(no subject)
Nov. 7th, 2010 08:25 pmSo ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
renay wanted me to talk about books.
I love books.
I still love books, though English is the degree where they take people who love to read and attempt to cure them of it.
I read all sorts of things, but what I tend to gravitate toward for first-time pleasure reading is YA urban fantasy. Twilight? Loved it. (Except Breaking Dawn, which was always in imminent danger of being hurled across the room.) It's not deep, it's very problematic in a lot of ways (ways that I've written papers and done presentations about!), it is NOT "great literature" by any stretch of the imagination. It's a trashy "beach read" sort of novel, the literary equivalent of impulse-buy candy. If you liked cleolinda's Twilight summaries, you'll enjoy the books. I was in it for the lulz, and there were many to be had.
If you're looking for extremely high-quality YA urban fantasy, I'd recommend Scott Westerfeld. I haven't read anything of his that I didn't like; I especially recommend the Uglies series.
Other books that I love...
My ultimate comfort re-read is Stephen King's The Stand. I do love a good end-of-the-world story. My new favorite post-apocalyptic story is Mira Grant's Feed. I loved that book and I don't even like zombie books. It made me laugh, it made me cry (more than once, and I'm talking great heaving hiccuping sobs, "I don't think I like this book any more!" and then ten minutes later I was reading it again. I got a hold of an ARC and the worst part about finishing was knowing that I had to wait an ENTIRE YEAR for the second one to come out. She makes you love the characters, and then she doesn't pull any punches, at all, ever. For anyone. I haven't re-read it yet just because I haven't had the emotional fortitude to go through it again - but I will. I will. It's sitting on my ereader, waiting for me to be ready for it.
Totally different things I love re-reading - anything by Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery's Anne series, Jane Eyre. Lois McMaster Bujold, especially the first two Vorkosigan books about Cordelia. She's my hero. There are others, but that's what I'm coming up with off the top of my head, and I'm stuck at work, so that's the best I can do.
Talking about books, I can also talk about my e-reader. I have a Sony Pocket and I love it.
Now, I'm a hands-on kind of reader. I love the feel, the smell, the experience of having a physical book in my hands. I never thought I'd want an e-reader. What actually convinced me to get one was school - I had a lot of professors assigning electronic articles, and I have a hard time reading .pdfs of more than ten or so pages on the computer. At the same time, I wasn't about to print all of them out.finch let me borrow his to test out, and I decided that I wanted one.
There are some books that I still will re-read my hard copies of - the Anne series in particular are tied into those physical books. But I'm also a reader. When I would travel, I'd have a bag almost completely full of books, and I'd live in fear that I'd finish all of them before I got home. Now, when I fly, I bring one physical book for take-off and landing, and then as many books as I want in my e-reader. THIS IS MUCH MORE COMPACT, GUYS. And when I'm traveling by car, or commuting, I just have to bring the e-reader. It's totally fantastic.
seventhe has a Kindle, and she talked about all the things she loves about her Kindle, so let me tell you why I chose the Sony.
- It's got an aluminum shell. This was actually one of the things that sold me on my MacBook, too. I like aluminum shells. I like sturdy (or semi-sturdy) electronic devices.
- It comes in colors. Mine's pink. This means that I can't accidentally pick upfinch's book, thinking it's mine, or vice versa. (We have enough literary taste in common that this probably would not be an unalloyed disaster, but with my luck it'd be the day he's got his book full of manga or something.)
- It doesn't have wi-fi or instant connection to a store. This is a feature, for me and my wallet. I am not tempted to buy books I can't afford for instant gratification's sake. It's also big enough that I have well over 200 books on it and it's nowhere near full, so running out of reading material isn't an issue.
- Of all the readers on the market at the time, I liked the physical layout of the Pocket best. The page forward and back buttons are in a logical place, and I can't accidentally turn the page by touching the screen (a serious problem with the Kindle software on my iPhone).
- It isn't backlit, and it doesn't do anything but display books (or manga, or pdfs, or whatever). I have plenty of multi-tasking devices; this doesn't need to be one of them.
There are drawbacks to the Pocket - not the least of which is the fact that I can't read Kindle books on it, which is an issue when the largest, cheapest collection of readily available ebooks is on Amazon. But overall I'm pretty happy with it.
QUESTIONS?
renay wanted me to talk about books.I love books.
I still love books, though English is the degree where they take people who love to read and attempt to cure them of it.
I read all sorts of things, but what I tend to gravitate toward for first-time pleasure reading is YA urban fantasy. Twilight? Loved it. (
cleolinda's Twilight summaries, you'll enjoy the books. I was in it for the lulz, and there were many to be had.If you're looking for extremely high-quality YA urban fantasy, I'd recommend Scott Westerfeld. I haven't read anything of his that I didn't like; I especially recommend the Uglies series.
Other books that I love...
My ultimate comfort re-read is Stephen King's The Stand. I do love a good end-of-the-world story. My new favorite post-apocalyptic story is Mira Grant's Feed. I loved that book and I don't even like zombie books. It made me laugh, it made me cry (more than once, and I'm talking great heaving hiccuping sobs, "I don't think I like this book any more!" and then ten minutes later I was reading it again. I got a hold of an ARC and the worst part about finishing was knowing that I had to wait an ENTIRE YEAR for the second one to come out. She makes you love the characters, and then she doesn't pull any punches, at all, ever. For anyone. I haven't re-read it yet just because I haven't had the emotional fortitude to go through it again - but I will. I will. It's sitting on my ereader, waiting for me to be ready for it.
Totally different things I love re-reading - anything by Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery's Anne series, Jane Eyre. Lois McMaster Bujold, especially the first two Vorkosigan books about Cordelia. She's my hero. There are others, but that's what I'm coming up with off the top of my head, and I'm stuck at work, so that's the best I can do.
Talking about books, I can also talk about my e-reader. I have a Sony Pocket and I love it.
Now, I'm a hands-on kind of reader. I love the feel, the smell, the experience of having a physical book in my hands. I never thought I'd want an e-reader. What actually convinced me to get one was school - I had a lot of professors assigning electronic articles, and I have a hard time reading .pdfs of more than ten or so pages on the computer. At the same time, I wasn't about to print all of them out.
finch let me borrow his to test out, and I decided that I wanted one.There are some books that I still will re-read my hard copies of - the Anne series in particular are tied into those physical books. But I'm also a reader. When I would travel, I'd have a bag almost completely full of books, and I'd live in fear that I'd finish all of them before I got home. Now, when I fly, I bring one physical book for take-off and landing, and then as many books as I want in my e-reader. THIS IS MUCH MORE COMPACT, GUYS. And when I'm traveling by car, or commuting, I just have to bring the e-reader. It's totally fantastic.
seventhe has a Kindle, and she talked about all the things she loves about her Kindle, so let me tell you why I chose the Sony.- It's got an aluminum shell. This was actually one of the things that sold me on my MacBook, too. I like aluminum shells. I like sturdy (or semi-sturdy) electronic devices.
- It comes in colors. Mine's pink. This means that I can't accidentally pick up
finch's book, thinking it's mine, or vice versa. (We have enough literary taste in common that this probably would not be an unalloyed disaster, but with my luck it'd be the day he's got his book full of manga or something.)- It doesn't have wi-fi or instant connection to a store. This is a feature, for me and my wallet. I am not tempted to buy books I can't afford for instant gratification's sake. It's also big enough that I have well over 200 books on it and it's nowhere near full, so running out of reading material isn't an issue.
- Of all the readers on the market at the time, I liked the physical layout of the Pocket best. The page forward and back buttons are in a logical place, and I can't accidentally turn the page by touching the screen (a serious problem with the Kindle software on my iPhone).
- It isn't backlit, and it doesn't do anything but display books (or manga, or pdfs, or whatever). I have plenty of multi-tasking devices; this doesn't need to be one of them.
There are drawbacks to the Pocket - not the least of which is the fact that I can't read Kindle books on it, which is an issue when the largest, cheapest collection of readily available ebooks is on Amazon. But overall I'm pretty happy with it.
QUESTIONS?
