In Which We Discuss the iPhone

I bought myself an iPhone for Christmas, and one thing I'm really loving about it is the books app. I'm cheap so I've been reading free books, and so many classic books are now out of copyright. Things like The Secret Garden, and A Little Princess, and Dracula, and Sherlock Holmes, and Dickens, and Austen - lots of books I loved as a child, and lots of books that I tried to read but couldn't quite get into then, that I'm devouring now. Mostly on buses. I started crying at the end of The Secret Garden, that was embarrassing.

At the moment, I'm reading Little Women. I did read that book a few years ago, but don't remember being all that into it, and I don't recall what happened. I'm really loving it, now that I'm older.

iPhones are awesome.

In Which We Discuss the Spice Girls, and Things Not to Do

Well, the first thing not to do is neglect a blog for three months.  What can I say?  I've been busy.

The second thing not to do - or the first thing, for a published author - is to respond to a review like this;

You obviously didn't read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review. My Amazon readers/reviewers give it 5 stars and 4 stars and they say they really enjoyed The Greek Seaman and thought it was well written. Maybe its just my style and being English is what you don't get. Sorry it wasn't your cup of tea, but I think I will stick to my five star and four star reviews thanks.

That's Jacqueline Howett, responding to this review. A review which, fairly, in my opinion, points out that lines like "Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance" are grammatically incorrect and difficult to understand.  And not just to people who 'aren't English'.  Thanks for attempting to drag the rest of the country into your mess, Howett.

So what if "everyone else" liked it?  It's a subjective opinion.   Throwing a tantrum is not the adult way to handle it.

In other news, I've been reading Spice Girls autobiographies recently.  Namely, Geri Halliwell's If Only, Mel B's to Catch a Fire, and Victoria Beckham's Learning to Fly.

I think, for me, a good part of the appeal is the fact that these women had a hand in shaping my childhood.  Spicemania was the atmosphere I grew up in.  And, now that I'm the same age, or even, older than they were, I want to see what it looked like from the other side.  It's interesting, to see these icons of my childhood as people, rather than as larger-than-life concepts.  It's also interesting to see how three different people describe the same event.  Sometimes, one or two have forgotten it completely, and sometimes they remember differently.  It's interesting.