73% geek, the rest is girly-bits

Shardik
by Richard Adams

I first read Richard Adams’ novel Maia at twelve, and instantly fell in love with the Beklan Empire. Reread multiple times during my youth, I was crushed when my copy went missing and I searched for a replacement for years. I was overjoyed when I finally found a battered second-hand copy last year, but the cherry on top was finding a copy of Shardik a couple of weeks later. Maia was published ten years after Shardik, but is a prequel of sorts as it is set before the events described in Shardik.

Shardik is fantasy novel about a simple hunter who one day encounters a giant bear. After that first chance meeting, Kelderek’s fate becomes inextricably entwined with that of Shardik the Bear, the physical embodiment of the Power of God as worshipped by an Ortelgan cult. Adams never explicitly reveals whether or not Shardik is the actual embodiment of divinity. The characters themselves have differing opinions on whether Shardik is a divine creature or merely a savage animal. And there is no lack of savagery. Shardik kills many during the course of the story, if not indiscriminately then at least whimsically on more than one occasion, and being his worshipper in no way guarantees safety.

Although the story is basically about a man hunting a big bear, it’s also about worship, slavery, pride, humility, savagery, betrayal, forgiveness and contentment. It’s meandering and at times overflowing with flowery passages, particularly ones describing emotions, but it works. Although I prefer Maia the two novels complement one another, and I really enjoyed seeing the Beklan Empire from another point of view.

Dragons of the Highlord Skies
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Dragons of the Highlord Skies details Kitiara Uth Matar’s rise within the ranks of the Dragon Army, and Laurana’s struggle to accept the loss of Tanis whilst helping a trio of Solamnic Knights search for a second Dragon Orb.

As mentioned previously, I was a little disappointed after finishing the first book of the Chronicles, Dragons Of The Dwarven Depths. The characters felt a little “off”. While Dragons of the Highlord Skies did a better job of recapturing the personalities of beloved characters, I felt Weis and Hickman spent a little too much time on characters introduced in this novel whereas I would have preferred to see more depth imparted to the relationships we already care about thanks to the original trilogy. Considering what happens in Dragons of Winter Night, I would have loved more interaction between Laurana and Sturm.

Though I didn’t enjoy Dragons of the Highlord Skies as much as the original novels, it’s a pretty satisfying read, and I enjoyed learning more about what Kitiara was up to whilst the Companions were traipsing around Krynn in the Chronicles. However, I’ll freely admit to being sorely disappointed by the much anticipated meeting of Kitiara and Lord Soth. Instead of spending chapters detailing Kitara’s journey to Dargaard Keep, I’d have preferred reading about the meeting itself, rather that being fobbed off with what felt like a summary.

Notwithstanding the Kitiara/Lord Soth letdown, I am really looking forward to Dragons of the Hourglass Mage as Weis and Hickman seem to be getting back into their groove, and Raistlin always was one of my favourite characters.

Dragons Of The Dwarven Depths
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

As a teen, I spent countless hours devouring the various Dragonlance novels, and the first novel in the series, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, was directly responsible for my initiation into role-playing games. I spent many hours as a DM for years to come because of that one novel. Ah good times…

During the 90s an endless barrage of novels were pumped out of first TSR, later WOTC under the Dragonlance banner. Some were atrocious, some meh, and some really good. I guess I was, and still am, a purist at heart, preferring the “core” novels, i.e. the Chronicles, Legends and Tales I and II trilogies. So you can imagine my glee when I very recently discovered that Weis and Hickman were more than halfway through writing a series of books called the Lost Chronicles. A trilogy set during the original Chronicles, embellishing some of the more minor events that were glossed over in the original novels.

Unfortunately I was a little disappointed after finishing the first book in the series, Dragons Of The Dwarven Depths. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed learning more about the events that took place with details we weren’t privy to in previous novels, but… It wasn’t the same as reading the Chronicles the first time. I don’t know whether that’s because Weis’s and Hickman’s style is actually different in this book or simply that I am a lot older now and perhaps my tastes have changed. It just felt a little bloodless. The characters I know and love were there, but seemed like pale shadows of the personalities I remember from years ago.

That being said, I finished Dragons of The Dwarven Depths, am a quarter of the way through Dragons of the Highlord Skies and will undoubtedly be reading Dragons of the Hourglass Mage when it’s published. So it would seem I’m still a Dragonlance fangirl…

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
by John Berendt

I took note of Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil when it was first published and storming up the best-seller lists, then once again when it was filmed, but until I found a beat-up copy in a thrift store I never bothered reading it. My mistake.

Not only is it well-written and extremely readable, it has such a fictional feel, I actually didn’t realise it was based on a true story until the very end. Only the lack of a “tidy” denouement gave it away. Although the plot is interesting and the characters are intriguing, it’s very obvious who the star of the novel is. The entire book reads like a love-letter to Savannah, and the plot itself became almost secondary to the exploration of the city and it’s inhabitants.

I really enjoyed Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil, and Berendt’s style so I’ll definitely be reading The City of Falling Angels when I get through my current to-read pile (which is still taller than me).

As I mentioned previously, the ‘net offers many ways to get ebooks for free. However, if you want to read the latest blockbusters, and more contemporary literature you’ll have to buy it. The following is a list of ebook retailers I’ve found, and in most cases purchased from.

Books on Board
Books on Board offer lots of books in various formats, and also sell audiobooks. Personally I find the site a little frustrating, for some reason it’s slow to load for me, and if I’m trying to look up a lot of books the wait gets tedious. Books on Board have pretty good prices, and seem to get new books quicker than some of the other retailers. They also offer a discount towards future purchases through their Rewards Dollars program.

The Rewards Dollars program is pretty cool as you get the discount in addition to whatever price you paid for your books, it works more like a bonus than a rebate. The only thing I don’t like is that they aren’t totally automatic. If you want to claim Rewards Dollars you need to mail the receipt to BoB within 10 days of purchase in order for the Rewards Dollars to be credited. That’s the type of thing I’ll forget to do at one point or another and then I’ll get annoyed with myself

CyberRead
CyberRead offer thousands of ebooks in a few formats, and although they don’t have a rebate/rewards scheme they often give nice discounts.  I’ve bought a lot of books from them, and apart from the lack of wish list functionality, I’ve been very happy with their site. All purchased books are stored under the My Orders area, and arranged by purchase date under the order number. It’s a nice clean way of doing it, but in a couple of years with few hundred books purchased from them, I doubt I’m going to find it particularly user-friendly.

Speaking of discounts, as far as I know, in 2009 CyberRead will offer a 40% discount code for every review submitted. You don’t have to purchase the book from them in order for your review to be eligible, but be aware that it can take a few days before the code arrives, as they have to review and accept your submission.

Diesel eBooks
Diesel eBooks boasts a massive inventory, basically saying on their website, if it’s in a digital format, we’ve got it. Although not offering specials via loyalty clubs or mailing list subscriptions, Diesel eBooks claim to have low prices up front and from what I’ve seen, that claim seems to be on the nose. In addition to the low prices you can earn discounts towards future purchases, which unlike BoB’s system seems to be automatic. Diesel also offers wish list functionality, discounted book bundles, and even allows different ways to sort your bookshelf.

Downloading ebooks from Diesel is a bit different from other stores, and I find it a bit odd. Once you’ve bought a book, you are emailed a link to the download. The purchased book does not appear on your bookshelf on the Diesel site for 24 hours.

Digitalbok
Digitalbok.no is the only Norwegian distributor of ebooks that I’m aware of, and they also sell readers. In fact I bought my Cybook Gen3 from them. They do sell Norwegian ebooks, but AFAIK only in PDF format. Also, they seem in general to price books a little higher than their EU/US based counterparts.

eBooks.com
eBooks.com has a good amount of ebooks in a couple of formats, offers 10% discount on NYT bestsellers, and seems to regularly offer specials.  Although I have an account with them I’ve never used it, and can’t really say anything useful about their site.

eReader
eReader.com is powered by Fictionwise and offers a huge amount of ebooks (their tag line is “The World’s Largest eBook Store”) but only in eReader format. Since my Cybook doesn’t do eReader, I haven’t had the excuse opportunity to buy anything from them yet, so again, there is nothing useful I can say about eReader… yet.

Fictionwise
Fictionwise has been around since 2000 and offers both short stories, magazines, reference books and novels in unencrypted Multiformat, and encrypted MobiPocket, MS Reader, Adobe Reader, and eReader formats.

Lots of new books are added every Monday (I think), and Fictionwise usually offers various rebates and discounts weekly. You can set alerts for your favourite author, keep track of books you want to read via a wish list, and if you join their loyalty club, Buywise, you can even borrow books from the Fictionwise Lending Library. They also offer a selection of free ebooks, many of which are available in Multiformat.

I’ve been an active customer since October 2008, and aside from a little clunkiness here and there, I think the site works well. There are a couple of things I would love to see done differently though. Most importantly, I’d love the ability to change the sorting/view of the my bookshelf area where purchased books are stored. Also, even though I understand why they don’t/can’t, I do wish Fictionwise could guarantee the ability to access books I’ve purchased from them indefinitely. I take extra care with my ebook back-up procedure because of this, but good back-ups are never a bad idea.

However, I do like the wish list, the lending library and the ability to download my purchased ebooks in bulk. I like that you can set which format you prefer, and if you add ebooks in another format to your cart a warning appears. It’s saved me from buying in eReader format a couple of times. I also love the alert function. Some of my favourite authors have barely dipped their toes in the epublishing waters, so it’s nice to be alerted when a book by one of them actually appears in an ebook format.

MobiPocket
MobiPocket is one of the big guns in epublishing, they started in 2000 and were acquired by Amazon.com in 2005. Amazon’s acquisition was one of the reasons I wanted a reader which reads mobi format, as I hope .mobi/.prc will be supported for a long time to come due to Amazon’s backing. MobiPocket offer a whopping 40 000 titles on their site, but seem to be much more expensive than some of the other stores on this list. I’ve bought one book from them, but unless the prices come down, I suspect it will be the only one I purchase from them.

Olympia Press
Although every eBook store offers erotica,  (is it just me or is the entire epublishing business based on erotica/romance?) Olympia Press offer vintage erotica for $1.00. What’s not to like? I haven’t bought anything from them yet, but again… $1.00! Erotica!

Smashwords
Smashwords is a self-publishing platform/ebook store for indie authors offering DRM-free ebooks in lots of different formats. I only recently found out about Smashwords (via mobileread) and haven’t used them yet, but what I’ve seen so far looks good. The ebooks are offered at very reasonable prices,  in lots of formats, and a lot of them feature free samples. You might not find a famous author on Smashwords, but it’s possible that the Next Big Thing is already there just waiting to be discovered.

Webscription
Every month Baen Books offers four novels serialized into three parts, available via their Webscriptions.net service (schedule here). Each part is released a month apart, starting three months before publication. The first months, the books are available only in HTML through a password protected site, but the final month sees delivery in a variety of DRM-free formats. They also offer individual books and advanced reader copies (ARC). A lot of books are also offered free via the Baen Free Library, but if that’s not enough to prove how cool Jim Baen is, then check out what he does for disabled readers.

Although they don’t have a gigantic catalogue, they do have a lot of big name authors, so if you like sci-fi/fantasy, this is definitely a site to check out.

WHSmith eBooks
W H Smith eBooks can be more expensive than other shops, but they offer books that aren’t easy to find other places. For instance they offer what seems to be almost the entire Iain (M.) Banks catalogue, but sadly most of it is in Adobe ePub format (which sucks for Cybook owners, or does it?). They offer various discounts from time to time, and have sorted the books into Cybook and Sony compatible formats, which makes it a lot easier to browse. I’ve bought a couple of books from them, but only because I couldn’t get those books from one of my preferred shops. Though they are only a little more expensive, in the world of ebooks even $1 can get you a book (erotica!), and I like quality and quantity.

Although the net is pretty much awash with ebooks, it can be frustratingly difficult to find what you want, particularly in a preferred format. Below is a short list of the sites I check when I want something new to read, and don’t have money to spend.

The mobileread forums are a fantastic resource for all things ebook. News about ebooks published, formats, readers and software is regularly posted, making it easy to keep abreast of what’s happening in the world of epublishing. One of my favourite sub-forums on the site is Deals, Freebies, and Resources where hot tips about sales, give-aways and special offers on ebooks, readers and software are posted. There are multiple sub-forums dealing with formats, and various readers and if you need help with anything ebooky, I’m pretty sure you can find someone who knows the answer at mobileread. They also offer a large selection of free ebooks painstakingly formatted by mobileread’s members in BBeB/LRF, MOBI/PRC, ePub, IMP, and other formats.

Because Feedbooks allows anyone to contribute books that are either in the public domain or original self-published works, they can offer thousands of free ebooks in many formats, including PDFs generated on the fly to fit a variety of dedicated readers. They also offer an easy way to convert RSS feeds into formats supported by a lot of readers. It isn’t just Project Gutenberg books on offer either, you can also find works by contemporary authors such as Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Kelly Link, and Steven Brust.

Manybooks also offers thousands of free ebooks, in a large variety of formats. Most books are from Project Gutenberg, but you can find public domain books from other sources and also creative commons licensed works. Some works that aren’t available on Feedbooks (at least, as I write this they aren’t), can be found here, such as John Scalzi’s Agent To The Stars.

The Baen Free Library has, available for free, quite a few books by a good amount of authors, such as Lois McMaster Bujold, Andre Norton, Larry Niven, Mercedes Lackey, and Elizabeth Moon. Of course, it’s all part of a nefarious plot designed to suck you in with the first book or two in a series, ensnaring you with their magical words, and ensuring you’ll want to read the rest. Personally, I like that kind of plot, so I’m not complaining.

After an unrelenting barrage of Kindle 2 pr0n assailing me through forums, feeds and email, I figured I’d write up my thoughts on the new features. Mostly because I’m lusting after one, and need to talk myself down. I have a perfectly good Cybook Gen3 which I’m extremely happy with, and they don’t even sell the Kindle in Europe… yet.

New features in the Kindle 2

• Slim & Lightweight: Just over 1/3 inch and 10.2 ounces
  I don’t care. Ebook readers are too fragile and cost too much to bounce them around in bags willy-nilly (you can tell I’m paranoid, right?). As long as it weighs less than a paperback, and is comfortable to hold I’m happy.
• Books in under 60 seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
  I love this, my credit card would not. ’nuff said.
• Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for crisp images and text; even reads well in bright sunlight
  I don’t care. I read text, if I want to look at pictures I’ll use a PC or a dead-tree edition. Text doesn’t need 16 shades. My Cybook Gen3 only has 4 shades and is very comfortable to read, also pictures really don’t look too bad on it. We aren’t talking art here, but were I to read Winnie the Pooh, I’d be able to tell Piglet from Pooh, no problem.
• Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
  Love it. You can never have too much battery life.
• More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
  Ambivalent to this. I love that they upped the storage capacity to 2gb, but if the Kindle doesn’t have a card reader of some sort… would it have been too much to ask for them to include one?
• Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
  What is not to love? Turning a page on an ebook is odd to get used to, and is the most obvious difference between electronic and paper books. After having my Cybook for three months I don’t even notice it anymore, but it was very strange at first.
• Read-to-Me: Text-to-Speech feature means Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud
  Again, I’m ambivalent towards this. It’s a truly awesome feature, but I suspect that for those who don’t *need* the feature, i.e. people who aren’t visually impaired, the text-to-speech synthesizer has to be pretty frakkin’ good for there to be any point.
• No Wireless Bills: No monthly wireless bills, data plans, or commitments. Amazon pays for Kindle’s wireless connectivity so you won’t see a monthly wireless bill
  Awww yeah! The only thing wrong with this feature is WHY CAN’T I HAVE A KINDLE IN EUROPE? *sobs* And not just the Europe that’s part of the EU. ALL of Europe thankyouverymuchsaidtheNorwegian.
• Large Selection: Over 230,000 books, plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines and blogs available
  Large selections are great, but the Kindle could have tapped into a ridiculously huge selection by including native support for the html, eReader, lit, epub, and DRM’ed mobi formats. Srsly Amazon, you guys *own* Mobipocket… can’t you let prc, mobi and azw just get along. Kudos for getting Audible format in there though. That’s nifty, but again… with ebooks *and* Audible content wouldn’t a card reader have been a good idea?
• Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise
  Nice, nice, nice! Nothing to dislike about this apart from the obvious (which is the Kindle 2 not being available to me).

Although I probably wouldn’t buy a Kindle 2 even if they were available to me here in Norway (Cybook remember), I love that Amazon are prepared to be in the vanguard of the ebook industry. If they market aggressively enough, ebook readers will go from being strictly for early-adopters to almost ubiquitous.

My Cybook has changed the way I read. I read more, and choose to use the reader whenever possible, preferring it to paper. Even though ebooks are (usually) cheaper than paper, I’ve spent more on books since I got my reader than I used to in an entire year, simply because I’ve bought a lot of books. I can’t help myself…

Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man
by Norah Vincent

I first heard about Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man by Norah Vincent via the xckd blag, and finding the concept intriguing I had to pick up a copy when I saw it available at CyberRead.

Norah Vincent decides to live as a man for more than a year. As Ned, she partakes in various male experiences like bonding with a bowling team, visiting strip clubs, going on dates, joining a men’s group, taking a sales job in a Glengarry Glen Ross-esque environment, and even joins a monastery for several weeks.

The book is a well-written and extremely engrossing account of her search for what it means to be a man. Though I don’t think Vincent could in any way truly become a man, I do think certain gender differences became more acutely visible to her, precisely because she isn’t male. A man couldn’t write Self-Made Man any more than a woman could write a book called Self-Made Woman.

Something that struck me about the book is how very brave Vincent was to do some of the things she did. She put herself in a wide variety of situations where she was completely out of her depth and which could have turned ugly fast had she been unlucky. Not only did she have the guts to get into those situations, and the skill to navigate them successfully, she also has the ability of eloquently describing how she felt at the time.

After reading Self-Made Man I realised just how tough life can be when you’re male, and was left with a profound sense of empathy towards men. If you are at all interested in how men and women think and interact with each other I suggest reading Self-Made Man, hopefully you’ll enjoy it as much as I did. I just wish Norah Vincent had more/better pictures of Ned available on her website. After reading so much about him I would have appreciated seeing him properly.

Love in the Time of Cholera
by Gabriel García Márquez

Love In The Time Of Cholera is about death, life, love, lust, desire, obsession and ageing. It’s a complex novel inhabited by characters whose actions range from the mundane to the reprehensible. I found the rapes and paedophilia (a nod to Nabokov?), particularly in the cavalier manner in which they are presented, distasteful; but repellent and/or uncomfortable themes do not equate to a story being bad or poorly written. In regard to the writing, I wonder if the novel suffers a little in the translation to English. There were many run-on sentences which I sometimes found hard to process, and needed to reread in order to understand.

I found it hard to care about any of the characters, none of them seemed very likeable. Florentino Ariza is portrayed as amoral and obsessive, constantly mistaking his own desires for love all the while clinging to the illusion that Fermina loves him. Fermina Daza seems obstinate and vengeful, comfortable to accept the circumstances of her loveless yet stable marriage to Juvenal Urbino. Juvenal himself comes across as a mere footnote in the intertwining lives of Fermina and Florentino.

However I did like how García Márquez treats love as a battlefield/playground for all, no matter their age. Love, particularly desire and sexual love is arguably still considered to belong to the young, as something to be left behind when we age. The exploration of love and sex between ageing minds and bodies was refreshing and charming.

Ultimately, I’m not quite sure what to think about Love In The Time Of Cholera. It didn’t make me want to run out and read another Gabriel García Márquez novel, and I certainly won’t reread Love In The Time Of Cholera, but I can’t say I disliked it either. Also, what was up with all the enemas?

Watchmen
by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

I just finished reading Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons last night. Yes, yes, I know. I should have read it earlier, and I really have no excuse but somehow it managed to slip by me in the nineties. I’ve always meant to read it, so in preparation I spent the last decade and a half strenuously avoiding any mention of Watchmen. Particularly the last year has been hard for me, what with the film being hyped all over the place.

In effect, I was a Watchman virgin when I started it a couple of nights ago, and I now that I’ve read it, I get it. I understand why people get all excited about it. It truly is a graphic Novel, complex and multi-layered. The plot itself had a few points which were a little too transparent for my tastes, but the plot isn’t really the point. To me it was more of a vehicle for telling the story of these diverse characters and the dystopian world they inhabit. A story which is told in an exceptionally satisfying manner.

However, something which confused me was the interwoven story of Marooned from the Tales of the Black Freighter comic. I have read it before. How this can be escapes me. I know I haven’t read Watchmen before, so where does my more than passing familiarity with Marooned come from? I know Wikipedia lists Moore’s alluding to Seeräuberjenny from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, but I haven’t seen, read or heard anything to with that before. Has it been released as it’s own comic? Did someone lift the story and do something else with it? Where does it come from!?

As Watchmen is so complex I’m going to be buying my own copy (thanks for the loan TM!) so I can re-read it at leisure. The next times I read it however, I’m going to be pairing it with stuff like The Annotated Watchmen whilst I look forward to the film which will (hopefully) be released soon.