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By Nico Vreeland, on July 17th, 2009  David Pogue reports: some Kindle users found today that Amazon had yanked several Orwell books—Animal Farm and 1984—off their Kindles and refunded the purchase price without satisfactory explanation.
As you might remember, we learned that Amazon could remotely alter or kill Kindle ebooks thanks to the text-to-speech debacle, and this is exactly what everybody was afraid of then. It’s very bad, but it’s exactly the problem of digital rights management: DRM means you never fully own the media you buy.
That said, the more interesting question is why Amazon remote-killed these books, and whether they’ll apologize or even unkill them. In the Kindle forum where Pogue found this story, the prevailing theory is that the books were pirated or sold by a party without the proper copyrights. However, the salient sentence of the response from Amazon customer support is this:
Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.
That makes it sound like somebody simply changed their mind and Kindle customers got shafted in the process.
TeleRead posted an insight email exchange an affected Kindler had with Amazon, wherein Amazon claims to have discovered a “problem” with the ebooks. Sounds like even customer service isn’t sure what happened.
I have a feeling that if the books were indeed pirated, Amazon won’t quite apologize and definitely won’t reinstate those books. If, however, the publisher simply decided not to sell them, we’ve got a better chance to see some serious Bezos backtracking.
Kindle users should still be concerned. If Amazon’s willing to seriously infringe on buyers’ rights for something as small as a couple 99-cent ebooks, they definitely won’t be shy about revoking books in the future.
It makes me really glad I don’t have a Kindle.
Here are a few other reactions: CrunchGear discusses kill switches and clouds, the Guardian has a few selected reader reactions (surprise: they’re all negative), and Boing Boing points to this website where affected Kindlers (or anybody else) can download Orwell books DRM-free (and monetarily free, too).
By Nico Vreeland, on July 17th, 2009 This book has been selected as a Great Read.
Author: Gillian Flynn
Shaye Areheart Books, 2009
Best ebook deal: Seattle Public Library
Filed under: Mystery
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
6 |
| Entertainment..... |
9 |
| Depth..... |
6 |
I picked up Dark Places by accident, off the new ebook releases list at the public library. I had never heard of Gillian Flynn, and I didn’t much care for the title, so I wasn’t expecting the riveting mystery I got.
I’ve learned subsequently that Flynn’s first novel, Sharp Objects, was well received and nominated for an Edgar and several other awards. So perhaps previous Flynn readers won’t be as surprised as I was that she can write a hell of a mystery. This book grabs you by page 50; I had a hard time putting it down after that, and in fact I couldn’t put it down for the last 150 pages.
Dark Places is about Libby Day, whose family was murdered 24 years ago by her brother, Ben. Ben’s been in jail for all of those 24 years—convicted on 7-year-old Libby’s eyewitness testimony—and she’s never gone to see him. After Libby meets the members of a niche “Kill Club” whose hobby is investigating her family’s case, she begins investigating the murders herself, and becomes less certain of what she saw that night.
Flynn packs the story full of twists and subplots and vivid characters, Satanism and viciousness and gut-wrenching crimes, leaving very little sag and very little room to breathe. This is not the Great American Novel, but if you’re looking for a great mystery, look no further. Just be warned: there’s a lot of violence and a lot of not-for-the-squeamish in this book. …
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By Sara LeHoullier, on July 16th, 2009 This book has been selected as a Great Read.
Author: Mary Roach
W. W. Norton, 2008
Best ebook deal: Audiobook available at Seattle Public Library
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
8 |
| Entertainment..... |
10 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
If you’ve ever wondered about how a male chimpanzee woos a mate, how human pheromones function, or whether Viagra will work for women, this is the book for you. The study of sex has a long and harrowing history, which Mary Roach explores in an in-depth, but not overly technical manner. In other words, it’s a science book for non-scientists. My curiosity about Bonk was piqued when I saw Roach speak on the TED blog back in May. Her talk had a provocative title (10 Things you didn’t know about orgasm), and after listening to her for a few minutes, I had to know more.
Roach is extremely thorough with her research and it shows. In Bonk, she starts at the very beginning, at the foundations of the body of work on sex, when scientists were studying animals to try to figure out how humans functioned. She recognizes the important work of all of the players, from Kinsey (whom we’ve all heard about, thanks to the popular film) to Masters and Johnson, who studied laboratory sexual encounters for years and published their intriguing findings in 1979 – an article entitled Homosexuality in Perspective.
She explores behaviors from the 1500s, when a woman could sue her husband for impotence, and to prove the fact, a team of observers was required to enter his bedroom to verify the facts before granting a divorce. She looks at the trajectory of ED (erectile dysfunction), and the crazy lengths people have gone to cure it throughout the ages. She examines the machines that have been developed to aid in intercourse, and the orgasmic capabilities of people with spinal injuries. She is willing to participate in studies, attend talks, and go to otherwise great lengths to collect her data, and writes about these experiences very candidly. As someone hasn’t read a lot of nonfiction lately, apart from the depressing, the dry, and the painfully detailed, I found Bonk to be a breath of fresh air – it’s also full of fun trivia that you can use to wow your friends and family at the dinner table. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 16th, 2009  Iceberg Reader isn’t a standalone reader app, such as Stanza or eReader, but rather a licensed architecture, such as TouchBooks, that provides the framework for single book downloads from the app store. I’m the type that likes to manage my own library, so this isn’t quite in my wheelhouse, but for those who want to download a book, read it, and be done with it (and reclaim the homescreen space and memory it occupies) appbooks with Iceberg may be the best option for you. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on July 15th, 2009  I’m trying out a new look for the Links post starting this week. Hit the jump for complete linkage. On the menu this week:
- Which popular book series would you tattoo on yourself?
- Lots of advice for aspiring novelists
- Book recommendations from around the web
- What’s behind Kindle’s price drop?
By Sean Clark, on July 14th, 2009  Author: Anthony Trollope
Longmans of London, 1855.
Best ebook deal: Free in the public domain (many formats here)
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
6 |
| Depth..... |
8 |
The Way We Live Now has been one of my favorite books since I discovered it just after college. A goal of mine for this summer was to read more Trollope, so I decided to begin with The Warden, which is the first installment in his popular series, known informally as the Barsetshire series.
The Warden is typical of 19th century books. That shouldn’t be too surprising as Trollope was one of the most prolific and popular writers of the century. The book includes plenty of robust characters of varying sensibility and social status, political intrigue, philosophical waxing, and plenty of wit. While The Warden is lacking the complexity and satirical fangs of The Way We Live Now, it still features a morally complex subtext that powers the book nicely. Both greed and righteousness are covetous traits, and Trollope’s novel showcases the chaos such motivations can incur, even in the most peaceful of settings. …
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By Aaron Block, on July 13th, 2009  Authors: Various
DC Comics, 2009
Best ebook deal: not available
Editor’s Note: Due to the number of authors and artists who contribute to this series, there is no ratings table for this work. Aaron has said it deserves a 10 in the Entertainment category, however.
Before I review Wednesday Comics, DC’s new weekly series, I’d like to say a few words about its conceptual predecessor, Solo. Like Wednesday Comics, Solo was the pet project of DC’s art director, Mark Chiarello, a gifted painter in his own right who conceived of the bi-monthly series as a celebration of the industry’s diverse artistic talent. The concept was simple enough – released on a bi-monthly schedule, each 48-page issue would be a showcase for a single artist, who would then fill those pages with short stories, sometimes written by the artist, other times written by friends/collaborators.
I loved it, and treasured even those issues with art I didn’t particularly care for. And though it won three Eisner Awards in 2006, Solo was cancelled after only twelve issues, due to poor sales. Considering the talent on display: Darwyn Cooke, Paul Pope, Brendan McCarthy, and Tim Sale among others, speaks volumes about the average comic fan’s distaste for the anthology format.
Which brings us back to Wednesday Comics, another anthology series that’s attracted top-level talent, but this time with a built-in twelve issue terminus. Once bitten, twice shy, I suppose. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on July 10th, 2009  Author: Bruce Sterling
Del Rey, 2009
Best ebook deal: Diesel eBooks
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
4 |
| Entertainment..... |
4 |
| Depth..... |
5 |
The Caryatids is a novel of ideas, in that it doesn’t give too much weight to characters or plot. It concerns a dystopian future in which the environment has been destroyed, and the substance of the narrative largely focuses on the debate about what to do.
In the blue corner, there’s the Acquis (or future Democrats), well-meaning bleeding hearts with questionable methods; they’re trying to fix the planet and save humanity. In the red corner, there’s the Dispensation (future Republicans), profiteering corporate lugs with questionable morals; they’ve accepted their doom and are trying to live as well as they can in the meantime. It’s a thinly veiled political allegory, and doesn’t serve particularly well as the backbone of this fictional world.
The title refers to seven clones created by a rogue scientist. The novel is divided into three sections, each following one “sister,” tied together more by passing reference than any real connection or interaction. Ultimately each section is more a premise than a narrative, and The Caryatids is finally a fractured series of ideas and satires that never quite coalesces into a compelling story. …
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By Sean Clark, on July 9th, 2009  Author: Ivo Andrić
University of Chicago Press, 1945
Best ebook deal: Not Available
| C4 Ratings.....out of |
10 |
| Language..... |
7 |
| Entertainment..... |
7 |
| Depth..... |
9 |
As much as I enjoyed this novel, I want to mention that it took me quite a while to get through. In fact my review was originally scheduled to post back in May. It’s not that the book was laborious or boring, quite to the contrary. The Bridge on the Drina is one of those books that has a very steadfast feeling, and therefore, rather than feeling eager to get back to it, I was content to put it aside for a few days at a time, and visit it when the mood struck me. This is much the same way I approach reading poetry, as if it were a garden I really enjoyed strolling in, but only until my feet get sore.
That said, this is an excellent and engrossing book. Andrić won the 1961 Nobel Prize for it. In some ways (probably those that encouraged me to read it in parceled segments as I did), it is a conventional and comfortable book. It was easy to dip in and out of because the narration is very straightforward and the plot is episodic in nature, with bite-size chapters linked more thematically than anything else. In fact many of the characters and events are not even taken into account by the participants of later chapters. Unfortunately I cannot speak to the historical accuracy of Drina, but judging from the Wikipedia entry, Andrić seems to have kept pretty true to fact (at least at the major points) in his fictional rendering. …
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By Nico Vreeland, on July 8th, 2009 Some news about books and ebooks from around the web:
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