Roberta > Recent Status Updates

Unless this book gets a whole lot better very quickly, I am not worried that my library doesn't own the whole series.

I wish that when an author is writing about something that they know absolutely nothing about, they would at least take 10 minutes to do research online or ask a friend instead of writing something stupid. Do publishing companies still employ editors or just run spell check and call it a day?

Thank goodness I checked this book out of the library and didn't pay money for it.

It's not looking good. I hate the main character.

There are a totally ridiculous number of words in italics. This is common in self-published books with no editing but this book was published by Minotaur. What happened? Minotaur is part of St. Martin's Publishing and they used to be the best.

I love the dogs but I'm not crazy about books (or tv shows) featuring mysterious, nameless, faceless psychopathic villains. If he survives this book, I may be done with this series, reluctantly.

Assuming that we go along with the totally ridiculous premise, then I'm pretty sure I know how it plays out.

Who just dumps a $253,700 stamp (one just sold for that) into a desk drawer and forgets about it?

Did Professor Martin have to be murdered? He looked like a nice person. Couldn't he have just been badly injured?

This is looking sadly like a 5 page article stuffed with 295 pages of padding.

Fans waited years for THIS? It went down in flames on page 206 where I should have declared it a DNF and moved on.

Fans waited years for THIS? Probably the last of Jasper Fforde's books that I will waste my time reading. It went down in flames on page 206 where I should have declared it a DNF and moved on.

Probably the last of Jasper Fforde's books that I will waste my time reading. It went down in flames on page 206 where I should have declared it a DNF and moved on.

Probably the last of Jasper Fforde's books that I will waste my time reading.

Reading is temporarily suspended because the book was due back at the library.

I had too many books come in at the library at the same time. Decided to order my own copy of this one, sent it back to the lending library and then the one I ordered never showed up. I plan to finish reading it eventually.

It's hard to believe that a woman wrote the female character, Albany. She was 57 years old in 1983 and I guess she had been brought up in a different era. Or she thought that was the 14-year-old boy POV.

This book starts out violently as 67 tourists visiting a historic site are massacred by terrorists carrying AK-47s.

So is there some kind of rule? Nancy Drew's Third Law or the Fifth Susan Sand Commandment or something that says that a female character must visit the scene of the crime at midnight, alone, without telling anyone where she is going?

Kindle sucks.

The first ebook was just like the paperbacks that came before it. There were lots of pictures. It was frustrating that pictures look so pathetic on a Kindle. This book is different. There are fewer pictures and they are lame compared to pictures in previous books which makes me think that Watt knew that the pictures would suck on a Kindle anyway.

In Chapter 3 there a discussion of languages that Franz speaks and that he doesn't speak Portuguese very well. Later that discussion is repeated almost word for word but with a different response at the end from Nigel. Somebody, anybody, even casually reading the manuscript should have caught this.

In Chapter 6 a horse is generally smart enough not to eat buttercups. At least they don't do it more than once.

Damned Kindle

I know who did it. Pretty lame.

Book #13. The halfway point. I don't think I'm going to make it to the end of the series.

"...most of the doors in our house had keyed locks, even the closets..." Probably most people will read right by this but it stopped me in my tracks because I know how truly ridiculous it is.

I'm still reading because I already bought them and they aren't that bad. They don't take long to read.

Totally beyond ridiculous premise that in what is apparently 6 MONTHS (not years) since the last book, Meg's mother has been breeding (?) and growing roses to enter them in "highly competitive shows."

#1 A really huge parade in a small rural community. Who is left to watch? #2 A small-town parade with a deadline for lining up 3 hours before the start? And they are serving hot drinks. We have never lined up more than 2 hours before start and, even so, the bushes are full of firemen.

Might be a good idea to get dead drunk before reading this book. To date there are 25 books in this series and this is only #8!! How much more stupid can they get?