audiobooks – Page 18 – Rosepoint Publishing

May #TBR – Audiobooks, Indie Authors, Blog Tours, and NetGalley

Is All This Sheltering-in-Place Getting to Me?

I may have gone a bit overboard on scheduling book reviews and failing to leave sufficient time to get my gardens growing. Many of these looked too good to pass up, however, and as always, a wide variety of genres; cozies, literary fiction, legal thrillers, military adventures. I already started the month off with a ghost story, Forgiveness Falls, if you missed it.

(Goodreads links of the above:)

The Secret of Bones
An Unequal Defense
Streel
What You Don’t See
Sucker Punch
Departure (a CE review)
Killing Time

May audiobooks, author requests, and Blog Tours

Audiobooks—OMG–have you heard or read about Where the Crawdad’s Sing? This audiobook is phenomenal–beyond gripping. Good thing for earbuds, I listened to it into the night. Absolutely amazing, a #mustread or better yet, the audiobook. The narrator plunks you in the middle of the marsh with Kya. My review tomorrow, Tuesday, May 5th. Audible review of Murder by Perfection by Lauren Carr for iRead Book Tours.

Author Requests:

Out of the Red and into the Black (a CE review)

Curse of the Ninth

Blog Tours:

Kelegeen (Great Escapes)

Killing Time (NetGalley-Great Escapes)

I have high hopes for this schedule. Have you read any of these? Does one of them grab you? Can you guess which one is being made into a movie?

Rosepoint February Reviews Recap–HELLO March!!

Rosepoint Reviews - February Recap

I am still catching up on all the audiobooks I listened to in January, so posted two in February, one more still from David Rosenfelt that I’ll share in March. Of course March starts Reading Ireland Month and I’ve got several lined up already. If you haven’t already registered your participation in that challenge, now is the time to do it! I’ve added the badge with the link, so plunge head first into the green.

I certainly had a variety of reads in February, from mysticism to beautiful literary fiction. I reviewed three audiobooks by the same author (Rosenfelt), neither of which were my favorite series (Andy Carpenter)–one starting a new series (The K Team). The CE reviewed two novels, one an author request that he really enjoyed by Michael McLellan. While most were from NetGalley, I sampled two local book groups in February, one in Crown Point, and thinking I might just stay with the one in my own “township,” a new start up. It sounds like the director will be amenable to molding it in a unique format and I’m all for that! So in all, fourteen books for the month as follows:

The Master's Apprentice by Oliver Potzsch

In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree by Michael A McLellan

Bitter Alpine - A Emma Lord Returns Mystery by Mary Daheim

Anne and Louis: Rulers and Lovers by Rozsa Gaston

The Lost Boys of London by Mary Lawrence

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson

Statue of Limitations by Kate Collins
Fade to Black by David Rosenfelt (David Brock series audiobook)
The Master’s Apprentice by Oliver Pötzsch (CE review)
In the Shadow of the Hanging Tree by Michael McLellan (CE review)
Bitter Alpine by Mary Daheim
Anne and Louis by Rozsa Gaston
The Angel’s Trumpet by James Musgrave
The Lost Boys of London by Mary Lawrence
Black and Blue by David Rosenfelt (David Brock series audiobook)
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (Third Monday Book Club selection)
Here Comes the Body by Maria DiRico
The K Team by David Rosenfelt (new series)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Fiction Addiction Book Club selection)
Thief River Falls by Brian Freeman

March

I’ve done some scrambling to try and keep up with the reading challenges, five until next month when Reading Ireland Month kicks in. I’ll bring back John Connolly from last year reading The Wolf in Winter this year and I’ll be reading Book 2 written by an Irish American writing about an Irish police woman in New York City with her K-9 partner (did you really think I’d read all month without one about a dog?) called Irish Car Bomb (an Erin O’Reilly K-9 Mystery) by Steven Henry. Don’t ask me why I started the series with Book 2–I have no clue, but it might have been this quote I noted in the blurb: “If it weren’t for the Irish, New York wouldn’t have a police force. On the other hand, it might not need one.” And don’t forget to tag your posts with her hashtags #readingirelandmonth20 or #begorrathon20.

Otherwise, I’m pretty much behind on everything, including my NetGalley challenge. Thank heaven I only chose to try for Stenographer, 10-15 audiobooks! I think I’ll be able to make that one.

Thank you as always to those who have just joined me and those who continue to read and support this blog with your comments. You have no idea how much those are appreciated!

2020 V Williams

March photo background attribute: Canva.com

Author Interview: Brent Jones – Contemporary Fiction

Today I am absolutely thrilled to post the second in my new series of Author Interviews. Please let me introduce Brent Jones, who recently published his sophomore release Fender, (my review here). He is running 4.7 of 5 stars on Amazon and succeeded in garnering 18 reviews of 18 ratings on Goodreads! A record in itself!

Fender by Brent Jones

His Amazon editorial reviews have been outstanding as well: “Brent is a kick-ass storyteller. . . . I have little doubt [Fender] will tug at the heartstrings of anyone who reads it.” –Dana Gore, Author of Choose Awareness

“[Fender] is as visceral as it should be. . . . There is laughter, tears, foul language, anger, more laughter and eventually, glimmers of hope . . . I can’t recommend this one enough.” –Shannon O’Sullivan, Book Reviewer (readsandreels.com)

Continue reading “Author Interview: Brent Jones – Contemporary Fiction”

Not Your Grandma’s Library Anymore!

Lake Co Public Library-Merrillville — **Sunday Afternoon at the Lake County Public Library – Merrillville**

OMG, have you been to a library lately? What is this nonsense about reading being dead? Libraries are huge, newer, and offer SO many services these days; they are way beyond a normal repository for books. I’ve always enjoyed using libraries, but a quick trip to my local neighborhood depository discovered it’s no simple store of books anymore.

Beyond books of information and education–a storage of knowledge–libraries now have information specialists. Find the answer to any question–but not necessarily in books. Now the world wide web is at your service with internet access provided. Continue reading “Not Your Grandma’s Library Anymore!”

Let’s Go Audio-Books

Perhaps you are one of the folks out there who just love the kinesthetic feel of your books, and I’d agree with you–most of the time. (I love the feel of those books, too.) In the four years since we left Idaho, however, our print book library has taken a major hit. Indeed, we finally had to sift through even our old college books and decide whether we really needed to store or lug those poor things around–again. (We didn’t.)

In all the miles we shared on the road either in our car or the RV, one of the things we enjoyed most (after heart-to-heart conversations, of course) was to fill some of those open roads with borrowed audio books or those gleaned from a thrift store for a couple bucks. We listened to a wide variety of genres, and they were as exciting and remarkable for the distracted-free driver as the passenger. Continue reading “Let’s Go Audio-Books”

Books Are Books? Print, eBooks, or Audiobooks?

Books Are Books?

DAY 20 PROMPT: Did you publish your book as a traditionally printed book, an eBook, an audiobook, or all three? How did you come to your decision?

When I worked in graphics creating flyers for gospel concerts, I had a boss whose mantra was “they don’t know what they are doing.” That went for some of the most successful acts he engaged as well as anyone in his band who displeased him in rehearsal and upon occasion included me.

I certainly had my share of bluffing my way into jobs or events, his position being one, but probably the biggest and most recent was the publishing of my grandfather’s manuscripts. Talk about clueless….

It wasn’t like I came to a decision whether or not to create a printed book, eBook, or audiobook as much as I was steered into making a simple stock print book, soft cover, 6 x 9. The biggest decision there was glossy or matt cover? It was only with the fifth book that I chose not to do a print book as the total word count created a novella-length book and I saw no reason to go to the expense of creating a formally printed book.

Also, having no other experience than the one NaNoWriMo steered me into–CreateSpace–I came to appreciate the quality of their binding, if not the cover paper (which tends to curl slightly at the corner) and the speed with which they completed orders. CreateSpace also steers you into distribution, so there again it’s not as if you are making any big decisions.

After having created those print books, it was (again) a natural progression to find the road into “Kindle” and from there eBook formatting, becoming ever more complicated entering the world of Smashwords. While it was felt that Smashwords gave me a far greater reach for the eBook version than did Kindle, I’d yet to see a big sales advantage (and eventually dropped it in favor of Amazon).

One of the first notices I had of the choice of eBooks over print books is that I’d used the stock format for CreateSpace which uses a font less friendly to older folks. The common complaint until I got that first book into the second edition with larger print was that the font was too small and difficult to read. I suspect as we see the progression of the aging population the push to eBooks will become ever more popular as they discover the option of making the print as large as needed for comfortable reading. Rather than getting bigger and better bookcases, we’ll be looking for ever larger eBook storage capacity or flash storage. Perhaps the bookcases will hold thousands of books–but on Kindles, Cruzer’s, SanDisks, or the Cloud?