Sorry, had to do this: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_s...72&h=1cb07bdea8323892188f5f41dad4f50b0f8f8e97 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...stripbooks,125&rh=n:133140011,k:free+classics http://www.gutenberg.org/
Wait. I made a mistake. I have 150 print books TO BE READ. And ebooks aren't less money on Amazon. Or most other stores. In fact the only store where ebooks are genuinely cheaper for me by any real margin is the Baen Webscription store. In the UK, ebooks are subject to VAT which print books aren't.
Books that you already own, an e-reader won't help you with of course . And VAT, well that is absurd that it only applies to e-books. I didn't know that. Penguin is an international company, with home offices in Britain, so that may explain why they've been such a royal pain in the butt with their pricing (even though they do publish in America). But you can still download free books, and there are free applications to translate various non-kindle book formats to be read on a Kindle (I've used Calibre). Free is still free, no VAT. BTW, Calibre also will automatically download blogs, etc. to your Kindle (I'm not vouching for that feature). One problem with that was that when websites changed their format, Calibre sometimes would get confused by that. Also websites that do daily updates, well today it would download everything from today and maybe 7 days prior. Tomorrow it would download tomorrow plus everything in the previous download. I'm not sure if they've fixed that or not But I stopped using it. But for grabbing books from websites like Project Guttenberg, Calibre was great. But keep in mind that if you own an e-reader, that copyright usually extends from about 50 to 70 years depending on what country you live in, and that means that you should not pay for any e-books out of copyright. A lot of publishers sell kind of value-added books (special indexing, etc.) but if what you primarily care about reading the book, then that's not really worth the money. And you can still use it for library books or borrowing through Amazon.
I have bought books for my ereader. I have read about one of them, yet I have owned it for over a year. 150 print books. Maybe 10-15 ebooks. Print wins every time.
Of course. I'm not saying there's no benefits to ebooks. There are. You save a huge amount of space, to start with. But for me, they're not the same and they're not as good. I prefer print books by a wide margin.
TL;DR: Books are better than ebooks, because you can associate things with real books. Heh, I know that feeling. My parents and friends call me crazy because I buy so many books, but there is just something to them can't be replaced/reproduced. Ebooks feel a lot more sterile to me: They have no history. You can't look at your Kindle and wistfully say: Oh, I remember that, I read this on that beautiful vacation at the beach. Ebooks obviously don't have the smell of a) freshly printed books or b) old books. Ebooks don't get stained/crumpled/loose pages/donkey ears. For me, books are to be read. New books are nice, but I like it when books tell a story all by themselves. That includes signatures and pageholders. You can't browse through Ebooks properly. In my library or at home, I can pull out a book, take a look at the cover, the flap text, I can read some pages... I can compare the spines, look which books look well-read, enjoy the company of books. Big thing for me: You can't really give them to someone else. Sure, in theory you can, but it's not the same. With an ebook, you are giving a book, with a real book you can gift/give someone The Book. The one that you've read, the one that changed your life, the one you associate something with. To me, that means a lot more. It all boils down to this: I can't associate anything with ebooks. They don't wear out, they always stay the same, and they don't feel as if they belonged to me. I can read them, but it feels like a borrowed, pristine, sterile book.
Like my battered copy of John Saul's The Blackstone Chronicles that I've had for about 10 years, which has been on at least one holiday with me.
I used to have that feeling. I used to frequent these used book stores in Manhattan, and I loved the smell of the books, and the feel of the pages. Even the dust (though nowadays, I'm EXTREMELY allergic to dust mites). Now I've had to move several times in my life, and EVERY time, even when my employers were paying for it, I lost stuff in the move. This last time I moved halfway across the country at my own expense. So I had to make a lot of sacrifices, and 99% of my large book collection did not make the cut, but at least I know they found good homes (sounds like I'm talking about pet, not books). The people who helped me pack up got most of the stuff I couldn't take with me. That said, afterwards, I actually found I preferred the experience of reading an e-book to that of reading a real book. You are right that there are connections that you make, and I still make them. But the actual reading experience is better (at least for me) on an e-book. With my current reader, the contrast is whatever I want it to be for the brightness or darkness of the room. The font is whatever I need it to be (some books are ridiculous in their font choices). The e-reader is much lighter than a lot of books, so it feels more comfortable in my hand for long reads. And I can read through blackouts even at night now (with the new one). I told you I bring my Kindle everywhere -- well last time I was in the movie theater waiting for the film to begin while everyone else was watching commercials, I was reading my e-book. In the dark. I couldn't have done that with a real book, not without the awkwardness of holding a light source in one hand while holding the book open with another. I've had many books where the binding literally fell apart from repeated readings -- that no longer happens. Big hardcovers that are problematic to read in bed, or carry around with you -- are no longer a problem. They even have textbooks now in e-format. Honestly, I understand the connection to physical books. I still think that physical books are best when you are dealing with sizable illustrations and photos and so on. I purchased maybe 2 or 3 physical books last year (so far none this year) because they didn't make sense to read in e-format. I could get the last Colbert book in e-format, but I don't want to because I know he uses lots of color photos. So there are still practical reasons for preferring SOME physical books. But I'm also not carrying around a hardcover or large-sized paperback around with me everywhere.
My granny has each and every book by Minette Walters, Dorothy L. Sayers and all these criminal novel authors. Too bad I don't read those :/ On the other hand, she has a complete Brockhaus (20 books), which is like the Encyclopedia Britannica Also pretty much every classic novel you can think of and quite some modern literature as well. My parents aren't better: One wall in our living room is completely covered in books, up to the ceiling (3,50 m), their bedroom isn't better, and both me and my brother have a large amount of bookshelves in our room. Not to speak of the shelves I have in my appartment, which I'm just putting into boxes Yeah, my family certainly likes reading quite a lot
It was my grandfather who actually got me hooked on science fiction, and reading in general. He was a very smart guy but he had to quit high school during the depression to support the family (he actually went to school with the famous Rosenbergs who were found guilty of selling secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviets). Anyway, he eventually got a job doing construction in the NYC subway system. People would leave all sorts of things in the subway system, including whole boxes filled with books, including everything from text books to paperbacks, to books about politics and history, to comparative religion to 'literature' (like the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, H.G. Wells, and so on). His fellow workers never really cared about books, so he'd take them home, and he he probably read almost everything. And after he read the books, he'd give a lot of them to me. (He used to claim that he taught me how to read before I was actually in school). Teachers didn't know what to do with me in grade school because not only had I already read much of the stuff that was part of the curriculum, I also was already reading adult books by the 3rd and 4th grade. I actually remember my second grade teacher letting me read whatever I wanted to while she was teaching everyone else because I had already read most of what was in the school book. Even though he didn't have any advanced education, I think my grandfather saw himself as a kind of Renaissance man because he would read about just about everything, and could talk knowledgeably about mathematics and engineering and science and government and social issues. So while I don't think I'm quite the person that my Grandfather was, I definitely picked up some of my reading habits from him. Just in recent years, though, I haven't been reading as much as I used to.
I haven't yet read the whole Colour of Magic, as I'm currently reading its fourth part, but my impressions so far in a nutshell are: The story isn't really interesting, but the characters and the world are, so I'm going to follow it up with Light Fantastic.
Remember it was one of his first novels, so it's still really rough. He doesn't really, really find his feet (IMHO) until about the tenth.
I did enjoy reading it (I was especially entertained by some of the conversations), and having finished the fourth part, I consider the story a bit better, but I still say it's the weak point. Sometimes the writing was pretty confusing, but I chalk it up to my non-nativeness.
Speaking of Terry Pratchett, I just finished reading The Long Earth, which is the first in a new series by him and Stephen Baxter. It's pretty good and much more serious than his Discworld books, but it's still very Pratchettesque. I'm definitely looking forward to the next in the series.
Stephen Baxter has written a couple of good books. I liked "Moonseed". Also, I've read 2 out of 3 of his Manifold trilogy -- I liked the first one, didn't care for the second and decided not to read the third. I also know that his novel "The Timeships" was nominated for a Hugo Award (though I haven't read it yet -- it's on my to-read list.
Well I finally finished "On Stranger Tides" by Tim Powers (did I mention that I'm a much slower reader nowadays?). Anyway, it's an unusual fantasy novel set during the early 1700's in the Caribbean. Jack Chandagnac is a Dutch Puppetteer who's uncle has cheated his father out of an inheritance (a plantation in the New World). But the ship he's on gets attacked by pirates and his quest for justice gets sidetracked. "On Stranger Tides" is a really fun adventure involving Pirates, and Voodoo and zombies and ghosts and even Blackbeard and a quest to find the Fountain of Youth. I highly recommend it. NOTE: i just read on Wikipedia that this novel was the primary inspiration for both the Monkey Island adventure game, as well as "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides". Apparently , Disney did buy the rights to the novel, but it mostly borrowed certain aspects of it, instead of the actual plot. I have not seen the movie, nor have I played more than a few minutes of Monkey Island, so I can't comment on any similarities or differences other than what's in Wikipedia. I did see the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, and there's nothing in common, not even character names, other than the fact that both involve pirates and the Caribbean.
I just finished "Third Shift - Pact" by Hugh Howey. It's the eighth book in his Silo series that I've mentioned before, and the final chapter in the Shift trilogy. To remind people (taken from Wikipedia): Silo Series Wool - published Jul 29 2011 Wool 2 - Proper Gauge - published Nov 30, 2011 Wool 3 - Casting Off - published Dec 4, 2011 Wool 4 - The Unraveling - published Dec 26, 2011 Wool 5 - The Stranded - published Jan 25, 2012 Wool Omnibus Edition (Wool 1- 5) - published Jan 27, 2012 First Shift - Legacy (Part 6 of the Silo Series) - Apr 5 2012 Second Shift - Order (Part 7 of the Silo Series) - Nov 12, 2012 Third Shift - Pact (Part 8 of the Silo Series) - Jan 24 2013 Shift Omnibus Edition (Shift 1-3) - Jan 27, 2013 As the final chapter in the Shift trilogy, it answers a lot of questions and mysteries about what is going on. The Shift trilogy is kind of a prequel to Wool, but some of it (particularly in the third book) happens concurrently with the events in Wool. The end of "Third Shift - Pact" brings us right up to the end of Wool, and a new sub-series (Dust) will continue the story from there. "Third Shift - Pact" was a terrific book, but it's hard to talk about without revealing things that are unknown when you start reading Wool. It has two concurrent stories, one about the origins of "Solo", a character you meet at the end of Wool, and another continuing the story about "Donald", the main character of the Shift series, and someone who is trying to figure out the mysteries of exactly what's going on, and his reason for being there. Not every question is answered, but the big ones are. The others? Well that's why there's more books to come. This is one of the very best science fiction series I've read in years. It's intelligent, well-written, and makes you feel for the characters involved. The characters feel real, as does the world that Howey has constructed for them. There are truths and lies to be uncovered, and it's sometimes hard to tell which are which, which is what makes for a good mystery. Anyway, I gave it 5 stars on Amazon. It's a great addition to the series.
