BookBrowse Blog

So Many eReaders, Which to Choose?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:40:00 -0500

About a year ago, I wrote a blog about ebook readers and my decision to purchase a Sony PRS-505. I have absolutely no regrets, and I still love my reader; I can no longer say, though, that I "wouldn't trade it for anything."

First, I'm thrilled, pleased and tickled to death that after decades of owning ebook readers I'm finally using a product that's likely to become part of the mainstream. I've got at least three obsolete devices sitting around for which I can no longer purchase books. I truly believe that ebooks are here to stay this time. You can't read an industry publication these days without seeing at least one article about the evolving ebook market. Ebooks are the only segment of the book industry whose sales have seen a dramatic increase during the recession, and I know at least half a dozen people who are asking for an e-reader for the holidays this year. (Not to mention the fact that I'm frequently seeing others with these devices on the bus; mine is no longer a novelty.)

The technology is changing rapidly, however, and the decision as to which reader to get and when to get it has become much more complex. When I was choosing one just last year, my options were really just the Kindle and the Sony e-Reader. Well, now Amazon has two versions of the Kindle available, and Sony has two with a third one due out later this year. In addition, Barnes and Noble's first digital reader, the Nook (where DO they come up with these names!?) is now out and looks incredibly cool, with a split screen and color touchpad. (Some publications are already referring to it as "the Kindle Killer.") Apple, a company which seems to have cornered the market on sleek-looking devices that work well, is touting some sort of yet-to-be-seen tablet computer that they're planning to market as a book reader, too. I've also been using my Apple iTouch to read books via the free apps, and I think it works surprisingly well; I've currently got five different reader apps on the device, including the Kindle Reader and the B&N Reader. If you already own an iTouch or iPhone, it's a great way to see if reading books electronically is something that suits you. (I also know many people who prefer "real" books and find the idea of reading on an electronic device simply abhorrent).

So how do you settle on an ebook reader, if you're thinking about getting one? In all honesty, I don't know of anyone who has regretted their purchase, whether they went with the Sony or the Kindle. I'm sure those people are out there, but I haven't run into one yet, so there may be no "wrong" decision (it's too early to know about the Nook, and I don't know enough friends with other types of ereaders to be able to form an opinion). Whichever ereaders catches your eye, I strongly recommend you find a way to physically handle the devices you're considering, as that may swing your decision one way or the other (it was a major factor in my original decision). It's also a good idea to make a list of the features that are really important to you, and check to see where your chosen device stacks up. For example, if you are dead set that you want wireless content delivery your options are more limited. It's essential that you do your homework; I do know of one person who had planned to check out electronic books from her local library, only to find her Kindle's proprietary format kept her from being able to do that.

Most importantly, though, realize that if you get and ebook reader now, there will be a better one coming out in six months; that's just the way it's going to be for a few years. You could wait, of course, but you could end up playing the waiting game forever, since the technology is constantly evolving and will do so for some time to come (similar to the way PCs improve dramatically every few years). So my advice: Just go for it!

BookBrowse reviewer Kim Kovacs is an avid reader in the Pacific Northwest. All those rainy days give her the opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of books that span many genres. Browse Kim's reviews.

Autumn Reading by Elizabeth Strout

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:42:00 -0500

Not long ago I awoke in the middle of the night and realized immediately that it had arrived. The air, when I had gone to bed, was still faintly sultry, the air of evening that comes after a day of golden, soft sunshine. But when I woke in the dark I felt how the temperature had dropped, and the air smelled of autumn. It was like learning a secret, the rest of the city asleep around me, while I felt that I was the first to learn: autumn had come swiftly, quietly, to town. The moment was brief and delicious, and resonant with sudden memories and sensations that pulled me back into the comfort of sleep, and when I woke it was still there, the edge of the chill, but even more the faint smell of this change in the seasons.

It made me want to read.

There is much said about the "Summer Read," which suggests beaches and lounging and porches and hammocks. But this autumn, for the first time, it came to me that I seem to prefer to read in darkened, cozy places. I don't like to read on a beach. I like to read in messy coffee shops, or on subways (which, believe it or not, can sometimes feel quite cozy), I like to read at night in strange hotels when it is raining outside, or in my own kitchen, late, as I eat peanut butter crackers. And now that it really is autumn and getting dark earlier, it seems the joy of reading has come to me as it came to me when I was a child: that sweet tugging on the senses, come here, come here. It is surprising. I would have thought -- I have always thought -- I am a person who likes to read, and the where and the when didn't matter.

Who knew?

Maybe it is because I am at a stage in life where my schedule is not as regulated by domestic needs as it was when I was raising a family, and all reading was done hungrily anywhere I got the time. Now even while I still feel there is never enough time, never I will pop onto the couch with a quilt, and tell myself, Oh, just fifteen minutes and I will get back to work, and then pick up one of the many open books lying around. The loveliness of this! The glory of it, as I snuggle down. Through the window, I see the low clouds of autumn that seem to keep me blanketed inside and safe, while I read the stories of people who have felt this, lived through that, and I do not mind that winter will unfold its own carpet one of these days.

Elizabeth Strout is the author of Abide with Me, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick; Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. In 2009 she was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories about a woman and her immediate family and friends on the coast of Maine. She can be found online at www.elizabethstrout.com

It Takes All Kinds of Readers

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:29:00 -0500

OK, I confess, I joined Facebook. Now, you have to remember I'm a computer geek, and as such, I'm not really all that good at dealing with people, face-to-face. I'm much happier working with machines; they're logical, they don't talk back, and generally do what you tell them to without argument. (Although I do have one server that I swear wants a blood sacrifice before it'll condescend to behave.) If I have to interact with people over the course of the day, I do everything possible to do it in writing (yes, e-mail is my friend). So, it only makes sense that a medium that allows me to interact with others, without actually having to talk to them, would offer some appeal.

At first I thought it was kind of silly; I had four or five "friends" (distant cousins and co-workers) with whom I'd rarely communicated in the past and have little in common with now, and I just couldn't understand the attraction. (Sadly, I didn't really care that my cousin spent her evening watching Glee on Fox.) Then, one day, the oddest thing happened I got contacted by a former high school boyfriend. From there, one thing led to another, and now I'm in contact with all these people I have had nothing to do with for decades. (Still not entirely sure whether or not that's a good thing and they probably feel the same way.)

I've found that one of the more interesting aspects of these sites is all the book activity taking place on them. Considering the US isn't exactly a nation of readers (the average American reads four books a year according to a 2007 poll), I've been surprised at and heartened by - how many people are eager to discuss all things book-related. As you can see from the banner at the top of this page, BookBrowse participates in both Facebook and Twitter, but BookBrowse is hardly alone in taking advantage of current technology. I made the mistake of following a certain author's new book (because if you signed up as a fan, you could win a copy of her novel -- and the odds were good and I'll do just about anything for free books). This resulted in my Inbox receiving a poorly-written (yet glowing) reader review of said novel approximately every ten minutes. I'm glad it was only one author's updates! My gosh, it would have gotten real ugly, real fast had I did my usual thing - gotten all carried away and signed up for half a dozen of them!

Another thing I've discovered is that my opinions aren't universal, not even about something as highly regarded as a work of classic literature (say, for example, Pride & Prejudice). I actually had to stop looking at topics that discuss readers' least favorite books. It's very hard to restrain myself when others are trashing novels I'm passionate about, books that any NORMAL PERSON would like... books anyone with HALF A BRAIN SHOULD ADORE AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!?! ... (Uh, excuse me... sorry about that... having a flashback.) Needless to say, I've found that they do tend to frown on it when you start flaming others' opinions (even when you're completely right and they're stupid). So, to keep my friends, my various associated memberships, and my blood pressure in check, I've had to simply stop reading those conversation threads. Lesson learned.

BookBrowse reviewer Kim Kovacs is an avid reader in the Pacific Northwest. All those rainy days give her the opportunity to enjoy a wide variety of books that span many genres. Browse Kim's reviews.

Steampunk for Beginners by Cherie Priest

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:47:00 -0500

Steampunk: It's not as new, confusing, or weird as you may have heard. In fact, this sub-genre of science fiction is actually quite warm and welcoming and it's loads of fun. So let's take a minute to talk about what it is, and where it came from.

"Steampunk" is a style (of books, video games, comic books, movies, and more) that hearkens back to the fantastic/adventure literature of the nineteenth century. Jules Verne's stories about exploration and mayhem, H.G. Wells and his tales of alien invasion and time travel, and Mary Shelley's tome about science gone awry ... in these famous works you'll find the seeds of the modern steampunk sensibility.

The above-mentioned authors and their literary brethren were writing science fiction but they were writing it well before the microchip, the internet, or even in some cases, the internal combustion engine. Their idea of the future was colored by the technology they had at hand.

In their day, steam power was the very height of innovation.
Therefore, they assumed that steam would be the power source of the future.

In the 1950s and 1960s, pop culture rediscovered the "feel" of these old stories, and began to revisit them with a mid-century flair. Some people point to the 1954 movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as the first steampunk production, and it's a good contender with the wonderful, weird, incongruous technology and Victorian vibe; and 1965's Wild Wild West television show demonstrated nicely that strange gadgetry and adventure tech didn't have to be British to be chock full of scope and charm. Disney went back and did it again in 1968 with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a lighthearted throwback to the iconic retro mad science oeuvre.

In the 1980s, a fresh band of writers took a look back at the first folks who looked forward. K. W. Jeter, Tim Powers, and James Blaylock in particular were having a marvelous time with these "Victorian fantasies." In fact, it is Jeter who is generally credited with coining the term "steampunk" to describe them. In 1987 he sent a letter to the magazine Locus, wherein he searched for a collective term for the fiction trend, saying it should be called by, "...something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like 'steampunks', perhaps."

The 1990s saw fresh blood added to the field. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine in 1990 called attention to the possibilities; and Paul DiFilippo's 1995 Steampunk Trilogy brought the term to the forefront. And in 1999 Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics (and the subsequent movie in 2003) gave the world at large a very good look at what this whole "steampunk" thing could be.

And now its popularity is surging once more, with renewed interest from publishers, movie studios, and video game producers breathing new life into steampunk and it's poised to become more popular than ever.

At least, I certainly hope so.

My own steampunk novel, Boneshaker, hits the shelves on September 29, and I'm so excited I can hardly see straight ... so I might not be the world's most impartial source on the matter. But I do hope you'll take a chance on the next steampunk book or movie you see. You just might enjoy it, and find it more familiar yet more exciting and different than you ever expected.

Cherie Priest is the author of seven novels, including Boneshaker and the Blooker-award winning Four and Twenty Blackbirds, plus Fathom, Wings to the Kingdom, and the Endeavour-nominated book Not Flesh Nor Feathers from Tor. Her short novels Dreadful Skin and Those Who Went Remain There Still are published by Subterranean Press. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and a fat black cat.
She can be found online at cheriepriest.com and theclockworkcentury.com. Her novel, Boneshaker, can be found in all good US bookstores.

Pride Falls by Elizabeth Berg

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:28:00 -0500

I have a friend who's a very famous author, and the other day I asked her, "What's the first thing you wrote that you were proud of?" And she said it was her first novel. Which is a beautiful novel, but it was written when she was in her thirties. And I thought, What? Because the first thing I remember being proud of (and I'm talking proud, proud) was a poem I wrote when I was nine. It ended with the soul-stirring line, "The beauty enchantment now was broke." I actually submitted this poem to a magazine (where it was promptly rejected, needless to say).

Never mind. I got proud again, very soon afterwards, of something I wrote in the third grade. It was a page-long essay about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, accompanied for no extra charge by a construction paper silhouette. The essay moved me to tears every time I read it. The last line here was: "He had always wanted to free the slaves, and now he had." So. There you are. Don't you have tears in your eyes?

I turned it my essay (well, essay-ette, I think I might most accurately say) and waited for the teacher to plotz, or at least hold up my page before the class and say, "Now, this is what I was looking for! Elizabeth, will you please come forward and take a bow?" It did not happen. I handed in my essay and it was handed back with a passing grade. Period. But! I still have that essay, hanging out of some mildewed scrapbook, and I'll bet I could get five bucks for it on eBay just like that.

In high school, I wrote an essay about the ills of smoking, and at the top of the first page I glued an actual cigarette on which I had drawn a little face and made hair out of tobacco. The essay was from the point of view of the cigarette, you see. The cigarette was named Charlie, and he was extolling the virtues of smoking, but really he was revealing the vices of smoking. Oh, it was very clever, I thought. And the cigarette glued to the front? Darling. Plus an astonishing feat of artistry, I think you must agree. I got an A on that paper. The teacher thought the cigarette was cute; she liked my "creative approach." She wrote that in the margin in red pencil with an exclamation mark after it. Creative approach! Oh, one lived for those exclamation marks in red, didn't one? Unless they said something like MARGINS!!

In junior high, I wrote a longish play and read the whole dang thing over the phone to my best friend, I was so proud of it. And I thought she loved it too, because she kept so respectfully quiet while I read it to her, but in reality she had gone off to make a sandwich. And eat it. And wash her plate. I discovered this because she did not come back to the phone in time to hear the end of my play. "The End!" I said, with great satisfaction, and then I said, "So! Do you like it?" I waited for a rush of adulation only slightly mitigated by jealousy and heard....nothing. "Hello?" I said. "...Hello?" When she finally picked up the phone again and I asked, "Where did you go?" she told me.

I have now written 19 novels, 2 collections of short stories, and 2 works of non-fiction. And despite the fact that I have won awards for my books and have been the grateful recipient of many glowing reviews, I have never felt the kind of surety I did as a kid about anything I've written. I may love my work, but I do not enjoy that deep seated confidence about it any longer. I've gone wobbly on the inside. I suppose it's an indication of the fact that I have, at least in some respects, grown up and become aware of the fact that book publishing is a business and I am dependent for my livelihood on the opinions of others. And I have become aware of the arbitrary nature of just about everything, the way that the same object can be called black by one person and white by another, and each person is positive they are right. But despite the fact that I'm not as blindly self-assured as I used to be, I still feel a thrill every time I turn a book in. There is still a breathless joy in waiting for the response to the question, "Do you like it?" even when one knows the answer may grievously wound the unprotected heart. I don't know, I guess I hope it will always be that way.

Elizabeth's latest book, Home Safe, will be available in paperback from all good bookstores on September 29th. She can be found online at www.elizabeth-berg.net