friends who know my taste), a book with bad reviews, a book with a love triangle, a book set in high school, a book with magic.

See! If you read three books you would cover 11 or 12 options on the book of 50! But, where’s the fun in that?

Anyways, I’m going to keep track on here of my writing and reading challenges throughout this year. I’m going to try to post reviews of each book I’ve read, as well as past books that I enjoyed. I need to get better at writing reviews, honestly…so bare with me as I grow.