Indie 100

I came across a link via another bookblog about Marc Fitten's Indie 100. This is a blog that chronicles the author's visits to 100 independent bookstores across the country. I've had the chance to visit one or two on his list (in Seattle) and really enjoy his take. So far, they are concentrated in the Southeastern US, New England, and the Pacific NW. Check it out here!

Back Up Your Kindle

It seems silly to say, but in the world of digital property, you always want to have an independent backup. Otherwise, you are liable to become a victim of a crashed computer, a virus, or Amazon.com acting in a silent and ethically questionable way.

As you can read in the referenced article, Amazon recently deleted content that had been purchased by its customers via the Kindle whispernet. Yes, the whispernet goes both ways. It's a good article that explains why Amazon reversed its customers' purchases, what it claims it will do in future such circumstances, and why it's so ironic that the recalled book was 1984.

Ahh, the digital age. It's a tricky one. Back up your digital documents, people.

Get Your Cheaper Kindle Here

For the first time, Amazon has reduced the price on it's Kindle (the classic size, not the DX) to $299.00. You can buy it here.

Uncertain about the Kindle? Read my thoughts about the device, both before and after purchasing.

Unfortunately, I've also heard buzzing that Amazon is pursuing patents that will allow them to insert ads into ebooks. Slashdot has some commentary, as does Fast Company.

Personally, this could be a deal breaker for me. It's certainly possible that I could learn to ignore embedded ads, but with the smaller-than-ideal screen size to begin with on the Kindle, I imagine that embedded ads would be distracting to the point of unreadability. I read books to immerse myself in the adventure, the journey, the lesson; not to be abruptly reminded that there's a special promotion at Red Lobster.

The Fast Company article articulates a few instances where this could be a good thing - lower-cost books for people who choose to tolerate the ads, or the ability to risk more publication of new writers with the helpful boost of advertising revenue. I understand both of these perspectives, but like FC, fear the blowback of higher prices or standardization and unavoidable advertisements.

I'll certainly stay tuned to this topic and hope that Amazon finds a way to utilize the patents that is not disruptive of the reading experience.

What about you? Would you read ebooks with embedded, contextual advertisements?

Coming Out From Under My Rock

May and June were busy. A family graduation, two vacations, and a wedding quickly conspired to make the time slip away.

On the upside, with all of the travel, I had lots of reading time, and will be back in the swing of posting shortly!

In the meantime, I read with interest Omnivoracious' list of the Best Books of 2009...So Far, which was posted yesterday. I've looked at a few of these, and realized that I haven't actually read any of them! So, I selected a few to add to my TBR:

Overall Top 10:

• The Lost City of Z by David Grann
• The City & The City by China Mieville
• Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad

Nonfiction:

• The Unforgiving Minute by Craig Mullaney

Young Readers:

• The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (and series)

Have you read any of these Best of the Year (so far?)

Hampton Roads Book Sale!

In my free time, I volunteer at Reach, a non-profit that provides read-aloud programs and book donations to homeless and at-risk children in the Hampton Roads area. Reach is hosting a book sale this Saturday. If you happen to live in the area, stop by and fill a bag for $10!

You can learn more about Reach and its programs to support child literacy at www.reachreads.org

BBC Books List

I pulled this from my friend Lea and figured it would be fun to see how I measure up!
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X +
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X +
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible- X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X +
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy *
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X (doesn't this count under #33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne *
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X (twice - and I have to say, I was underwhelmed both times).
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins *
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel X
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon X
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X +
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon *
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Naboko *
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas *
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker *
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert X
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X +

Reading Rainbow

I read an encouraging, and very well-written, article lately on one of the blogs I follow, Dangerous Intersection.

The National Endowment for the Arts recently announced an increase in the reading habits of Americans, the first such increase in over twenty years.

The author's commentary echoes my own thoughts in its excitement and relief at this important indicator. Like the author, I've never been able to fully understand the lack of motivation to read. Certainly, I've had friends who spend their time and energy on other activities, and I can understand how there are other ways to obtain information in our digital age, but books are special and unique in a way that other media simply isn't. Unlike television programming, which caters to the masses, the majority of literature isn't written to an agenda, a political end, or to meet the societally-acceptable standards of its time. In fact, frequently books are written to counteract these very concepts.

From a more selfish perspective, I don't think I can put it better than the author:

"Reading, I believe, is the best way we have to gain access to the world short of physically immersing ourselves in different places and cultures. Even for those who have the opportunity and resource to travel that extensively, reading provides a necessary background for the many places that will be otherwise inaccessibly alien to our sensibilities."

Adult Material

I've been really enjoying various works of Young Adult fiction lately. I find the stories to be extremely compelling and direct in a way that standard fiction is sometimes not.

Today, I read a great quote by Steven Moffat that really speaks to this fact:

"The misconception about children's fiction is that it's lightweight or fluffy. It's about really big and important things. It's adults who like light and fluffy. Everything is big and important to a child, [so] their stories are about big and important events."

Poetry

Sometimes when I'm reading, I come across a phrase with a beauty that strikes me, and takes me out of the reading experience. Sometimes it makes me contemplative, other times sad, or emotionally in sync with the author.

While reading World Made By Hand, I encountered one of these phrases:

"The old high school complex itself was a 1970's-vintage modernist monstrosity, a U-shaped set of low-slung rectilinear boxes like ten thousand other schools around the nation from the period. Seeing the building usually made me deeply sad and even a little angry, the way that refrigerator in my garden did. Its vision of yesterday's tomorrow seemed pitiful."

It's vision of yesterday's tomorrow...

It's such an evocative phrase. It made me stop and think - what will tomorrow's people think of our vision of their present? What visions do we have today of our tomorrows that are similarly pitiful? How can we as humanity rise above the limitations we set for ourselves, and the restricted futures we dream of?

Most Amazing Library

I just saw this article on Wired.com, Jay Walker's library is a booklover's (and stargazer's, and history buff's) dream.

I would simply die. This is now the coolest library I have ever seen. Far surpassing previous holders of the title, among them Trinity College Dublin and the library in the Enchanted Castle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Feast your eyes on more photos....

66%

Well, I didn't do so well on the November Blog-month goal. In fact, I barely escaped a failing grade - 2/3 of days I successfully posted an entry. Ah well. I suppose it's a goal to have for the future!

But for the moment, I'm back! And I've brought some new fun: a POLL! See sidebar - look, it's big and prominent so you don't have to hunt. Yes, I'm venturing into the world of add-ons and fun features. So, dear readers (apparently I have 3 now! - although anonymous readers and passers-by are also very welcome), I pose a question to you:

What is your favorite book to read around the holidays? Myself, I routinely find my brain itching to read the young adult classic The Dark is Rising - one of the books in a series of 5, and an excellent story that is full of christmas-y setting. I also think of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the fight against winter without Christmas. And while I actually have never read A Christmas Carol (gasp!), it certainly comes to mind as a holiday classic.

So tell me what you think, and definitely leave a comment if you have another suggestion - I'm always looking for recommendations!

Books

Reading is something else, an engagement of the imagination with life experience. It’s fad-resistant, precisely because human beings are hard-wired for story, and intrinsically curious. Reading is not about product...Yes, the act of reading takes some effort, unlike the passive act of using the products Jobs has created, which involves little more than directing eyeballs to a flat patch or putting a plug into the ear. -excerpted from "Book Lust" in Wednesday's NYT.

An interesting counterpoint to my last post, and in response to Steve Jobs' comment lamenting the death of reading as an American activity. The author presents much more positive statistics about the frequency and impact of the American reader.

Particularly intriguing for me as I debate the merits of purchasing a Kindle. Less time spent in the back corners of independent bookstores? Fewer bookshelves groaning under the weight of my collection? Lighter bag without 1-2 books inside at all times? the ability to take a vacation and not run out of reading material half-way through? all good things...

contrasted to the pure joy of cracking open a new book, smelling the pages, touching the paper, and sitting with a cup of tea on a weekend morning?

I'm not sold yet....

Navigating by Bookstore

I had a life-altering experience this past weekend. Okay, I exaggerate, but even so, it was amazing. Beau and I were in Oregon for a friend's wedding, and on our way back home on Sunday, we made a stop at Powell's City of Books, in downtown Portland.

I'd heard of Powell's before, and actually subscribe to some of their review newsletters, but somehow I had not connected that it's the biggest bookstore in the world. It's just overwhelming! first off, it's an entire city block, with multiple floors. You walk in and collect a map, which guides you to the many color-coded sections that feature, say, cooking, home, and business; military, political, philosophical and social sciences; travel, religion; and so on and so forth.

Another really nice thing about Powell's is that they intermix the used and new books on the shelf. It gives you the option to purchase whichever type of book you want, in the condition you desire, at a price more or less of your choice.

Those of you who know me well will be impressed when I say I made it out only purchasing six new books (two of which were actually used). If you're interested:

• The Dark River (Fourth Realm Trilogy, Book 2) by John Twelve Hawks - follow up to The Traveler, a few years back


• Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy by Lindsay Moran


• The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien


• Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea by George Lakoff


• Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth by Daniel Glick


• The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design by Richard Dawkins

So with Powell's freshly in mind, I thought I'd publish for my friends and readers a list of my favorite bookstores across the country. If you happen to find yourself in one of these cities, run, do not walk, to the noted destination :-)

Seattle: Elliott Bay Book Company

Denver: The Tattered Cover

Boston (Cambridge): Globe Corner (travel books) and Schoenhof's (foreign language books)

Washington DC: Kramerbooks & Afterwords

and of course..
Portland: Powell's


I'll update as my travels take me elsewhere...

Seeking Suggestions



I'm currently reading an excellent book, The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay. It's really very good. It draws me in and makes me very sad when my ferry ride is over and I have to put it aside until the evening.

The interesting thing about this book is that, without the recommendation from a good friend, I would probably have overlooked it. The title sounds a bit too "personal-inspiration" story to make me pick it out of a crowd; the description (on the edition that I purchased) displays boxing gloves - I'm not a huge reader of sports stories - and in fact, despite the recommendation, I passed it by several times on trips to Borders.

Which just goes to show, sometimes my "book-sniffer" fails.

So with that in mind, any elusive readers of my blog, I'd love to get your suggestions. What are two or three of your favorite books? perhaps something outside of my usual silos of historical fiction, current affairs, and YA fiction/fantasy. Although I'd welcome any suggestions, of course. I won't ask for your ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOK because I know how much I personally hate that question. But just to open it up - what should be next on my TBR list? (to be read)

Thanks in advance for any responses :-)

Ha!

These book titles, taken together, just made me laugh:

Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show by Geoffrey Nunberg

Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) by Rod Dreher