Anne Frank is soooo boring

No to me, because I liked her diary (I actually like reading anybody’s diary), but this Salon article about Amazon.com users giving classic books 1-star reviews cracked me up. I will take a gander myself later on and find some other examples.

Why I’m Weird

Because I would read – and enjoy – a book entitled The Doctoral Candidate and the Ravishing Researcher.

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.

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.

I’m sensing a pattern here

I enjoy fiction. A lot. Some of my more outspoken colleagues openly question my love of fiction, and others just kind of give me sidelong looks, but I don’t care. I can sit down and enjoy a good non-fiction book just as much as the next nerd, but fiction is where my heart lives.

I have several stacks of “To be read” books in my room, but when I’m at work, I usually wander over to the New Book section to see what piques my interest. One of the books that I found this way was The Sleeping Beauty Proposal by Sarah Strohmeyer. This book is obviously marketed to women, and specifically those who have an interest in chick lit. I have absolutely nothing against the genre. Sometimes what you want is a book with some humor, romance, and vicarious fun that is not ONLY about romance.

I thought the book was funny, but I was bothered by how the main character tells a lie to save face, and then spends the rest of the novel telling larger and less justifiable lies to maintain her initial fiction. I definitely understand wanting to preserve your pride or trying to avoid looking foolish, but pretty early on, the deception crosses over into something else. I think that a lot of people can understand why Genie, the protagonist, would pretend that she is the person to whom her boyfriend proposed (over the phone) on live television, but then she gets more and more ridiculous as the book goes on. She buys a fake engagement ring, registers for stuff, and instead of trying to make some sort of graceful extrication, merely digs herself deeper and deeper into a mess.

I’ve been reading a lot of fantasy books lately (such as novels by Rachel Vincent, Mercedes Lackey, C. E. Murphy, and Sharon Shinn), so maybe I’m not just used to some of the conventions of other fiction anymore, but I really hate how reliant Strohmeyer’s protagonists are on dishonesty. I just started another of her novels, The Cinderella Pact. This novel also features a protagonist, Nola, who orchestrates a fiction that she then spends the rest of the rest of the book (so far) lying to maintain.

I don’t lie in order to get promotions, or to impress men, or really much at all (except to my nephew, and who doesn’t love lying to little kids??), and it disturbs me to see that dishonesty is sort of portrayed in these books as a functional way of life. I know, I know that the ends of these books have the heroines, their friends, and the fabulously wealthy romantic partners they’ve managed to snag along the way all chuckling and shaking their heads over the lies that were so recently such a large part of their lives, but this doesn’t ring true to me at all. I like my fiction to have a sort of internal consistency. And if it all ends up with everybody being understanding (after they’ve cooled off) and even admiring (However did you manage to maintain such a ruse for so long!), then why all the subterfuge to begin with?

I guess I’m probably thinking too much about these books, but I do think it’s kind of ridiculous how much effort both protagonists put into creating and maintaining an ever-growing amount of lies, all in the name of (financial, professional, romantic, personal) progress.

Tuesday night

In book news, I picked up Laurell K. Hamilton’s newest Anita Blake book today at the library. I haven’t started to read it yet, but I hope it’s good. Lately, the books in this series have seemed like nothing other than  exercises to see how many sexual partners Anita can have at once (I thought that was Merry‘s thing!), and I’m hoping there’s more plot to this one. I haven’t read about a repeat of the blog incident, so maybe this one will be good (or maybe Hamilton has just learned to step away from the keyboard).