ebook – OZTHOUGHTS

Ebook Review – Golden Biker; An Insane Romp Through India.

I have just read an amazingly funny and anarchic book called Golden Biker, written by the splendidly named Alexander von Eisenhart Rothe which apart from anything else disproves totally the idea that Germans have no sense of humour.

This wonderful ebook which is a sort of “The Marx brothers Meet Easy Rider” story is set in contemporary India and tells the tale of a most unlikely group of people who are – for a whole range of idiotic reasons – chasing each other across India.

I can do no better than quote, rather fully, from the author’s own description of this story. This description sets the tone of the story and is written in the same style as the story itself, so it will give you a good idea of the atmosphere of the ebook:

Brought together in India through a series of hare-brained adventures are Arthur, an old bohemian from Cologne; Albert, otherwise known as Bear, a snack bar owner who emigrated to Goa; Gerd, a German businessman with a mid-life crisis; and Sherie, a stunningly good-looking prostitute from Bombay.

Together, they embark on a mission to find a mystic figure in the Himalayas: The Golden Biker, who supposedly cruises through the mountains on a golden motorbike, to punish the evildoers and give to those who mean well some of his no less mystical marihuana… known among aficionados as the best grass in the world.

However, the route the foursome has to undertake riding some ancient motorbikes called Enfield Bullets, across all of India is rather long and full of danger. Increasingly so, if you have a gang of ill-tempered Indian Mafiosi, two permanently stoned Israeli secret service guys, a gang of politically correct gypsies, one involuntary guru, a stark-naked blowgun expert, a muddle brained but fanatical old Nazi including his private army, as well as two freelance killers from Bombay at your heels.

Gooseberry Patch – Cheap But Good Cookery Ebooks

Own an ereader and want recipes? Well here you go, The Gooseberry Patch has them!

The hugely successful Gooseberry Patch series of cook books are available now as ebooks. There are a couple of hundred of them covering just about every aspect of cooking delicious meals for yourself and your family.

These ebooks are as is normal with cookery books, set out subject by subject, so there are a whole range that show you how to cook meat in all manner of ways, how to make puddings and so on, from basic to really quite advanced recipes.

Titles range from “25 Savoury Pie Recipes”, “Christmas Classics Cookbook”, “25 Meat Loaf Recipes”, a whole slew of ebooks with the series name “Circle of Friends” – which are recipes that the two good ladies who started this company have been given by their friends to share with readers.

The Gooseberry Patch has been around now for quite some time, being founded in 1984 by Vickie Hutchins and Jo Ann Martin, who describe themselves as follows:

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What You Need To Consider When Buying An Ereader

Ereader or Tablet? Which should you buy? A bit of help for you here…

It can be very confusing when you think you might like to leap into the world of ereading and ebooks. There are so many different models out there, and the considerable problem of the various ebook formats as well.

ereaders

To help you a bit in making a choice I shall discuss some of the main considerations you should take into account before parting with your hard earned money and committing yourself to one or other model of ereader.

Does colour matter to you?

The first thing to consider is do you want to read novels rather than ebooks with loads of illustrations or magazines or comics? If the answer to that question is comics, magazines and other reading matter with lots of colour and illustrations, then you need to consider a tablet rather than a dedicated ereader, as most real ereaders are monochrome, and not really very good to view images with.

There are a number of ereaders with LCD screens which can manage colour OK, but their screens tend to be too small to be really pleasurable to view images with. But with things such as the iPad and similar tablets, comics, magazines newspapers and coffee table ebooks and similar are a real pleasure to read and gaze upon, given the brilliant colours they can offer you.

If on the other hand you want to read ebooks that are basically text – novels and similar, then probably a real, dedicated monochrome ereader is what you want, as they are specifically designed for this form of reading, and are totally optimised for such ebooks.

So that is your first decision. Colour and images = tablet. Text and almost no images = dedicated monochrome ereader.

Screen size.

This is perhaps the next consideration. If you are suffering from any sort of eye troubles, then the larger the screen you can get is something you should think about. Since if you have a smallish screen, and need the text size to be large, obviously you can then only fit so many words onto the screen at a time, so with a small screen you will be turning pages like a mad thing, but with a larger screen you will be able to have the letters quite large, but still have a reasonable number of words per page.

Currently the only large screen dedicated ereader I am aware of is the Kindle DX, which has a screen that is 9.7 inches diagonally across, room enough to make the letters huge and still have lots of words on the screen, otherwise you should consider a tablet again.

Most dedicated ereaders these days have a screen that is about 6 or 7 inches diagonally, which if your eyes are OK, is much like reading an average paper back.

So, if your eyes are OK, then any dedicated ereader will work for you , if not, consider a tablet with a much larger screen whatever sort of ebooks you want to read on it.

Front light or clip on reading light.

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Angie And Agent X – Again.

Some time ago I wrote a review of the first Angie And Agent X book by Gary Ruse, a silly, funny and thoroughly enjoyable book all about a very unlikely pair of CIA operatives and their adventures attempting to defeat a totally evil criminal (Link to that review: Angie and Agent X). Well now I have just had the pleasure of reading the follow up to that book and found it to be as enjoyable as the first volume was.

Once again our unlikely pair of heroes (Angie the young woman CIA operative and Agent X, an alien who has become involved in the CIA after his arrival on earth) find themselves asked to solve some very puzzling mysteries, the first mystery being how on earth did the dead body of a CIA operative who was apparently killed in Mexico turn up in the USA about 45 minutes after he was killed… And it gets weirder and weirder from that point on.

Gary Ruse (the author of this fine bit of silliness) has this to say about his book:-

In this sequel to Aggie & Agent X, CIA officer Agnes Westfeld has now been permanently assigned to the special investigative unit at Area 51 in Nevada. She and her partner, Agent X, are immediately thrown into a new case with a seemingly impossible twist. As they seek to solve this baffling mystery and learn the extent of a diabolical scheme by an ancient criminal organization, Aggie and Agent X face dangers more deadly than ever before. A new adventure with that special blend of sci-fi, espionage, mystery, humor and old movie atmosphere that launched the most unusual team-up of spies ever. A new mission! New perils! New villains! And more…

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Aggie & Agent X; Sci-Fi Fun By Gary Ruse

I recently read a rather curious and odd science fiction ebook by Gary Ruse. Its title, which is direct and to the point, is Aggie & Agent X. I found it to be a strangely endearing and decidedly odd book. Sort of a case of a “normal” thriller that has been acted out by the Marx Brothers, if you can imagine anything so odd. But as I said, a most endearing ebook.

The author, Gary Ruse describes this small masterpiece as follows – Not giving anything much away here though:-

Rookie CIA officer Agnes Westfeld is excited when she gets her first real assignment after only three months at the agency, even though she’s told it will be basically just a “baby-sitting” job. But when her new HQ turns out to be a legendary top secret base in the Nevada desert and her new partner is “out of this world,” pitted against an evil mastermind who will stop at nothing, Aggie goes on a wild and wacky spy mission that is the adventure of a lifetime!

The two heroes of this ebook are engaging in their differing ways, Aggie, (Agnese Westfield) the girl, is a sort of wide-eyed innocent at large, gazing at the world with wonder and apparent confusion, but, but in fact is amazingly together when it is necessary that she be so, and Agent X… What can I say about him? Well, he is an Alien who has a Humphrey Bogart fixation and a number of other strange ideas… An odd creation, but fun nonetheless.

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