ebooks: the verdict so far

no kindle for me. not yet. want, but not want enough to pony up the cash.

however, i've recently been carrying around jesse's netbook because he wasn't using it and it's teensy and adorable. and about the weight of a book anyway. plus, i recently noticed that the cross-the-water buses (aka the MAX) have internets, which occasionally comes in handy... and/or distracting.

anyway, since i was carrying book AND computer around, i thought i'd give combining the functions a go. after a little shopping around, i found that ereader.com had digital editions of some of my current brain candy series (jim butcher's dresden files, for the curious) for cheaper than most.

and now i've finished that book. and bought another. and have a couple things off project gutenberg stored for good measure.

for now, though, i'm still keeping a real book on me, too. minor irritations i find with reading via the netbook: bootup time (hear that dedicated reading devices don't have much of this), not so great in full sunlight (again with the kindle fixing it), shortish battery life (go go dedicated devices), and having to keep electronic devices off for big portions of airplane flights... the ones that really bug me, though, are the not being waterproof -- not that conventional books are terribly waterproof, but reading in the bathtub or by the pool or carrying a book around in the rain is risking a book, not my entire library and a pricey device! -- and feeling conspicuous. the latter will improve with time, but right now it's a bit of an issue... if i'm sitting out in the open reading along on the netbook, people seem compelled to talk to me and ask questions about it, which is pretty much the opposite of what i want when i'm trying to lose my environment in favor of a book. i expect that any of the fancier dedicated gadgets would just make this one worse. jesse suggested that the easy way around this is putting in a pair of earbuds, even if they're not playing anything. guess i'll give that a go on ebook #2.

there's plenty to love, though. #1, weight. the process of packing up the apartment is making this one hit home... i get attached to books, i have a hard time bringing myself to sell or donate the ones i've read and loved; if i can keep 'em in (pretty smallish) files, problem solved. on the other hand, however, lending gets a bit messier. (tangent - anybody want to "borrow" any of the novels i've read recently? for long-term to forever? jesse's asked me if thinning the bookshelves would be possible, and i figure handing things off to friends would be easier on my packrat instincts.)

an offshoot of the weight issue, if i can keep the battery running, i'm not going to realize halfway through the trip to work that i'm at the end of my novel and have nothing to keep me entertained the rest of the day's trips...

for the netbook, anyway, low light is no problem. it at least feels less disturbing on nighttime flights or in cars than the little spotlights.

the eyestrain isn't bad. granted, i haven't been sitting down for hours-long reading marathons lately, but with the adjustable-size font i think it may actually be less straining than a typical paperback if you're not out in the sun.

as a good little environmentalist whenever it starts to get convenient, i don't think i'm really concerned that they're charging as much for a bunch of electrons as they do for a paperback. print media publishers are struggling, a little profit's not going to kill anyone. and with ereader, anyway, i don't think the books actually are as expensive -- most of the full prices are comparable, and they apply a little credit to your account with each purchase to go towards the next one. and it's quite a bit cheaper when you're too antsy to wait for the paperback edition.

if we all switched to ebooks, i'd miss the physical bookstore experience -- i admit it, i love going, grabbing some overpriced coffee, browsing my way around slowly, reading backs of books. i love the conversations that start when you go to a bookstore with someone.

but anyway. so far, tentative thumbs up on the ebooks.

kait finds her hot-button issue

(i need a real blog update with all kinds of recent adventures, but internet at home's been down. and my car is dead. life's been interesting, to say the least... but more on that when the internet goes up at home... this is an official part-of-my-lunch-break-sized post.)

it's no secret that while i'm not exactly a highly political creature, i'm also not exactly an undecided voter. i'm also not generally a one-issue voter. but here's one that's really not much of an issue in the real world presidential election politics, but that made my eyebrows go way, way up.

seriously folks. you just don't mess with the librarians. even thinking about censoring books is not really funny. even in a town smaller than my hometown. dunno that the mccain/palin fan base would agree with me on this one, but i'd like some better explanation of what was going on...

thanks to dennis, who shared a blog pointing to this snopes article verifying the authenticity of a letter from a wasilla resident... which led, in turn, to a google search for palin + library.

matchairi genmaicha

or "brown rice green tea with added powdered tea."

on the way back from the interview in norfolk yesterday, i stopped to check out a couple bookstores way down granby street. there was a little japanese grocery beside one of them; instead of books, i wound up with tea. (and, incidentally, some really yummy chewy ginger candies!)

(one of the bookstores is pretty promising for supplying the cheap used novel habit... even if i've recently rediscovered the possibility of actually checking things out from the library and honestly probably don't need to buy any more books until i've read some of the ones i have. i still miss mckay's, though.)

trying out the tea this morning, i got curious over why this green tea's actually green whereas most of the green tea i buy is more the brown variety. wikipedia to the rescue! japanese green teas in general and genmaicha in specific. turns out that what i have is mostly the same stuff as the canister of "green tea with toasted rice" i had from republic of tea... but with a little matcha--the powdered, bright green green tea used for tea ceremonies and for the characteristic "green tea flavor" on things like ice cream that are not tea--mixed in for flavor and color. i like.

the label on the tea i bought is mostly in japanese (i bought it based on the illustration on the front of the bag), so i'm a little extra-happy that wikipedia had the characters, too. 茶, cha, tea, is familiar hanzi from chinese - i know a very few of 'em!

everest

odd little coincidence: sir edmund hillary's death was announced on friday. i happened to start an audiobook version of jon krakauer's into thin air the same day; while it's primarily about the 1996 disaster on everest, it provides plenty of historical context by talking about previous expeditions.

between press coverage of the first and six hours on the road with the second, i've suddenly wandered into knowing a lot more about mt. everest than i really meant to. it's fascinating. and thinking about it too much makes me really cold.

oh, and speaking of fascinating... while snooping around nationalgeographic.com looking for everest-related stuff, i ran across a gallery on a dino-mummy. i think dinosaurs and mummies were simultaneously just about the coolest things in the world when i was seven or eight (i came to this conclusion by trying to remember which elementary school library was linked with kids books about them in my head... odd, i have a much clearer mental picture of all three elementary school libraries i went through than i do of any of the classrooms). twenty years later, combining the two ideas is still pretty freakin' awesome. especially the photo with some skin texture poking through soil.

(must not think too much about science as i knew it when i was that age, or i'll get worked up because we're not hanging out on mars yet. we were so supposed to be by now.)