Book #39: Island of Fog, Surviving the Fog

Two books, both with Fog in the title, both available for free! Follow the link for each to Amazon, if you're interested in checking them out. (As usual, these are just plain links. I don't make any money if you follow a link of mine anywhere.)

Island of Fog by Keith Robinson.

Things I liked about Island of Fog:
- The plot. A few families are living together on an island. The rest of the world has been destroyed? Or is that a lie? Every family has one child, all the same age.

The children are turning into monsters. "Classic" monsters. Dragons, harpies, centaurs, etc. It was happening because There was another world connected to ours, a world full of those monster races. The humans there needed kids who could shapeshift so that they could talk to those monster populations and try to get them to stop killing the humans.

- The writing. I really like it when an author is willing to keep the readers in the dark and slowly drop hints about what's happening. (Beyond that point, the writing style/skill was only average. Not bad, not good.)

What I didn't like about it:
- I had zero connection with and even less interest in the characters. For all that I liked everything else about the book, this was a dealbreaker. There were a lot of them (10? kids) and though a few had a larger role than the others, it mostly felt like "the kids" were one character.

The kids were boring. The book was 224 pages long, but I couldn't tell you one physical description about one kid. I think one wore glasses? I think one girl had long hair? I'm not sure about those. With a slight exception for one girl, all the kids' personalities were as nondescript.

In conclusion: It's worth the price. It wasn't a bad book, I just had no emotional connection with it and little drive to finish it. The ideas in it were interesting. On one hand, I'd like to read more of the series to find out how the kids do, but without an emotional connection? I doubt I'll get to the rest of the books. I have too many other books I want to read.

Surviving the Fog by Stan Morris.

A free book that wasn't even worth its price. It's bad enough when an author doesn't know how to use semicolons (why, oh why, use so many of them when you don't know how?), Morris didn't know how to use commas either. I couldn't even get through the first page. It's really too bad, as the description made it sound like something I'd love:

Have you ever been to summer camp? What would you do if almost all of the adults left “for a few hours” and they had not returned a week later? What would you do if no one’s cell phone worked and your parents never showed up to take you home? What would you do if you realized that the area was surrounded by a mysterious brown fog that was dangerous? How would you survive the winter? How would you get more to eat?

Next up: A book without 'Fog' in the title.

Good sexuality, bad sexuality

aberdeen pointed out that there has been an update in the Great Homophobic Pasta War of 2013: Gay-Friendly Bertolli Makes The Most Of Barilla's Homophobic PR Mess.


(I think the dog might be the only smart one of that group. Why would pasta want to go into sauce, get cooked, be eaten?)

In much, much, much less amusing news, a Real Housewives of New Jersey cast member (Melissa Gorga) has written a book. Love Italian Style: The Secrets of My Hot and Happy Marriage. I'm not going to link to it on Amazon, I do not want to encourage anyone to buy it. (Though, on second thought, the comments are worth reading, so here's a link).

I've never watched any Real Housewives show, and quotes from this book do not change my opinion of the show or the type of people who are in it.

This woman tells men to rape their wives. Her exact words: “Men, I know you think your woman isn’t the type who wants to be taken. But trust me, she is. Every girl wants to get her hair pulled once in a while. If your wife says ‘no,’ turn her around, and rip her clothes off. She wants to be dominated.”

Just reading that disgusts me. The idea that some man might believe that and take it to heart...