I didn’t join Goodreads. Mostly because until recently I didn’t know what it was or what I would want to join for. Many authors and friends had suggested via facebook I should join, and that only made me less likely to do so, because I assumed it was another facebook game or oddity. When I finally realized it consisted of normal people, well, as normal as any one who would join something called Goodreads–meaning lovers of the written word–are, the grassroots group sold out to the man, as the kids in my youth would say. They sold their original nice friendly swapping of what members enjoyed and didn’t like to the Robber Baron devil of Amazon. On the Goodreads home page, the list owners describe
Kindle Archive
Finally a eReader User I finally bought an eBook reader. I know that I’ve been writing about eBooks for a few years now, but only just this past week did I finally decide to get a dedicated eBook reader, rather than running an app on my iPad or an eBook reader program on my computer. My initial assessment, which I’ll explain more in a bit, is overwhelmingly positive. I decided that it was finally time to get one because a few months ago a friend recommended Old Man’s War by John Scalzi. I was about to buy a copy when I remembered that it was among the 8 books included with the Humble eBook Bundle, a pay-what-you-want collection of DRM free eBooks I had bought a few
I suppose the kindle or nook or ibook could be considered a stack of books being lightly hauled from destination to destination by those who love to use them. Not of that ilk myself, I tend to enclose a book of some sort, hardcover, paperback, pulp fiction, doesn’t matter what form, so long as it’s not a machine. I have one in a bag made especially for the written word, coincidently called a ‘book bag.’ Or, if thin and compact enough, I stuff one in whatever purse I am forced to bring with me in order to fit into society’s expectations of what women are supposed to have as paraphernalia. I used to manage without even a wallet, just keys and some ID, but that
So a few independent bookstores decided to sue Amazon and the major publishers who made a devil’s deal to control e-books. From the Huffington Post: “Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold. The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers.” Not that
One of the things I remember from my time in school learning to be a librarian was something the professor in the Reference Services class I took during my first semester said: never apologize for what you read. This is just one of those quotes that is so simple and yet so true. Why should you apologize for what you read? Reading is done for you and no one else. Reading a book lets you learn something you didn’t know, it entertains you, and it provides an escape valve. It is also very hard to put into practice. Or it was, at least. People judge people. They judge them based on what they wear, how they talk, what they say, what they do, and what they read. I commute to