Archive for the 'Books' Category
July 13, 2010 @ 9:13 pm | Filed under: Books
To cut to the chase: a Kindle has come into my possession, and I’m surprised to find I adore it. That’s right, Mac-fangirl, iPad-coveting me.
After a mere four days of Kindle use, I find myself eyeing the stacks of books in the TBR pile and wishing I had their digital versions instead.
This feels passing strange, considering how much I love the tactile aspects of a book-book. The intriguing or unsuitable cover, the shush of pages rustling, the crisp words springing up from the page. Font, margin, endpapers: these things I cherish.
But: the Kindle—it’s so slim and smooth in the hand, and one hand is enough. Tap, tap, tap, a single thumb—either thumb, a detail I appreciate—advances the pages. Three chapters into a book about Sudan, I find myself wanting some background; I nudge the little square button and make my way, lightning-quick, to Google or Wikipedia. (How much saner I’d have been had I read the recent Byatt book this way instead.) Dickens makes me laugh, and I want to share the passage with Scott: chk chk, I’ve highlighted the quote and added a note of my own.
The Dickens was free, of course, and easy to find.
Unlike my iPod Touch, I can’t read the Kindle in the dark. But any book I download to the Kindle can be sent to the Touch as well, and there’s a sync function to make sure my bookmark is always in the right spot.
When I first turned the Kindle on, I was disappointed. The contrast is not terrific; the background of the page is gray, not white, not the creamy color my Touch can produce. Oh dear, I thought, this is going to be a bust. My eyes require good contrast. I drive Scott crazy by wearing down my laptop battery with the screen turned always to maximum bright.
But I wasn’t sitting in good light during that first encounter. I upped the font size and moved to a sunny corner, and I could read just fine. Under a lamp or reading light, it’s the same as reading a real book.
(I will always call them real books, you know.)
When I read on my iPod, the device seldom ceases calling attention to itself. I’ve written before about feeling curiously distant from the text of a book-on-iPod. Is it the small screen? The backlighting? Whatever the cause, I have to concentrate harder. That isn’t happening with the Kindle. The Kindle disappears. There’s just the unfolding story. I’d heard people say that, but I was skeptical. It’s true. It disappears—until the moment I desire its presence. I really love that note-and-highlight function.
The iPod Touch is a brilliant multitasker. You know I love its versatility: mail, web, games, books, language lessons, social networks, videos, good grief is there anything it can’t do? Well, it seems it can’t stop nibbling at my attention, that’s what. I’m reading a book but I know I can do a quick mail check with two taps. Temptations. Distractions.
The Kindle’s web browser is boring black-and-white, not at all tempting. It’s a unitasker, and that’s what this fidgety brain of mine needs in order to focus on a book. A real book is a single-purpose tool. (Unless you count serving as the dominant element of my home’s interior design.)
These are just notes on the honeymoon phase of the Kindle experience. The novelty may wear off quickly; we’ll see. I have all these lovely realbooks here waiting to be read. Real books with no DRM attached—that’s a major strike against the Kindle, when it comes to newer publications, the kind you actually pay for. And of course with a great many children’s books (picture books go without saying), you want to turn real pages, pages your four-year-old can point at and and pore over.
For classics, though? And thinking as a homeschooler? There’s a lot to recommend a cool, slim, ten-ounce tablet that can put any of the Great Books before your children’s eyes in a matter of seconds. As for new books, even if you can’t live with DRM-laden purchases, you gotta love the free download of first chapters to help you decide what to buy, in any form.
Well, we’ll see how long the honeymoon lasts.
ebooks, ereaders, iPod Touch, kindle
July 11, 2010 @ 7:28 pm | Filed under: Books
For one week I am attempting to record everything each member of the family reads. Today is day six. Day one. Day two. Day three. Day four. Day five.
Jane:
—reread Hunger Games
—Mindblind (ARC)
–Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy (in progress)
Rose:
—Rakkety Tam
Beanie:
—Marlfox
me:
—Great Expectations (cont.)
—The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (cont.)
Scott:
—the REM bio (cont.)
—Ringworld (cont.)
Will add bedtime reading in the morning.
July 10, 2010 @ 5:57 pm | Filed under: Books
For one week I am attempting to record everything each member of the family reads. Today is day five. Day one. Day two. Day three. Day four.
Jane:
—The Naming
—The Riddle
—Bella at Midnight
—Things Not Seen
—Things Hoped For
—Things That Are, these last three by Andrew Clements
(Saturday is library day.)
—UPDATED ON SUNDAY: I hear she stayed up late last night finishing Mansfield Park. Yay!
Rose:
—Pearls of Lutra (cont.)
—The Birthday Ball by Lois Lowry (ARC; in progress)
Beanie:
—Mossflower (cont.)
—Beck Beyond the Sea (Disney fairies book)
—Lily in Full Bloom (Disney fairies)
me:
—A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (advance review copy)
—Great Expectations, first four chapters (long story) (ha, pun not intended)
read-aloud to Rilla & Wonderboy:
—Today I Will Fly (a Mo Willems Piggie & Elephant book)
—There Is a Bird on Your Head (ditto)**
—Mr. Putter and Tabby Paint the Porch
Scott:
—Reveal: The Story of REM (cont.)
—Ringworld (cont.)
Scott to Rilla at bedtime:
—The Salamander Room
I forgot to do arrivals and departures! Saturday is our big library day, so a lot of things went back. I forgot to pay attention to what, though. A bunch of Jane’s things—handful of Dorothy Sayers mysteries, plus I think I saw the four-book Softwire series by P. J. Haarsma, the Orbis books (Virus on Orbis 1, Betrayal on Orbis 2, etc; and I know there was a Caroline Cooney book in the pile too. Also the two Cory Doctorow YA novels I’d checked out—I’ve decided to read them as e-books instead.
As for arrivals, the library-goers brought home more than they took back. I saw two of Mary Pope Osborne’s series of tales based on The Odyssey (brilliant idea, I must say); So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane; all the books in Jane’s list above; three Disney fairies books; the first book of a YA series by Ted Dekker; and Scott checked out Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, a Son, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood.
**Adding a note about reading the two Mo Willems books with Rilla today, because I’ll want to remember this in years to come. We had enjoyed both of these books, Today I Will Fly and There’s a Bird on Your Head, dozens of times already, but several weeks ago. Yesterday we found Today I Will Fly and she “read” it to me—mostly from memory, but a fair amount of sight-word recognition happening. And that’s so exciting; I can see she’s on the brink of reading, just as it happened with Beanie & Bob Books before her, and Rose with My Father’s Dragon before that. Today, she “read” me There’s a Bird on Your Head. Then she picked up Today I Will Fly and read that one—except she used, deliberately, the words from There’s a Bird on Your Head, tweaking them slightly to make them loosely fit the Today I Will Fly pictures. It was kind of hilarious, and great fun to see her playing with form that way. Gosh, I love this stage.
OK, I can’t be bothered to do italics on all those titles. Sorry, Chicago Manual of Style.
July 10, 2010 @ 9:17 am | Filed under: Books
For one week I am attempting to record everything each member of the family reads. Today is day four. Day one. Day two. Day three.
Jane:
—Feed
—more Dorothy Sayers
—Mansfield Park (cont.)
Rose:
—The Long Patrol (cont.)
Beanie:
—Mossflower (cont.)
me:
—Um. Weird. I seem not to have read anything from a book on this day. Really? Can that be right? Read a fair amount online, but no fiction. Well, we had other things going on. Our kitchen Monarch emerged from its chrysalis. I got a haircut.
read aloud to littles:
—the Searching for Small chapter from House at Pooh Corner
(big kids couldn’t help listening)
—Today I Will Fly by Mo Willems (actually, delightfully, Rilla read most of this to me)
Scott:
—Feed (cont.)
After he emerged, we moved him to the backyard. Photo by Jane.
July 8, 2010 @ 8:08 pm | Filed under: Books
For one week I am attempting to record everything each member of the family reads. Today is day three. Day one. Day two.
Jane:
—Lord Peter by Dorothy Sayers
—Unexplained (cont.)
—Showcase Presents: Batman #4
—Mansfield Park (cont.)
—Percy Jackson: The Demigod Files
Rose:
—Salamandastron (apparently started last night; I missed it)
—The Long Patrol (in progress)
—Jennie’s Moonlight Adventure by Esther Averill
—The School for Cats, also by Averill
Beanie:
—Mossflower (cont.)
me:
—Finished Feed.
read to Rilla:
—If You Put Me in the Zoo. Seems to be this week’s favorite.
Scott to Rilla & older listen-and-laughers:
—Pish Posh Said Hieronymus Bosch (this time for real!)
Scott himself:
—Ringworld (cont.)
Arrivals:
—an REM biography for Scott
—the two Esther Averill cat books on Rose’s list above, a nice distraction from sore teeth on braces day
Another busy day: Rose got braces; I did the grocery shopping; we went to the Y. So not a lot of cuddle-and-read time. That’s summer.
July 7, 2010 @ 6:25 pm | Filed under: Books
For one week—starting, awkwardly, on a Tuesday—I am attempting to record everything each member of the family reads. Day one was yesterday.
Jane:
—Mansfield Park (cont.)
—Unexplained (cont.)
—Showcase Presents: Batman 3 & 4
Rose and Beanie:
—Fraggle Rock comics #2 & 3
Rose:
Pearls of Lutra (cont.)
Beanie:
—Mossflower (cont.)
—Rowan and the Ice Creepers
me:
—Feed (cont.)
—The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (cont.)
Scott to Rilla and older listeners-in:
—Pish Posh Said Hieronymus Bosch (whoops, strike that, she fell asleep too soon)
Arrivals:
—None! Practically a first!
Departures:
—Bears on Wheels went back to the library. Yup, I remembered.
Other book-related activities:
—Stopped into our local children’s bookstore to see if they were stocking the Betsy-Tacy reissues. The Emily of Deep Valley reissue with Mitali Perkins’s foreword, and the Carney/Winona reissue with my foreword, will be published in October. ALA Midwinter is being held right here in San Diego in January, and the Betsy-Tacy crowd is already gearing up for some Maud-themed fun. I wanted to make sure this little bookstore was up to speed on all things Betsy Ray. The manager had not heard about the reissues and was quite interested.
Miscellaneous notes:
—Busy morning out of the house; Jane had a friend over in the afternoon. I didn’t read anything at all to the little ones, a realization that, here at the tail end of the day, makes me wince a little.
This list doesn’t (yet) include bedtime reading. I’ll update it in the morning.
July 6, 2010 @ 7:14 pm | Filed under: Books
Just for fun, I thought I’d try to keep track of everything everybody in the house reads each day for one week. I’ll update today’s entry tomorrow morning after I find out who read what in bed tonight. I’ll also include notes on books that make their way into (or out of, on loan or otherwise) the house.
Jane:
—finished one Dorothy Sayers (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club); started another (The Documents in the Case)
—Mansfield Park
—new issues of Muse and Calliope
—Unexplained: 347 Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena (began)
Rose:
—High Rhulain
—(UPDATED next morning) Pearls of Lutra, at bedtime
Beanie:
—Mossflower
—Billy Batson and the Power of Shazam (comics trade paperback)
Read aloud to Beanie & Rose:
—chapter of String, Straightedge, & Shadow
Read aloud to Rilla & Wonderboy:
—Bears on Wheels
—Mama!
—Mr. Putter and Tabby Paint the Porch
Scott read aloud to all girls:
—I’m writing this before bedtime, but I’m assuming he’s going to read them a chapter of their current read-aloud, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. (Jane & Rose has read it already, numerous times. First time for Rose and Beanie. The older girls wouldn’t dream of missing another opportunity to hear Scott’s Dumbledore voice.)
(Sometimes Dumbledore performs selections from The Cat in the Hat. I’m told this is the funniest. thing. ever.)
UPDATED WITH CORRECTION: I was wrong; last night turned out to be a late bedtime, so no Harry Potter. Scott read Put Me in the Zoo to Rilla (and the room at large).
Me:
—a wee little bit of Denby’s Great Books
—began Feed by M. T. Anderson
—various blogs
—UPDATED next morning: at bedtime, enjoyed another chapter of The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (Flavia de Luce sequel)
Scott:
—Ringworld by Larry Niven.
—plus of course he reads all day at work, including, on this day, an early volume of Sandman which he had to proof for the digital edition.
Arrivals:
—The Simpsons in the Classroom (review copy; looks like fun)
—The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and two others we’d reserved at the library; titles escape me now.
—also from the library, a few beginning readers: the aforementioned Mr. Putter book; ¡Mama! (a Spanish picture book Wonderboy makes a beeline for every time we go); a Little Bear book I think we own, but he was keen to check it out, so why not.
Departures:
—a stack of beginning readers returned to the library, except the one (Bears on Wheels) which was actually due today and not renewable, dadgummit. If I remember to return it before noon tomorrow, there won’t be a fine.
Will I remember? Oh the suspense.
July 1, 2010 @ 6:35 am | Filed under: Books
Continued to read, slowly, big chunks here and there, my two books on crows: Crow Planet and Caw of the Wild. In Caw, the author makes the acquaintance of her neighborhood crows (whom she comes to know by sight and personalities) by tossing peanuts onto her roof every day at the same time. This amused and delighted me, because the crows here fly passes over our yard every morning to see if I have chucked our bread crusts out the back door yet. I started clicking my tongue when I put out the crusts, and now if I walk out back in the morning and click, I’ll hear the sentry crow, perched in our neighbor’s tree with an eye on our yard, call a heads-up to his fellows. I get a little thrill of delight every time.
To Serve Them All My Days by R. F. Delderfield (a reread, only half finished at the end of June).
The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. I have not managed to be coherent about it yet.
Mindblind by Jennifer Roy. ARC sent by publisher. YA fiction about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. Mentioned here.
The Whisper of Glocken by Carol Kendall. Sequel to The Gammage Cup. From my notes: “Even better than Gammage, though The Firelings still holds the top spot in my heart. I want to write at more length about Kendall’s beguiling, quirky, suspenseful books, especially her fondness for bands of unlikely heroes whose faults turn out, Meg Murry-like, to be their strengths. For now I’ll just say that I highly recommend all three of these novels as family read-alouds or as satisfying read-alones for boys, girls, and fantasy-loving adults.”
A God Somewhere by John Arcudi, illustrated by Peter Snejbjerg (graphic novel).
Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles by Margaret Leslie Davis (parts).
Now it’s July. Three weeks to Comic-con. That’ll shape my reading choices this month.
June 29, 2010 @ 9:07 am | Filed under: Books
Byatt’s The Children’s Book. There is much to say. I can’t, yet. I finished it on Saturday and I couldn’t even look at another book on Sunday. Yesterday I picked up something I’ve already read: Delderfield’s To Serve Them All My Days. It begins at the end of World War I (which is where the Byatt ends) with a shell-shocked Welsh soldier taking a teaching post at a remote school for boys in North Devon. I think I felt a little shell-shocked myself after Byatt’s dark epic and, like David Powlett-Jones, needed a dose of bracing upland air and boyish pranks to pull me out of my head.
There’s a lesson for me here, and it’s that making reading lists, while a deeply satisfying activity, has, for me, practically nothing to do with the actual reading of books. Much of the time, perhaps most of the time, the book I have just finished reading selects its successor.
Between The Children’s Book (which begins in 1895, in the last creaky years of Victoria’s reign) and The Diamond’s Age, which I flipped through the other day, looking for (and not finding) a particularly iPad-ish quote for Friday’s little post, I have found myself hankering after a biography of Queen Victoria. Serendipitously, today Colleen teases a novel (not bio) called, deliciously, Prisoners in the Palace: A Novel of Intrigue and Romance about How Princess Victoria Became Queen with the Help of a Maid, a Newspaperman, and a Scoundrel. According to the blurb at Powell’s, it was “meticulously based on newly discovered information” by historian Michaela Maccoll. Sounds promising, no?
June 25, 2010 @ 2:34 pm | Filed under: Books
I mentioned Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age in my last post. I’ve added a brief and hopefully not-too-spoilery synopsis in the comments, with caveats, if you’re interested.
