Romance Is the New Hotness!

I'm not sure how it happened, but romance is the new hotness.  Declaring your love for romance is awesome!  I mean, Lindsay Ellis did it on her newest PBS video and now the Mary Sue has jumped in with this article (which includes the above video).
I love romance, especially historical romance.  I have so many favourite romance authors who I will review in the next few posts or if you're lucky, a YT video.  I'm working on it!
I love romance for so many reasons!  If you read a good historical romance, the author will leave you notes and you can go and have research fun.  But, let's face it...the reason to read a historical romance is to, well, romanticize the past.  I love historical romance!  Medieval, Tudor, Regency, I don't really care!  It let's me escape into the past.  Since Romance is the new hotness, I will be posting reviews of some of my favourite authors with book (or series) specific suggestions.

Author Review: Jane Ashford

Let's face it:  I love reading romance.  As with any genre, you have so many subgenres that it can be hard to figure out what you truly like.  Although I have a fondness for any historical romance, I particularly adore Regency romances!  The glamour of the ton, the clothes and the food all simply make a wonderful background for a good story.  There were also so much important events happening during this period that you can have a variety of plots as well.  However, sometimes you get so tired of spies and injured war heroes that all you want is a simple, sweet romance story.

This is where Jane Ashford comes in.  Although some of her earlier works are a little too simple (i.e. the main characters fall in love because they are supposed to), I simply adore her more recent works.  She doesn't include explicit sex scenes, but still conveys chemistry between the love interests.  I found that the earliest example of this was in The Headstrong Ward, where the ward butts heads with her guardian as the two slowly fall in love as well as correction misconceptions about each other.  Her newest book, Brave New Earl, has a wonderful plot and the two main characters have wonderful chemistry which she manages to convey without any explicit sex scenes.  I can't wait to see what happens in the next book!

Review: My Little Pony: Ponyville Mysteries

If you know me, this shouldn’t come as much of shock, but I LOVE My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
I enjoy individual episodes, especially the episode where Rainbow Dash realizes that she loves reading.
That’s the librarian in me I guess.

During the summer, I had my niece staying with me and wanted to get her books from the library.  I was
delighted to see that they had thin chapter books called Ponyville Mysteries, so I picked up the first in the
series.  My niece didn’t read it, but I did. I really liked the book and now I want to read more of the series! Sadly, the ebook versions are only available in Kindle, so I’ll just have to read the paperbacks.

I loved the book because it featured the Cutie Mark Crusaders who are some of my favourite characters
(the episode where they actually get their cutie marks makes me cry EVERYTIME).  It was a quick read
for me, but for a new reader it would take longer. The vocabulary is simple enough to understand for
older readers, but requires prior understanding of the show. As for continuity, it would take place after
Season 5, but it is harder to place it more accurately than that as I don’t believe that Lilymoon has shown
up in the show (as of Season 7 at any rate) and I'm not really sure how canon these books are.

I would suggest this for ages 7+ who have a familiarity with the series because you need prior
understanding of the show.

Tech Tips & Tricks: Scanning with An Android Phone

I love getting cookbooks from the library.  Cookbooks are my favourite non-fiction as it tends to be non-linear.  I can flip back and forth looking at sections or just flip until I find a photo of something I want to try.  However, I find that 3 weeks isn't usually enough time to try all the recipes I want, especially in the summer.  I also can't afford to buy books from the bookstore all the time, but I don't want to have to wait another 6 months to access the recipes.  As a result, I usually scan or type out the recipes that I want to try.

In this case, I decided to scan the recipes as I only have my Chromebook with which to work.  However, I didn't want to go through the effort of setting up the scanner on my father-in-law's computer as it is rather bulky.  I decided to see if I could find a way to scan the recipes I wanted without having to set up the scanner.

I just did a quick Google to see if I could find if it was possible.  Here's the link to the instructions:
https://support.google.com/drive/answer/3145835?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

I did manage to do the "scanning" of the recipes, but it would definitely be better for smaller items like receipts and stuff of that sort.

3M CloudLibrary Express Review

I’m sure you remember that I was super excited when my library got the 3M Cloudlibrary service.  I’m decidedly less excited now.  I’m not sure what is going on but the catalogue is pretty much the same or worse.  There’s a total of 2 fantasy books.  The Romance section has around 40 books, most of which I’m either not interested in or I've already read.  One of the little add-ons that could really help out the service is a wishlist...if there were some books that I wanted to read.  I’m a bit disappointed, especially since I was living in the US and my library there subscribes to a service called Freading.  It has a wishlist and I put an item that said it was coming soon to the catalogue, which is great!  What I really like about Freading is that it has a good mix of older books, including bundles, and new books.

I'm really hoping that my library here in Canada wakes up and does something with the 3M CloudLibrary or it is going to be useless!

Review: The Last Dragon Slayer

The Last Dragon Slayer by Martyn Stanley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Author sponsored review
This was a really good book! I wasn't sure I would enjoy it, but once I got into it, I really did. Essentially, a dwarf and two humans are on a quest for the Empress to slay a dragon. However, they wish for Silus to join them as he was with the last party who killed a Noble Dragon. Along the way they pick up a dark-elf (gravian) Brael, saving him from the executor's block. After rescuing him, they are rescued from the resulting pursuers by a mysterious elf named Vashni. As a group, they then continue on their quest, helping those they encounter on the way. At the same time, Vashni takes Korhan on as an apprentice in order to help him build resistance to "whispering", which is a form of mind control. As they journey towards the dragon, Vashni also trains Korhan in swordsmanship. Will it be enough to slay the dragon? Read the book to find out!

View all my reviews

My Library Got Express E-Books!

I was so excited to see this!  Finally, I could read ebooks without having to wait in line FOREVER.  At first, I was really confused because this is a very new service provided by a completely different vendor.  We also had this vendor (3M) show up on our website a couple of years ago by mistake, but I realized that it was real once I looked at my limits for checkouts.

So I finally tried out the service.  You can download the app to both Apple and Android devices which I did while travelling.  The app is super easy to use on mobile devices and it was really great to be able to do this.  However, depending on settings like your screen brightness etc., it can really eat up your battery.

You can also install a separate program for Windows based systems in order to download your books onto the Kobo.  This is where I ran into some issues with conflicts between Cloudlibrary from 3M and ADE.  I kept getting an error saying that I needed to update ADE and that there were issues with Adobe authorization.  I am running ADE 3.0 because versions 4 & 4.5.4 are super unstable.  If you are having issues with CloudLibrary, try the following steps:

1.  Open ADE.
2.  Deauthorize your computer using Ctrl+Shift+D (you need to know your Adobe ID password & make sure you remember it because you'll need it again in a minute)
3.  Open CloudLibrary
4.  Authorize your computer from within CloudLibrary by entering your Adobe ID password(you should get a message telling you that you need to authorize your computer)
5.  Plug in your ereader
6.  Go to My Books in Cloudlibrary
7.  Transfer to Device

Hope that helps!

Also, it is really nice since unlike Overdrive, it does keep a list of your reading history (since I was playing around with the program, mine is a little messed up).  However, unlike ADE, you cannot simply return your books from within CloudLibrary on the PC once you have transferred it to a device.  You have to do that on the app.

In the app:
1.  Click on the menu (3 horizontal lines) in the upper left corner
2.  Click My Books
3.  Choose Return
4.  Select which book you would like to return

Easy peasy nice and breezy!

I'm really looking forward to using this program since it means that I will have less books on hold on my Overdrive account, in theory at least.  I have a couple of question for my readers though.  What services have you added to your library recently?  How have they been received?  I invite you to post in the comments below!