Sony have added a short stories category to the eBook Store. They have over 1000 stories in Sci-Fi, Horror, Mystery, Thriller and others. Cheap as well, from $0.50 up to a few dollars.
Tag Archives | Books
What have I been reading?
Sony Reader PRS-505
I’ve been using a Sony Reader since last June. It’s an excellent device for reading fiction. I got the latest model (PRS-505) when in San Francisco recently. This has a slightly modified form factor that improves on the PRS-500. Plus it has a slightly better screen. One nice thing the the PRS-505 does that the previous one didn’t, is that it mounts as a USB drive in Mac OS X. This means that content can be copied on to it without using he Windows only Sony Connect Software. Don’t get me wrong, I still use the Windows software for most of the content management, but I use the USB disk mode to quickly get interesting web pages and articles onto the device for reading away from the computer. Copying the text from a web page into Microsoft Word and saving as an RTF file produces a file that looks really nice on the Reader.
Dune – Audiobook
There is a new audiobook version of Frank Herbert’s fabulous Dune available. I’ve listened to the first 3 hours of the whole 21 hour epic. It’s truly wonderful. Narrated by Simon Vance with a supporting cast providing some of the characters spoken parts. As such it sits somewhere between a narration and a full dramatisation. It’s very good indeed.
Signed up for Amazon Associates program
I’ve just signed up for the Amazon UK Associates Program. In the interests of disclosure please be aware that I will be putting my Associate ID into the links I provide to the Amazon Uk site from the Soapbox. This means that I will get a 5% kick back if anyone follows a link and then buys the linked book, DVD, game etc. If you follow this site you’ll know I link to a lot of books on Amazon. The addition of the Amazon ID, and its potential financial kickback, won’t make any difference to that. There won’t be any more or less links to Amazon. If there are any kickbacks as a result of links then that’ll just be a bonus. Any funds generated will be paid to me in the form of Amazon vouchers to buy more stuff.
Revolution
I’m currently reading The Living Cosmos by Chris Impey. I’m only about 20% into it but so far it’s an excellent book on the subject of astrobiology. It contains and interesting tidbit about the adoption of the work revolution to mean changes, paradigm shifts etc. It stems from Copernicus’ book On the revolutions of the celestial spheres, in which Copernicus outlined the evidence for the fact that the Earth goes around the Sun, and not the other way around. This was such an Earth shaking change in humanities thinking that Revolution came to be used to describe great changes.
Click picture for larger view
The Golden Compass
I’ve written about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy here before. I liked the ideas, but the books didn’t grab my imagination by the scruff of the neck. The film version of the first book comes out this week: The Golden Compass. Hopefully the books will translate in to good movies. If they expose more people to the ideas then that will be a good thing™. Mark Morford has written a nice column on the flap the film is causing amongst the “faithful”. Well worth a read.
More Sony Reader content…
Yeah. Fictionwise have added the Sony Reader as an option for the multiformat content they carry. So that means like Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction are now available for the device. Excellent news.
Harry Potter and the pots of cash
According to the BBC the 7th and last Harry Potter book sold 11 Million copies in 24 hours. Gosh! I have to admit that I’ve never read any of them. Not for any particular reason, I just never got round to it. Way to much other stuff to read over the last 10 years. Maybe I’ll have to read them all now the series is complete. Might actually be better to read them now as I won’t have to wait for the author to complete the series. That used to scroll my nerd big time when I was a lad 🙂 I can remember nearly going spare waiting for Julian May to complete the Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series.
What happens if she gets hit by a bus!? 😉
Thankfully she didn’t (and not just so she could complete the books).
It seems that Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling have not authorised electronic copies of the Potter books for eInk devices like the Sony Reader. This is a mistake in my opinion. Although given the sales of the series I’m not sure mistake is the term to use! In any event if I do decide to read the books then I’ll have to get cheap paperback copies so I’ve actually bought the books and maybe look for electronic copies for the Reader from alternative sources…
The question is. Are they worth reading?
UPDATE: The Loading Ready Run crew attend a Victoria HP7 launch event.
God is not Great – Christopher Hitchens
I finished God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens last week. It’s the most recent of the string of popular anti-religion books that have been published over the last year (Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor Stenger and others have trampled the grass on this path recently). many people think that Richard Dawkins is a bit strident in his anti-religions views. I don’t, for the record. BTW, why does it seem that none of the people who have responded to Dawkins’ latest book, with arguments that he is too strident or hasn’t studied some obscure theological text, that they haven’t actually read his book for comprehension (or at all)?
Anyway. If you thought Dawkins was strident you’ll either love or blanch completely at Hitchens’ latest book. This is a real polemic. Wide ranging as well. Dawkins focused on Christianity to a large extent. Hitchens covers Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and others. Hitchens has a writting style and background that will appeal to a more literary audience than Dawkins et al. As such it is a welcome new addition to the anti-religion canon. A good synopsis of the book is given in a lecture by Hitchens presented by the Seattle Town Hall Center for Civic Life and University Book Store.
BTW: This was the first book I read on an eInk device. A Sony Reader.
Sony Reader PRS-500
I’ve been using a Sony Reader PRS-500 eBook device for the last month. I’ve just finished the first book that I read completely, and solely, on the Reader. God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. I’ll post about the book itself later. Reading a book on the Reader is a very nice experience. The eInk screen is very easy on the eyes and very easy to read. Several times when reading I went to manually turn a page just like i would with a real paper book. I actually forgot it was an electronic device. The video below gives a short demo of how the device operates.
It might be better to download the above movie and view it at double size in the quicktime player. You can download it by right clicking on this link, and saving it to disk.
Content for the Reader is available from the Sony Connect Store. You have to have a USA credit card to use this or you can buy gift tokens in USA books shops such as Borders that work on the store. There are tools, like Book Designer, that allow other formats such as PDF and HTML to be converted to Reader files. I’ve also bought a scanner so that I can convert some of my favourite books to PDF then to Reader format. Well the ones not available in electronic format from elsewhere.
I really like the Reader. It’ll be my first choice for reading all future novels and fiction. I’d really love an A4 version for reading journals such as Nature and Science, as well as A4 PDF’s such as Apple documentation. Colour would be really good as well for things like Scientific American. Both A4 and colour eInk screens are in development. Hopefully they’ll ship as products in the near future.