Posts Tagged kindle
Hey Alex, whatcha readin’?
Posted by Alex in Reviews and Recommendations on April 6, 2011
I picked up a Kindle quite awhile ago and I realized I’ve never really mentioned what I’ve been reading on it. Considering this blog exists, it seems like something I should do, no? I’m not going to review any of these titles, just yap about them very briefly.
The Dresden Files
I eased myself back into hobby reading by picking up a fun, simple series — Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files. It’s a series about a private investigator. Also, he’s a wizard. Wikipedia’s synopsis:
The Dresden Files is a series of fantasy/mystery novels written by Jim Butcher. He provides a first person narrative of each story from the point of view of the main character, private investigator and wizard Harry Dresden, as he recounts investigations into supernatural disturbances in modern-day Chicago. Butcher’s original proposed title for the first novel was “Semiautomagic”, which sums up the series’ balance of fantasy and hard-boiled detective fiction.
The series is an easy read and absolutely a cheesy romp — there’s plenty of gratuitous violence and sexual tension with a ludicrously powerful main character, but I’m cool with it. It’s fun and forgetting how to appreciate simple fun is one of the worst things you can do to yourself.
The Farseer Trilogy
Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy is a great fantasy series that starts off very slowly. It’s a rich setting and the trilogy as a whole was made better by it, but the first half of the first novel is all scene-setting. You’re given the background of the kingdom involved and are given an overview of the main character’s growing years, from being a small bastard child left in the care of his father’s right hand man, up to him being a teenage apprentice to the royal assassin. I have rather severe untreated ADD. My attention span and ability to focus is complete shit and it’s something I struggle with quite a bit. Muscling through the first half of the first novel was hard. Not only is my attention span shit, but there was also nothing reaching out and grabbing me and forcing me to focus — if books had a voice, the first half of Assassin’s Apprentice would have sounded entirely monotone to me. It gets better.
Once the series got going, there was no stopping the events in motion. I loved the series — and I hated the main character. You want to cheer for him, but he’s constantly fucking everything up for himself and everybody he comes in contact with. You hate him, but you still want him to win. It was an interesting feeling.
The Tawny Man Trilogy is a followup to The Farseer Trilogy, taking place fifteen(ish) years later. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my list.
Codex Alera
After wrapping up the most recent addition to The Dresden Files, I was curious how Jim Butcher handled a pure fantasy setting. Codex Alera is his attempt at that — I’m currently reading the first novel in the series, Furies of Calderon. It’s … okay. It is far too early to say whether I like it or not, but it hasn’t grabbed me. It’s simply not interesting. I’m going to give Butcher the benefit of the doubt though, because I do love Dresden and early Dresden wasn’t the greatest material, either. Based purely on faith to the author, I’ll probably give it until book two to grab my attention.
Have any of you read this series? Does it get better?
What next?
After Codex Alera, I’ll either move onto The Tawny Man Trilogy or go back to the Vlad Taltos series. A good friend of mine recommended them to me a few years back and I very much enjoyed them, but for some reason I stopped reading right in the middle of Dzur and never picked the series up again. Considering the recent release of Tiassa, it seems like a good time to get back into them. Though I hear that reading Phoenix Guards before Tiassa is highly recommended — I haven’t touched those yet either. So perhaps Dzur, Jhegaala, Iorich, Phoenix Guards, then Tiassa? We’ll see.
E-readers dropping in price, DC Comics enters digital market
Posted by Alex in Alex's Thoughts on June 25, 2010
Anybody who knows me is very aware that I’m a huge supporter of digital distribution. I’m not here to rant about it today, just to share a few links that are great pieces of related news.
- Amazon’s Kindle drops to $189, heating up the e-reader price war. Prices on e-readers could potentially drop to below $100, which is fantastic for consumers. Hundreds upon hundreds of dollars for high-end e-readers and devices like the iPad is all fine and good for tech geeks, but it’s going to prevent them from becoming common household items anytime soon. How do you sell someone that isn’t tech savvy on a book (that isn’t really a book) that will cost them nearly $300? You don’t.
- Despite repeatedly voicing a reluctance to get into the digital marketplace, DC Comics has put out an iPhone/iPad app. Even if you aren’t a big comic fan, the “big dogs” of the comics industry taking the digital marketplace seriously is good news. Indie groups and grassroots efforts have already been capitalizing on the digital market and doing a great job of it, but larger groups like DC moving in will draw a lot of attention to the possibilities available. Here’s hoping they expand their efforts to other digital platforms as well, and not just Apple products.
Good news all around, I think.
Of Spring and Kindles!
Posted by Alex in Alex's Thoughts on March 11, 2009
It’s vaguely warm outside! I’m excited! Can you tell!? I’m using exclamation points! How delightful!
No, really. It was in the low 60s today in Milwaukee, which is absolutely beautiful compared to the winter we just had. The last few days have been full of freezing rain (hooray ice-coated sidewalks) and in the upper 20s, so the warmth today was completely unexpected. I bundled up to walk to the store and pick up some soda (Dr. Pepper, if you must know). I was wearing a winter coat and hat, and borrowed my girlfriend’s scarf because breathing cold air triggers my asthma in a bad way. I didn’t really notice the temperature until I was about halfway there and it was too late to just toss my coat and all back into the house. I’m pretty sure I died of a heat stroke at least three times on the way there and back.
Of course, this pleasant weather isn’t going to stick around. It’s only March, and this is Wisconsin. It’s supposed to storm tonight, and my fancy iGoogle homepage says that it’s going to be back down in the 20s for the next couple of days. That sounds about right for the Northern Midwest around this time of year. We’ll have another day in the 60s next week, then it’ll drop down again. The pattern will continue until June, when it shoots up to the 80s with a constant 95-100% humidity until October, when it will immediately plummet into the 40s.
In completely unrelated news, I’ve been considering picking up a Kindle. Well, a Kindle 2, which they released at the end of February. I like the concept of being able to have this futuristic datapad around that I can pick up in the morning and read the newspaper on, or my favorite blogs, or some books, or whatever I want. Instead of going outside to pick up a paper, the thing is already sitting on my coffee table. That’s pretty sweet.
What isn’t sweet is the fact that a Kindle will run me nearly $400. There is very little that is worth $400 to me. A Kindle is not one of those things, not by a long shot. It doesn’t help that their ebooks aren’t much cheaper than actual books. Essentially, the $400 you’re paying is the price of covenience. Is not needing to go to Borders once in awhile worth $400 to me, considering I can have the newspaper sent to my front door every morning anyway if I wanted? Absolutely not. Especially since Borders is where I indulge in my addiction to Chai Tea/Lattes.
Another thing that counts against the Kindle is the fact that I don’t yet have an iPhone. Not only does the iPhone have a Kindle app, but it’s also far more useful an a whole lot of other ways. The only issue with getting an iPhone is I need to cut my contract with US Cellular short. US Cellular is terrible. Terrible. My phone didn’t even come with any games, or the ability to download games. What kind of phone doesn’t come with games, or let you add games? Useless ones.
It’d cost me $150 to break off my US Cellular contract, which I will most certainly do… eventually. Not right now because I need to cough up roughly $3,500 in taxes in the next couple of months, but sooner or later I’m going to take the dive and get an iPhone. It’ll be really fantastic for work-related things, too. Not being able to check my e-mail or check up on the site when I’m out of the house drives me crazy. It really has reached the point where if I’m not plugged in constantly, I get the jitters. Purely work-related, too. I don’t worry about my leisure activities at all if I’m at the store or whatever, but work? Oh hell yes. I hate not knowing what’s going on at every waking moment. An iPhone will help me dramatically. My laptop really didn’t cut it, though it is nice having a computer in two rooms! Yeah, I’m hopeless. When do I get to put a computer directly into my brain? Or maybe I could have a pair of glasses with a computer in them that I manipulate with my eyeballs. That would be sweet and solve a lot of my problems.