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By Nico Vreeland, on April 30th, 2009 Yeah, I’m a day late, and at least a dollar short. I’ll have my ducks back in their row next week. In the meantime, some news about books and ebooks from around the web:
- From GalleyCat: a very interesting item about W.W. Norton offering digital textbooks for sale by the chapter. No more $120 dropped on a book you only read four chapters out of. This is the first simple, obvious, major advantage of students using etextbooks. The drawback of this system as it is: you can only read the books online. There’s a groundswell waiting to happen, but we’ve got a while yet to wait.
By Sean Clark, on April 29th, 2009  Author: Gayle Forman
Dutton Books, 2009
Best ebook deal: Sony eBook Store
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
5 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
If I Stay teeters between young adult and literary fiction carefully, and ultimately borrows enough from both sides of the fence that genre distinction doesn’t much matter. At times the eloquent writing and mature linguistic choices elevate the book beyond what you’d expect from young adult, yet at other times words (and teen friendly music name-dropping) feel misplaced, carving into the credibility of the story, most notably through the characterization. Despite a few flaws this is a good book, albeit a depressing one. …
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By Sean Clark, on April 28th, 2009
I get a little annoyed when people confuse the physical book (just a bunch of pressed wood pulp, ink, and glue) with the book itself (a collection of letters, arranged into words, arranged into sentences, in a one-of-a-kind sequence). Sure, it’s okay to have your preference in reading medium, but War and Peace is War and Peace even if you pee it into the snow or yodel it.
So when I read things like this post from techradar (Why Publishers Would Be Mad to Support eBooks), it grinds my gears a bit. Beyond the fact that the author has clearly done little research and likely hasn’t taken the time to actually try an ereader before condemning them (I was an opponent won over quickly and those who naysay without trying one really sounds akin to someone in the 80s calling email a gimmick), he doesn’t seem to read books all that much, and certainly doesn’t love them.
Right now, the publishing industry faces a similar change [to that encountered by the music industry]. If it goes digital, it’s moving into a world where there are bigger, more powerful and more experienced players, and those players will eat the publishers’ lunch; if the book trade thinks supermarket discounting is making its life difficult, it ain’t seen nothing yet.
By sticking to dead trees, however, the book publishers can keep on doing what they’re doing. Sure, some people will be happy with a leaked download of Harry Potter, or a badly scanned how-to manual. But they’ll be the minority.
Recorded music is a relatively new invention, but books have been around for nearly two thousand years and mass-produced books for several hundred. If publishers don’t rush into digital, they could be around for hundreds more.
Besides the basic economic principal that competition drives innovation, the recommendation that the book publishers can safely keep doing what they’re doing is ridiculous. …
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By Sean Clark, on April 28th, 2009
 image credit: notempire.com In what could be terrible news, Lexcycle, the producer of the best (by far) reader app for the iPhone, Stanza, has announced their sale to Amazon. If Amazon uses this move to try and strangle the market and push their proprietary Kindle format on mobile devices, this could be very bad news indeed and indicate a big step backwards for mobile device ereading. If however, they stick to their claim to leave Stanza unchanged, or better yet, they open Stanza to the Kindle format without locking out other formats, it could be a step forward. We’ll have to wait and see, but don’t hold your breath.
via Apple Insider.
By Sean Clark, on April 28th, 2009  Author: Aravind Adiga
Free Press, 2008
Best ebook deal: Diesel eBooks
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
8 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
Right of the bat, narrator/protagonist Balram writes of the murder he committed, yet I gladly read through the book to hear his story. This is always a sign of good writing and a good book, and is an especially commendable feat in a debut novel. To willingly give oneself up to the whim of the narrator rather than to trudge through the book in search of looming plot twists requires a reader’s full trust and delight in an author. I quickly trusted Adiga, and as White Tiger was the winner of the 2008 Man Booker prize, it’s clear I wasn’t the only one to be won over. The dark humor of this book is of the perfect tint, and the plot and narration hits all the right notes. …
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By David Duhr, on April 27th, 2009  Author: Rose Tremain
Chatto & Windus, 2007 (Great Britain)
Little, Brown and Company, 2008 (United States)
Best ebook deal: Unavailable
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
7 |
I didn’t lose sleep because of The Road Home. It never shrieked at me from the nightstand, begging to be read, nor did I ponder the story when I wasn’t reading it. And yet, I found myself picking the book up at unexpected times, reading a few pages here, a few pages there, until it finally snuck into my subconscious and set up shop, almost apologetically—until I read the last page, whereupon it faded once again into the back alleys of my mind, where it will stay. …
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By Sean Clark, on April 27th, 2009 This book has been chosen as a Great Read.
 Author: Vladimir Nabokov
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1958
Best ebook deal: Public library
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
10 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
This won’t be a full review, as there is nothing to be said about this book that hasn’t already been said (in fact, you can read me gush about it in this post). However if you haven’t read Lolita, you should drop whatever you’re doing and go pick it up (or download it), then read it over the weekend. Nabokov’s writing, from the language and syntax, to plot development and pacing, characterization and thematic webs, is as masterful as can be.
Essentially about Humbert Humbert, a middle aged Parisian pedophile, as he searches for nymphets to replace his childhood crush and finds the ultimate incarnation of that ideal in the daughter of his New England landlady, Lolita tackles some big themes in very unconventional ways. These themes are deeply rooted in the id, yet as Humbert weaves his narrative web, the archetypical and clichéd ideas he tackles take on new, if sinister, light.
Humbert Humbert is easily the most complex character I’ve come across ever. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on April 24th, 2009
 Whatever happened to this screen happened while it was inside a standard soft ereader case Ever since my first Sony Reader took a powder, I’ve been looking for a case that delivered more protection than aesthetics. I wanted something that would absorb a sharp blow, a case tough enough that I won’t worry about my ereader when I sling my bookbag around.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to want to make a case like this. My PRS-505 and BeBook both came with covers, but neither are rigid. My first Sony, the PRS-700, broke inside just such a soft cover, inside my backpack.
So I decided to repurpose some other kind of case, which turned out to be a whole lot more trouble than I thought it would be.
Here are three DIY options for hard cases that will give your ereader enough protection to survive anything short of being run over. Complete picture gallery at the bottom of this post. …
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By Sean Clark, on April 23rd, 2009  Author: Gioconda Belli, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
Harper Collins, 2009
Best ebook deal: Harper Collins
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
I’ve never been one to consume all that much poetry. I really enjoy good poetry, but it’s just something I don’t read all that often. Because of this, I tend to have reservations about novels written by poets, as I feel they can be a little too off balance with evocation and tropes outweighing narrative rules. This is not to say these books are all bad, just that I’m not the ideal reader. Spanish poet Gioconda Belli’s novel, however, does a wonderful job of transforming the (biblical and archetypical) story of Adam and Eve into an excellent novel, by utilizing her linguistic and thematic skills as a poet within a framework of traditional narrative. This book is short and sweet, and will be loved by poets and feminists and those interested in the Bible as literature especially. However it is an accessible and enjoyable book, devoid of any sort of heavy-handedness or didacticism, and is certainly worth a read by readers outside that group. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on April 22nd, 2009 Some news about books and ebooks from around the web:
- Random of the week: face-melting street BMX. Absolutely face-melting. Also from Afrojacks: go ahead and draft John Wall in your fantasy basketball dynasty league (disclaimer: I know less than nothing about basketball). Last: apparently my business card is crap. Thanks, Joel Bauer. I heard about this first on Mike Schmidt’s podcast (which is NSFW, if a podcast can be NSFW).
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