Catch-Up Links

While I was on medical hiatus, I stopped writing for Heroes & Heartbreakers. I continued my work for Publishers Weekly and, as I felt well enough, wrote some brief reviews for Amazon and Amazon Vine. Here are the links you missed, beginning with a link from my return to the H&H rotation:

• Kindle Magic (or How to Organize Your Kindle) article by Laurie Gold for Heroes & Heartbreakers
• Vine review of Lustfully Ever After by Kristina Wright (Erotic Romance)
• Vine review of Dermacontrol Foam Wash by Cetaphil (Skincare)
• Vine review of Apron Anxiety by Alysssa Shelasky (Memoir)
• Vine review of Paris in Love by Eloisa James (Memoir)
• Vine review of Curly-Q Dinnerware Set by Rachael Ray (Housewares)
• Review of Women's JB-6210-F "Victory" Pink Stainless Steel Diamond Watch by Just Bling (Jewelry/Watches)
• Review of Colored Gemstones by Paul Deasy (Reference)
• Vine review of Mio, Mango Peach by Kraft (Water Enhancer)
• Vine review of Fruit Design Post-It Notes by 3M (Office Supplies)
• Review of Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie (Biography)
• Review of Conan O'Brien Can't Stop (documentary) DVD, directed by Rodman Flender
  

Catch-Up Links

Invicta Men's 1107 Pro Diver Chronograph Black Dial Black Polyurethane Watch

Men's 1107 Pro Diver Chronograph Black Dial Black Polyurethane Watch

Invicta

Grade: C

When this watch became available on Amazon Vine, I ordered it for my brother-in-law to try because he is quite tall and the watch face, at 49 milimeters, is large. After wearing it for a month, he provided me with these pros and cons, first noting that the watch is a diver's watch and he does not dive...

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Invicta Men's 1107 Pro Diver Chronograph Black Dial Black Polyurethane Watch

Withering Tights by Louise Rennison

Withering Tights

Louise Rennison

Young Adult/Chick Lit for Teens

Grade: B

"As an avid fan of the first several Georgia Nicholson books, I jumped at the chance to read and review Withering Tights, which kicks off a new series by Louise Rennison. Although my daughter and I both outgrew the original series by the time we'd finished book five, I hoped for the best, and was not at all disappointed."

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Withering Tights by Louise Rennison

You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

Celia Rivenbark

Humor

Grade: B-

"If Joe Bob Briggs and Libby Gelman-Waxner had a love-child (improbable in more ways than one, not the least of which is that both were invented characters) who grew up Southern and wrote a book, she would be Celia Rivenbark and the book would be You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl. Filled with colorful, inventive and often invented prose, pop culture-infused content that remains unconcerned with political correctness, mockery of self and others, the book is breezy and easy to read fun."

Read this brief Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl by Celia Rivenbark

Targus 90 W AC Laptop Charger with USB Fast Charging Port

Laptop Charger with USB Fast Charging Port APA32US

Targus

Grade: B

Frequent travelers often run out of USB ports. Indeed, I have three USB ports on my Lenovo Thinkpad and at times I need four. When on the road I dedicate a USB port to my USB modem, leaving me with two while often needing to charge a phone, Kindle, and backup/transfer data with flash drives and/or an external hard drive...

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Targus 90 W AC Laptop Charger with USB Fast Charging Port

iHome iA63 Alarm Clock Radio with Rotating Dock

iHome iA63 App-Enhanced Alarm Clock FM Radio Stereo Speaker System with Motorized Rotating Dock for iPhone and iPod

iHome

iPod dock/alarm clock radio

Grade: C

Music for my husband is critical. For that reason and because he uses an alarm clock, I asked him to test the iHome iA63. He did over a period of weeks and deemed it "yet another device that tries to be all things, and does none of them great."

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

iHome iA63 Alarm Clock Radio with Rotating Dock

TomTom Go 2435 TM

TomTom Go 2435 TM

Read my attempt at installing and using this special Lifetime Map Updates TomTom at Amazon Vine.

P.S. It wasn't fun.

TomTom Go 2435 TM

Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones, and Butter

Gabrielle Hamilton

Memoir

Grade: C+

Ever since I saw the first "wow, this is great!" review of Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter, I knew I had to read it. When Amazon offered it through their Vine program, I requested a copy. As advertised, the author's voice is clear, strong, and very descriptive; it's not surprising to learn she earned a master's degree in writing. When she describes the "pig-urine stench of panchetta," I sat back, thought about it, and realized she was absolutely...incredibly...right on the nose. The book's structure, though, didn't work as well as the prose itself. I would have preferred seeing her in my mind's eye as an adult first, and a chef, before reading about her very unusual upbringing. Context is necessary on both ends, and without the later context, her background seemed all the more foreign.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

Matt Taibbi

Grade: B+

"Follow the money" has long been my mantra, and Matt Taibbi's cogent reporting does the best job describing various economic crises of the last fifteen years of any that I've read, peeling away each level of complexity in a way that the layman reader can easily understand our world turned upside down as a result of greedy financiers and their collusion with the government. He details the creation and bursting of the dot.com bubble, the 2004 energy crisis, and the 2008 economic collapse, and like the prosecutor in a Mafia trial, lays out a scathing indictment of Wall Street and those who set monetary policy in the U.S., starting with Alan Greenspan, whose Ayn Randian views continue to pervade economic policy long after her death in the early 1980s.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Griftopia by Matt Taibbi

365 Thank Yous by John Kralik

365 Thank Yous

John Kralik

Grade: C/C+

While John Kralik hadn't fallen as low as Michael Gates Gill, author of How Starbucks Saved My Life, and is fifteen years younger, both men hit rock bottom in their personal and professional lives when they took unusual actions to save themselves. Gill learned, through menial work once thought beneath him, among people he would otherwise never have met, how to regain his self-worth and get by, happily, with far less than he'd grown accustomed. John Kralik, who years earlier had quit his high-end law partnership to go the noble, Jerry Maguire route, discovered doing the right thing doesn't always end well.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

365 Thank Yous by John Kralik

Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

Not That Kind of Girl

Siobhan Vivian

Grade: B-

To be honest, nearly two weeks after finishing Not that Kind of Girl, I can't honestly say I "liked" it. What I can say is that the lead character's drive, focus, and need for control affected me on a deep, personal level, and for that reason alone I recommend it.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Not That Kind of Girl by Siobhan Vivian

Queen of Your Own Life by Kathy Kinney and Cindy Ratzlaff

Queen of Your Own Life

Kathy Kinney and Cindy Ratzlaff

Grade: C

Non-Fiction

Queen of Your Own Life would have been a five-star magazine article, but there's not enough content to justify a full book. Kathy Kinney, who portrayed horny librarian Miss Goddard on Newhart and Mimi on The Drew Carey Show to perfection, co-wrote the book with her long-time friend Cindy Ratzlaff, who created the marketing plans for more than a hundred NYTimes bestsellers. The book features "the seven bet gifts a woman can give herself": 1)Claim your beauty and feel your power; 2) Clean your mental closet and find your queen voice; 3) Admire yourself for who you've become; 4) Build deep, fulfilling frienships with other women; 5) Establish firm boundaries that will strengthen all your relationships; 6) Learn the simple trick to finally being happy; and 7) Proclaim yourself queen of your own life.

Read this Amazon Vine review in its entirety at Amazon.

Queen of Your Own Life by Kathy Kinney and Cindy Ratzlaff

ZeroWater Filtration System

ZeroWater ZD-013 Filtration Pitcher with Electronic Tester, Filter Included

Grade: C

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this water filtration system. It begins...

The good news about the ZeroWater filtration system is that it provides peace of mind knowing that the water you're drinking is super clean. Our tap water measured 144 ppm dissolved solids. The bottled water we buy at the grocery store from Arrowhead in 2.5 gallon containers measured 35 ppm. The water filtered using ZeroWater measured not quite zero the first time, but subsequently the electronic tester did show "000". More good news? The pitcher fit in our refrigerator just fine and the nifty press-button dispenser at the bottom of the pitcher worked as advertised. On the other hand...

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

ZeroWater Filtration System

An Anti-Fan?

I think, but can't be sure, that an anti-fan is determined to screw me over on Amazon (click here for my profile page). Yesterday I received five "unhelpful" votes out of five votes in total, and what really makes me believe I'm actually not paranoid is this: My review of Alison Kent's upcoming release (in other words, the book is not yet available for sale) for the new True Vows imprint of reality-based romances is one of two four-star reviews at Amazon. The other has one of one helpful votes. Mine has just one helpful vote...of four.

Here's another tip-off. There are 13 reviews of a razor I reviewed last week. Nine of them have no votes at all. Mine received the most "unhelpful" votes...three of the four votes. And each day more negative votes appear on reviews that were for a reasonable amount of time quite positively received.

A couple of online friends - and my husband - suggested contacting Amazon to register a complaint. My view is that this happens to lots of people who post reviews, and that to do so would be petty. That's the same reason I've had for not asking people I know to actually read through my reviews and vote "helpful" when it fits the bill. It seems a petty thing to do, and not all that different than an anti-fan hitting the "unhelpful" button on various computers throughout the day. But my number of negative votes has increased so much in the past two weeks - since mentioning it here on the blog and tweeting about it - that for the first time in about a year, my percentage of positive votes has actually gone down a point.

I realize nobody reads this blog...well, maybe 20 or so of you do on a daily basis. So people are not clamoring to hear Laurie's Views. That's is why I've felt that asking people to check out the reviews - which I already tweet about when they go online, btw - is small and that it might be more reasonable for me to simply stop doing the Amazon reviews and quit the Vine program. If indeed I actually have an anti-fan and it's not just that all of my recent reviews suck dirt, this does indeed give them a "win," but perhaps, as I've mentioned to those online friends, my conversational style of reviewing truly isn't helpful on Amazon.

But now it's time to get ready for Rosh Hashanah and put petty thoughts aside.

An Anti-Fan?

McKettricks of Texas: Austin by Linda Lael Miller

McKettricks of Texas: Austin

Linda Lael Miller

Grade: C

Contemporary Romance

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this book. It begins...

Linda Lael Miller's been writing for a very long time, and while for me she's had more misses than hits, since she started writing Frontier Romances - both historical and contemporary - she's experienced a goodly amount of commercial success. When Amazon Vine offered McKettricks of Texas: Austin, the third in a contemporary series for HQN and part of a larger McKettrick series begun in 2002 when she was published by Pocket, I requested a copy for review. My reaction is mixed. I liked the second-chance-at-love romance between Austin McKettrick and Paige Remington, but found the set up for the series-within-a-series - three brothers falling in love with and marrying three sisters - entirely too precious. Add to the "too precious" quotient that they all live in the same large ranch house, and the enjoyable romance cancels out.

Read this review in its entirety at Amazon.

McKettricks of Texas: Austin by Linda Lael Miller

Schick Hydro 5 Blade Razor

Schick Hydro 5 Blade Razor

Grade: C+

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this razor. It begins...

When Amazon Vine offered up the Schick Hydro 5 Blade Razor for review, I clicked the "send" button as fast as I could. My husband already uses Gillette's 5 blade Razor and though I am a woman (one who has long used the Gillette Venus 3 Blade Razor), I find that sometimes I prefer a man's razor on my legs, which I need to shave just about daily. Gillette does sell its own 5 blade razor for women, but given the relatively poor reviews I read for it (rated 3.3 of 5 stars for 33 reviews on the Gillette site itself), I don't think I'll be checking out the Venus Embrace anytime soon.

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

Schick Hydro 5 Blade Razor

Conair "You Curl" Curling Iron

"You Curl" Curling Iron
Conair Cd117 Infinit Pro By Conair "You Curl" Tourmaline Ceramic Curling Iron, Red

Grade: C

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this curling iron. It begins...

In a classic episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray and Debra make a deal: If she isn't ready to leave for the ESPY Awards at a certain time, he'll leave without her. She's just about ready to go when one last pass with her curling iron results in disaster. It gets stuck in her hair. None of us may ever attend to the ESPY Awards, but haven't all of us experienced an, "Oh, no...my hair is stuck in this hot curling iron and I smell it burning!" moment?

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

Conair "You Curl" Curling Iron

July Books

Jonathan Tropper's How To Talk To a Widower is one of the books I most enjoyed this year. Because it was published under the Random House umbrella, I assumed that last year's hardcover, This Is Where I Leave You, released to great acclaim, was also published by Random House and looked forward to buying the digital version to coincide with the book's mass market release. Random House, as you might recall, did not switch to the agency model for digital releases, and as a result, their books remain discounted. Also as a result, their digital sales through Amazon have increased by upward of 40%.

Alas, apparently Tropper switched publishers in-between both books. His new publisher, Penguin, which sets its own prices for digital books at Amazon, is currently selling This Is Where I Leave You for $12.99 while the hardcover, which it does allow to be discounted, sells for less, at $11.23. When the trade paperback version is released tomorrow, it will sell for $10.20 at Amazon. If Penguin is true to form, the digital version should come down tomorrow, but my guess is that it'll match the paperback price of $10.20, which I find a ludicrous proposition.

I've decided not to buy the book because of Penguin's Kindle pricing policy and instead decided to fill in my Tropper back-list with Everything Changes - published by Random House and very nicely discounted at $7.20. It too is a digital version of a trade paperback, which currently sells for $10.20.

Here's what else I bought for July on my Kindle: Twice Tempted by a Rogue by Tessa Dare (published by Random House's Ballantine Books) and Susan Mallery's Almost Perfect (published by Harlequin, which, like Random House, did not switch to the agency model). The digital versions of both books are nicely discounted.

Though Dare's debut and subsequent releases have received great fanfare, I've never actually read her, so I'm hoping for a good read. As for Mallery, after hating the first couple of books I read for her and reviewed for PW - The Marcelli Princess and Sunset Bay - she seems to be growing on me. I actually recommended Under Her Skin and Chasing Perfect in my PW reviews.

As much as I'd like to buy Lisa Kleypas' Love in the Afternoon, Macmillan, its publisher, set the price for its digital version at $7.99 at Amazon. The mass market releases sells at Amazon for $7.19.

There is one book I'm wavering on for July: the third in Sharon Ashwood's Dark Forgotten series. I read and gave book one, Ravenous, a strong review for PW but put down book two, Scorched, mid-way and never finished it. This series is published under the Penguin Umbrella - by Signet - and, surprisingly, the Kindle price is $6.99, slightly less than the paperback will sell for ($7.19) when both versions go on sale tomorrow. But given my "meh" response to the unfinished book two, I doubt I'll be buying Unchained, book three in the series, even if Penguin is beginning to see the light.

It's a shame that authors have to suffer for their publisher's misguided policies, but rather than over-paying for the Tropper and Kleypas books, I'll likely be reading them at the bookstore instead.

One last thing before I sign off...in less than a week I've published two Amazon Vine reviews. I recommend both, with some recommendations. Please check out my reviews for Marcus of Umbria and The Bucolic Plague, both memoirs with a similar theme.

P.S. - This link will only work until next Monday, but if you want to read my newest PW review, for the new Susan Andersen, click here. The review is third from the bottom of the page.

July Books

Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood

Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks

Cara Lockwood

Grade: C+

Urban Fantasy Romance

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this book, which begins...

Are readers crying out for more light urban fantasy novels? It all depends on the book, and frankly, nothing in particular stands out as stellar in the second release of Cara Lockwood's Dogwood series. On the other hand, the only truly negative comment I can make is that I didn't care for the duo of befuddled angels who record events through the book and occasionally overstep their bounds. Though I'm quite secular, I was strangely offended by the notion of bumbling angels, even though they have a lengthy legacy in film and fiction....

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood

Red Hot Fury by Kasey MacKenzie

Red Hot Fury

Kasey MacKenzie

Grade: C+

Urban Fantasy Romance

Amazon Vine just posted my review of this book, which begins...

Reading Kasey MacKenzie's Red Hot Fury, the first in a new urban fantasy series, is like walking into a movie ten minutes after it's started. Though you are able to follow along well enough, you feel slightly disoriented, constantly in the need to catch up, and even if you enjoy it, it ends leaving you as though you've missed something...

Click here to read the rest of my review for Amazon

Red Hot Fury by Kasey MacKenzie