Kill it with fire (or a stake, or decapitation)…

Just when I think that the actions of the TwiMoms, the most frightening segment of Twilight fandom (although there’s pretty stiff competition for that title) have gone too far, one of them has to go ahead and do something even creepier. This time: Etsy seller Twimom (yes, she got the actual name; does that make her their leader??) presents Cullen-ize Me. For only $10, you can see what you’d look like if you were all undead and sparkly. Jesus.

First impressions: Barnes and Noble Nook

I read all the time, even when I should be doing other things. I take a ton of books with me on vacation, and as any student/or big-time reader can tell you, lugging around a lot of books gets really old, really quick. I’d been toying around with the idea of getting an e-book reader for a while, and even went so far as to compare the Amazon Kindle, which seems to be the industry standard, to e-readers from Sony and other companies. Nothing really screamed “buy me,” so I put that search on the back burner. I was surprised then, by how fascinated I became when Barnes and Noble announced their Nook. For some reason, it seemed like a better fit for me than a Kindle, which I’ve only briefly seen in action. Why? Now, I really can’t remember, but maybe it was the newness of it. It seemed to me that something newer, which reasonably stood to benefit from the examples of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s e-book readers, would present the end user with a better product. Is this the case? I don’t know.

The wait

After an agonizing day of going over the pros and cons in my minds, and looking at comparison charts, I decided to buy the Nook the day after it was announced. I waited with baited breath until November 30 (the original estimated ship date), and got really angry when, at 4:30 that day, B&N sent out an email stating that the Nook wouldn’t be delivered until December 10. That was a week and a half away!!! I would have felt better if they’d been upfront about this earlier, as they had to have known that they wouldn’t make their initial market date.

They did try to placate those of us who’d expected a Nook on November 30 with a $10 credit to their online store, which was also an instance of epic failure since, at the time, the B&N online store didn’t allow credits to be used to buy e-books. Barnes and Noble’s real books are usually pricey without their $25/year membership, and I’m not a member; 99% of what I want is cheaper at Amazon, so why in the world would I want to buy a physical book from B&N?? Luckily, B&N finally realized how stupid it was not to allow e-reader owners to buy e-books with the “my bad” credit they’d received, and changed to policy to allow store credits to purchase e-books.

The reality

When I first got my Nook, I was in heaven. I was so happy it had arrived that I tore into the packaging as soon as I got home and saw it on my bed. Unfortunately, the people who made the Nook must have thought that a genius would be opening the package only after it was attacked by a band of feral animals, because the opening process was so difficult that it included instructions. And I still found it hard! Once I got over my worries that my troubles in opening the Nook meant I was too stupid to use it, I let it get fully charged and then started to play around with it.

The things I like about the Nook are manifold:

• It’s insanely portable; I ordered  a case that was back-ordered and hasn’t arrived yet, but it fits perfectly into a quart-sized ziplock bag, so that’s how I’ve been moving it to and fro.
• Changing from the default font to Helvetica Neue made a ton of difference for me, and now the text is perfect for extended periods of reading.
• I like being able to browse B&N and Google Book collections on my Nook, and download items directly to it. Also, anything I buy on Barnes and Noble’s web site is automatically sent to my Nook.

The thing I don’t like about the Nook:

• If I’d posted this yesterday, I would have started with the fact that turning pages on the Nook was noticeably slow. I didn’t want to complain about this, but three seconds to get from one page of a book to the next is certainly something that grows tiresome over the course of 800+ pages. Awesomely, the software on the Nook updated today to version 1.1, and now turning pages is much much faster.
• Turning pages by swiping the touchscreen. I have to say that, for the first week or so that I had my Nook, I found this function almost completely useless. When I tried to change the page using the touchscreen, I would be successfully only about 25% of the time. The Nook guide was pretty useless in figuring out the specific movement that would work every time, as it just said to swipe your finger across the touchscreen (um, thanks). And the instructions didn’t mention that I had to swipe toward the left to turn to the next page. Maybe if most English-language books went from right to left, this would make sense, or even if the Nook’s directional buttons functioned in this way, but they don’t, so it doesn’t. Through trial and error, I finally figured out how to swipe in a way that almost always works, but this was no thanks to B&N.
• Although I’m pleased with the now speedier page-turning process, it feels like Nook symbol has become less responsive with this software update. I wonder if that’s possible, but it seems like I have to press the symbol and the touchscreen harder now in order to awaken them after they’ve fallen asleep. This annoys me.

The verdict

I like my Nook a lot, I just don’t love every part about it. I agree with this Engadget review, that says it’s hard to use and lacks any sort of intuitive interface. I think that David Pogue’s review was overly negative, but that it brought up some valid points. I feel that there was a bit of a learning curve, and I’m now familiar enough with this gadget that I understand and like it for what it is. I don’t know if everybody would feel this way, but I’m glad that I bought my Nook.

Say it ain’t so, Philly

I really like Philadelphia. Despite its obnoxious baseball team (who the Mets beat today in dramatic fashion [finally]), it has a lot of good things to recommend it. It’s walkable, pretty, and since the murder rate is so high (but now falling!), it’s nice that the cabs are plentiful and relatively cheap. Plus, I have good friends who live nearby, which clearly adds to the awesomeness that is Philly. At one point, I’d even considered moving there and getting a job at one of the city’s library branches. Which is why the news that the entire city/regional Free Library of Philadelphia system will close on October 2, unless the state legislature approves funding, is both so shocking and frightening.  I’ve heard of branches closing or hours being cut back, but I’ve never heard about such a large library system considering closing down altogether. This is both nuts and scary. In this time of increased economic hardship, libraries are playing a vital role in their communities.

Should this happen, I wish the best of luck to all who lose their jobs because of this, and the worst of it to the politicians responsible.

Again?

I never tire of asking what is wrong with people, and as usual, the dawning of a new day just brings me new people to despise and pity. The culprits this time? Some stupid yahoos in West Bend, Wisconsin, who think that censorship, law suits, and book-burning (literally) are perfectly cromulent responses to books in the Young Adult section that they find inappropriate. No rational person is going to argue that every book in a library is appropriate for every person who who may walk into that library. And I’m all for parents having a say over what media their children consume (until those kids are over 18 or paying their own way in life). But instead of these people just telling their own children not to read certain books, which would be well within their rights as parents, they want to label and move books and prevent other people’s children from having access to them, too.

Instead of being ashamed of themselves for being so fearful and hiding their intolerance from the world, such people wear it proudly like a badge and want to get more people to join their crusade. Ginny Maziarka is one of the spokespeople for the efforts to censor the library’s materials and amend its policies for labeling young adult material. She seems to be the leader of those in West Bend who are trying to prevent other people’s children from reading things that their own parents may not find objectionable, and runs the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries web site.

This is what I don’t get about so many issues that people object to; if you don’t like it, don’t do it/watch it/listen to it/eat it, etc. Why should I have to live according to what you believe? And who gets to say what is appropriate anyway? I mean, I find those Purity Ball things highly suspect, but I would never force grown men to stop encouraging their daughters to wear prom dresses, don pseudo-wedding bands, and pledge their virginity to their fathers. Because that’s not creepy at all.

Thankfully, Ms. Maziarka does not speak for the entire town, and there is a reasonable response to that site, in the form of Sleepless in West Bend. The library is for everybody (even weirdos)! There are a lot of things in the library that I kind of give people the side-eye for even wanting to look at, but that doesn’t lessen my support for those items to stay in the library. I’m not sure how I missed out on hearing about this sooner, since Gawker covered it over a month ago.

And THIS is why I don’t have a Kindle

As you are probably coming to understand, I read all the time. All. The. Time. I am always reading something, be it in the form of a physical book, or more and more frequently lately, on my computer through the New York Public Library‘s ebooks division. I know that a lot of people prefer the heft and smell of physical books, or just can’t stare at a screen for long, but that doesn’t bother me. I’ve flirted with the idea of getting a kindle, but it just seems to be too expensive. Amazon recently dropped the price from $360 to $299, so that’s nice, but each book still runs an average of $10 each. If NYPL or BCCLS, the other library system that I belong to, would work out an arrangement with Kindle that would allow users to borrow and return books, then the initial outlay would be immediately justifiable for me and I’d snap up a Kindle without delay. This seems unlikely though, so I will stick with my free physical and digital library books.

Another thing that gives me pause is the “What ifs” associated with moving to an all-digital book format. This technology isn’t very old, and I think people and companies are still grappling with its possibilities and limitations. Kindle owners rave about how they can download their books wirelessly, but recently they learned the hard way that their beloved wireless transfer system works both ways. So a Kindle content provider maybe-sorta sold editions of 1984 and Animal Farm that it didn’t actually hold the rights for. And when Amazon was alerted to this by the companies that actually do own the rights to those books, they maybe-sorta just yanked them back off of people’s Kindles and issued refunds, without any sort of heads-up. Was that wrong? Should they not have done that? While bypassing the apology all together, Amazon did say that, in the future. books it is found to have sold in error will not be removed remotely from people’s Kindles. The person I felt worst for when reading this article was this kid:

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

I guess I’m also waiting for an e-reader that will do color well and not be so clunky. I love actual books, so I can wait.

On second thought

So I’m still going to read through Newsweek’s list of the top 100 books, but I finally went through it and realized I’d read a fifth of the books contained on it (still pretty terrible for a librarian, eh?). I do not want to reread those books; in many cases, once was enough. So I’m going to continue with my plan to work my way through this list, without repetitions. I’m also not going in order, because the end of the list is weighted down by many dour-looking nonfiction works, the mere thought of which makes me sleepy.

I already keep a spreadsheet of books I’ve read, but I think I’ll need to start a new one just for this project. I’ll post it when I’m finished making it!

Update: Here is the spreadsheet in .xls format. When I get to a computer with OpenOffice.org on it, I’ll also put it in an open format.

La, la, la, {skip}

I have no idea why, but I’m so happy today. It’s not the usual, “It’s a Friday and I don’t have to work” kind of deal. I’m just really really happy. I actually caught myself singing “La la la” and skipping down the hall from my room to the living room. I know that’s abnormal, but there you go. I did just finish a really interesting book (nonfiction even!), and that always excites me. The book is entitled The Unlikely Disciple and written by Kevin Roose, a young journalist from Brown University who spends a semester at Liberty University. I appreciated the nuanced view; it wasn’t LOLXtians at all. I finished that much quicker than I expected to (nonfiction tends to languish in piles until I can’t take the guilt anymore and just return them, unread, to the library), so maybe I’ll start on my Newsweek Top 100 books challenge earlier than I though. I believe that I shall ease myself into it by rereading Pride and Prejudice tomorrow while I’m at work.

This afternoon, though, I’m going to hang out with my parents, and just generally enjoy this lovely day!

Books, books, books

I find Top 100 (or 10, 50, etc) of anything lists fascinating to read but generally meaningless. Tastes are so subjective, and even when I’m familiar with the subject being evaulated, I don’t always agree with the items that are chosen for inclusion. Still, I’ve found out about good books, movies, music, and web sites this way, so I’d be crazy to discount Top whatever lists. Today, while reading Newsweek’s Top 100 Books, I thought it might be interesting to work my way through the list and read everything on it, even books that I’d already read before. I used to hate classic literature, but now  I realize that I just hated the way that a lot of it was taught in schools, with all the joy removed and too much focus on minute, boring analyses. Then I read books like Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice on my own, and realized that a book doesn’t have to be terrible just because it’s considered classic literature.

At first I was going to give myself a time frame in which to do this, but there are few things in life that I enjoy as much as completely ignoring deadlines, so I’m not even going to bother to assign an end date for this. I’m in the middle of a fun, lighthearted Jennifer Cruisie novel right now, and I have a few other things lined up for the rest of the week, but I’ll get started on this at least by the end of the month. I’ll keep track of my progress.

What?

I usually pride myself on my English comprehension, but I cannot for the life of me figure out the point of this article. I can’t believe that this anecdote by a first-time author was deemed to be interesting enough to publish. I wouldn’t even have told it at a dinner party.

Yay for productivity

I took this week off of work to decompress and just relax, and I told myself that today I would either knit or clean. You’d think that would be an obvious choice, but by 11:30 I still hadn’t done anything, so I made myself lunch and then set to cleaning my room. It took several hours, because my books all feel in love and bred it seems like, but I finally saw FLOOR at 3:45. Then, just for the hell of it, I changed my sheets and comforter. My room is never going to be spotless because 1) I’m neat, but not obsessive and 2) I’ve condensed a large part of an entire apartment’s contents into one room.

So I guess now there’s nothing stopping me from working on that blanket. I think I shall have to tell myself that if I don’t finish another color set on the blanket (probably 16 rows at this point), I will not be allowed to go out and play tomorrow. I may cheat a bit, though, since I’m going to a knitting meetup tomorrow, and it only makes sense to bring my major project along. BUT, I will have to do a needle/yarn inventory first, so that I don’t end up buying something I already own.