Read. More present than past-tense.

[captainsblog]

Just updated my running total of books-read for the year, and,.... not so hot.  I'm near finished with one e-book and about halfway through paper (29 and 30 on the list, respectively), putting me a good half-dozen behind where I was around this time last year, my first keeping a book-a-week pace since starting to keep track.

There are reasons, I know.  The biggest falloff was in August, when I was away for a week and spent good chunks of the previous and following ones with work and the kids' move and all. Also, those months of switching much of cardio to outdoor running wasn't really conducive to sticking a book under your nose.  Yet I also have to lay a bit of blame at the feet of e-bookery.  While they're incredibly easy to acquire if they're either free-free or paid-for (not so much when they're public library titles), there's still all this electronic stuff about them you have to deal with.

For one thing, I am massively disliking all the proprietary software that has to be dealt with.  My tablet default is something originally used by our local library system called Overdrive; that's largely being phased out now that most of the Big Six have stopped licensing new material to public libraries, but it still works for general .epub-formatted works and I'm used to it. But some downloads require the Adobe Digital Reader, which, being from Adobe, tends to annoy the shit out of you with updates and add-ons of things you might not want if you're not quick enough to say "no" to them.  Anything coming from Amazonland requires you to use the Kindle Reader. THAT's another coupla megs devoted to just one function, next to their Unbox for videos and their MP3 downloader for anything musical you buy from them. Just now, when I tried to open my desktop version of the Kindle Reader (to check the exact title of my almost-read copy of cluegirl's Kindl-y book), it popped an error, announcing This version of the Kindle application has expired and can no longer be used. Please update to a newer version), and closed. No update link, nothing saying how it will affect my tablet version of the reader if I do update it, everything BUT saying what they're really trying to say, which is Wouldn't it just be easier if you bought a real Kindle?  So that's three readers right there, which doesn't count the My Library default on Android tablets, or Stanza (which is what I started out with back reading books on the phone), or who-all knows what Nookie is involved to read a BN-only copy?

There's more than that to it, though. I still prefer pages- even though they sometimes blow over the edge of the reading rack at the gym, and even though the tablet nicely simulates page formatting, there's something ephemeral about e-pages that doesn't resonate the same way. Some of it is the programmers being too clever by half: I flip Godot from landscape to portrait or vice versa, and instantly the pages reconfigure themselves, and the page numbers along with it, so I never have a good sense of how far I've come or have to go- which you can check in the various apps, but rarely with the same ease and certainty of seeing a page number on the bottom and flipping to the last page of the book to see how far you've got to go. (Overdrive is better than Kindle at this, the latter referencing how many hundred-out-of-thousand Bezonimical Units you've come.) The e-books have search and bookmark functions, but without a keyboard I find them clumsy- okay, I find ME clumsy- and I've never taken advantage of them.

I've started carpooling to a weight training class once a week with a friend who lives close to here. When I picked her up last Saturday, she brought her just-delivered paper copy of the Buffalo News out to the car, so she could glance at the top stories.  I told her we hadn't taken the paper-paper in years, but that I'd probably have to get at least the Sunday paper coming again once they put up their long-promised paywall later this month.^* Ann's pretty tech-savvy- has a smartphone and a Facebook and all that, and she's my age or so- but she said she never reads the paper online. I like PAPER, and turning pages, is more or less how she put it.  I never had trouble making the transition from paper to digital when it came to newsprint- maybe the lack of inky fingers made up for the loss of tactile sensation- but I'm finding some of the same sentiment still sticking as I decide, with each new read, whether to go e-book or not. So far, I'm still leaning toward paper-in-hand- especially when the author is (as, increasingly, he, or even more often she, happens to be) someone I know. Because far as I can tell, there's no way for an author to put an autograph and a personal note on an e-book, and those words on so many title pages and colophons wind up being the most precious part of the physical book for me, and almost as important as the story inside it.

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^* Not sure if I've mentioned this before, but under the announced model for the paywall, it will actually cost more per week to not get home delivery ($2.50 per week) than it will to take at least just the Sunday paper ($1.99 per week with autopay). That's a testimony to just how important paper-circulation numbers are to advertisers even in these digital times. When you go to sign up, you find it's not QUITE that much a difference; your Sunday-only subscription also automatically adds on up to ten "holiday" editions of the paper at their dollar-a-day newsstand price, because advertisers pay big bucks for big distribution on those days, too. It's still a better deal than the $2.50 over the long haul, but it's going to be an accounting PITA to keep track of how much the autorenew is each period if you don't know how many "extras" you're paying for in advance until it hits your account.

Comments

[puppy-ciao.livejournal.com]

I use a program called Calibre to organize and format all of my eBooks- well, that's not exactly true...my husband used it and put about 800 books on my nook for me and I never looked at it again after that, so I can't tell you much about it except that it reads lots of formats and you might wanna check it out. :-)

I am planning on getting a Sunday subscription to the News anyway, for reading with my coffee and (more importantly) for the massive amount of coupons that come with it. I recently got mildly obsessed with coupons, lol :-P

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

If it would help, I can send you a PDF or text version of the file without any proprietary software on it. I mean, it's not as if that shorts me anything, given that you've paid to read the thing already, and I rather want to be sure that you get your money's worth if possible.

Just let me know, ok?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Not necessary, but thanks. I had no trouble accessing it on the tablet; it was trying to save myself two whole minutes by looking it up on the PC that cost me half an hour of installation time getting the PC-based Kindle reader back up. Of course, I'd have had to do that anyway the next time I downloaded something.

I owe you a proper review (any sites you prefer I do one on, or just here?), but at least one line of it will be this: If ever there was a book crying out to be made into a movie with a Great Big Sea soundtrack, this is it:)

[cluegirl.livejournal.com]

Here is great, but honestly, a C&P to either Amazon or Goodreads would be even better. There's something arcane about the review and ratings systems on the big sales sites that leads to a book staying highly ranked (and therefore visible to browsing buyers,) for longer. But I'll admit I like the actual word of mouth effect that shilling a book on your blog brings -- people who trust your judgment are good new readers to have.

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

Same thing with the Boston Globe. It costs less to get the electronic edition AND the Sunday dead-tree edition than it does to get the 'lectric edition alone.

And don't get me started on the Grey Lady, where you pay one price for mobile phone edition, another price for tablet, and a third price for full-fledged computer, all to read the same content!