A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Nerd bought himself a Nook e-reader, and surprised me with one, too. Since we got new Android phones for Valentine's Day, too, we basically just leaped ahead about four years, technologically speaking, and it's awesome. Except when it's kind of disturbing. Since I have new gadgets, I've been poking around in unfamiliar corners of the Internet, and I am finding a lot of things that make me say: What the heck are these people thinking?
Self-published books
Apparently the proliferation of reading devices like the Kindle and Nook has created a huge market for these self-published ebooks. Mr. Nerd has spent a lot of time on the NookBooks section of barnesandnoble.com, looking for stuff to read. Here is one of his finds:
It's considered a "paranormal romance/urban fantasy anthology." If you check out the overview, it appears to be a mashup of Twilight/fairy/space/cat people-shape shifter/bodice-ripper romance, for 99 cents. And there are tons of these. I don't know whether I should laugh, or get busy thinking up stories for my new series about a scrappy part-dog/part-elf female ghost investigator and her on-again/off-again romance with a shape-shifting bad-boy cat/vampire named Chance. (Mr. Nerd would want me to let you know that he doesn't read these; he was looking for science fiction stories.)
I came across these next few when I did a search for cookbooks:
Cooking with Coolio. Cooking. With Coolio. Now I'm wondering: Are there a bunch of these out there, that just shove a rapper into some completely random how-to guide? Like, say, furniture repair with 50 Cent? Landscaping with Lil' Wayne? Embroidery with Eminem?
Is there a follow-up to this one, called Ten Great Recipes for when You Have the Munchies?
And were there supposed to be, like, 100 recipes, but Smokey (ha! I see what you did there) got too baked and ended up staring at his fingerprints for a few hours instead? I think the next installment would be a big seller, since you've already identified your target market. And it wouldn't require a whole lot of effort--list Dr. Pepper, Snickers bars, and Doritos, and the book is half-done already. Just sayin'.
Pardon me a moment while I try not to hurl:
100? Seriously? That stuff is nas-ty. I've never tasted jerky, and I pray that I never have to. We have dog treats in the cabinet that look AND smell better than this stuff.
And finally, check out the tagline on this one:
"Converting" makes it sound so...clinical. Like chemistry class. Do a few equations, gather up some test tubes, fire up the Bunsen burner and--voila!--venison dinner. Definitely no gutting involved here.
I meant to include some of the head-scratching-ly strange Android apps I've found, but I'm out of time for tonight. Be sure to check back for that!
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