E-readers Are Not Evil! (vlog)

Hello, book buds! Did you notice my absence around blogland, Facebook and Twitter the last few weeks?  No? *note to self: Lesa is not the center of the universe*  Well, I have been enjoying a much needed social media sabbatical. 

And I have been utterly and completely obsessed preoccupied with my KindleFire.

Yes, I have joined the darkside ranks of the e-reader cheerleaders. (If you missed it, groove here to my KindleFire dance party) 

In fact, I am so thrilled with the KindleFire (and e-reading in general) that I decided to focus my first ever solo vlog on it. If you fear brainwashing don't have time to watch, scroll down to read my favorable and convincing first impressions.  



Apologies, the camera got too hot and stopped, hence part two.



What I'm liking about the Kindlefire:

It is very user friendly despite a very touchy touch screen. 

The background color, font, text size and brightness of a book page can be adjusted to suit personal preferences. It makes reading a book very easy on the eyes. And it does not look or feel like reading on a computer. 


The backlit screen allows reading in the dark! My favorite feature!! I can read at night while riding in the car! When I can pry it away from my child...  

By the way, if you have children consider getting them their own Kindlefire to fight over. My little boy loves reading books and playing free games on it.  He actually prefers it over his DSi XL. Grrr...

I like the novelty of streaming videos, music and accessing the web but the Kindlefire may be redundant if you already do that with other portable devices. If that is the case, try an e-reader that is for books only. 


What I'm loving about e-reading:

Free books! And not just classics. There seems to be an unlimited supply of 'new' fiction/non-fiction freebies available.  


Convenience! An entire portable library is at hand anytime anywhere. 


So any new converts among the e-reader naysayers and fence sitters? 

Testify, Brother and Sister Bookworms! 


E-readers are not evil!

E-readers are good!

Embrace e-readers!

Really, you will be delighted by how much an e-reader enhances your reading life. 

I kid you not. I still can't get over the wonder of this cool fun new way to read. 

And I am still reading physical books too... still buying 'real' bargain books... still borrowing books from the library.  

Using an e-reader hasn't changed anything regarding my love or use of physical books. It has only enhanced and added a new dimension to my reading life. 

So don't be as silly and stubborn as me, try an e-reader soon!

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For those who viewed my vlogs, what did you think?

Have I not made a perfect drinking game vlog for book club night?!  Every time, Lesa flaps the Kindle cover take a swig! Every time,  she says 'fun', take two swigs!!

Hahahaha! Watching oneself on video is a real eye opener!  

I want to get better at this vlogging business so please share your tips and advice.  I'm very competitive with myself so I've already noted many ways to improve, such as:

1. Keep it short and to the point!  My challenge will be to keep future vlogs between 2 and 4 minutes long.  Feel free to place bets among yourselves. hahaha

2. Invest in an external microphone to eliminate camera noise and increase sound quality. 

3. Stop saying 'uh'. 

4. Stop playing with the props.

5. Sit still. Well, that one may be an impossible goal so at least sit in a non-squeaky chair. Which I did for part two. Did you notice?

6. Vlog when the lighting is best. The lighting had changed during part two and wasn't as nice.

Anything else? Be honest. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I have no illusions and would prefer to avoid future embarrassment. ;)

Thank you so much for your help.

And many many thank yous for watching (and reading).

Until next time, hugs and happy reading! 

On Fire with Lesa in 2012! Dance Party!

 (I have a deep dark bookish secret. Can you guess what it is from the conspicuous clues? And grooving is mandatory-- no matter where you are)

Happy second week of this beautiful new year! Is your year off to a blazing good start?

Great balls of fire! Mine certainly is.

I've been in a searing frenzy of productivity around the old homestead.  Start rearranging furniture at midnight? Hot damn, I'm just heating up at midnight.

And in the blogging department? Well, lately, I've been neglecting poor Baja in favor of my everything else blog, Dusty Us Diaries. 

BUT as the embers of 2011 burn to ash, the sparks of 2012 have ignited an inferno of exciting book bloggy ideas.  So stay tuned! 

And my reading? Off to a sizzling start with Summer by Edith Wharton. It is a scorcher! (teehee)

Using all the these fiery words tickles me. Hope you are amused too and not ready to toss me onto a pyre.  Okay, moving along, just in case. 

Have you guessed my secret yet? Are you burning to know? (teehee again)

Aw, you're so flaming brilliant, I bet you already figured it out. 

Alright, I never in a million years (or at least 5 years) expected to say this but here goes.... the big reveal... 
 


I received a Kindle Fire for Christmas! 

I  am actually the bemused proud owner of an e-reader. And a super cool high tech e-reader at that. Me. The girl with no ipod. The girl with a dumb phone.  (I did just upgrade to a smarter phone with a slide out keyboard and touch screen but kept it deliberately dumb-- no texting/interneting for me!)

And now I am with Kindle Fire.

Dang, I don't know nothin' 'bout reading on e-readers!

Ha, looks like I don't know whether to smile or grimace. Just momentary cognitive dissonance though. 


My mind was a whirl of: Uh buh.. no e-reader is my trademark. OMG! A KINDLE FIRE! Uh buh.. I prefer real books. OMG! A KINDLE FIRE! Uh buh... I want to be the last holdout. OMG! A KINDLE FIRE! I CAN GET ALL THE DICKENS' NOVELS FOR FREE!  (And that is no lie. Dickens popped into my mind before all others. my bargain book hunting has been thwarted by Dickens all year)

So yeah, I'm fired up about my new book toy!

Now, if I could only try it out.  That is right, I haven't even tried it out yet (but I have watched Amazon's cool tutorials). 

Why?  There is no wi-fi at my house.  

Why?   My bone idle but charming and bookish (redeeming qualities) Hub bought a wireless router two years ago and has yet to set it up. 

Hahahahahahahahahhahahah! This kills me! It is just so typical of our sitcom-esque life. 

Is your life like a sitcom too? 

Ours is a wonderfully maddening amalgamation of The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith Show, Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan's Island and Fawlty Towers. Really. 


So I'm giving Hub until February to hook up the wi-fi so I can set up my Kindle Fire in the comfort of my own home. If there is still no wi-fi on February 1, I'll go use the library's wi-fi. 


How much you wanna bet that I will be at the library on February 1?

Until then, I will just stand next to my Kindle Fire...

Where do you stand regarding e-readers? If you have one, which one do you have? How often do you use it?

Bargain Book Bonanza (29): Kindle Mysteries

Welcome to Bargain Book Bonanza!

DeLynne is hosting this week!

We all love a bargain, and books don't come any more basement-priced than free.  Here are three Kindle mysteries I picked up for nothing, nada, niente.  Remember, folks, if you don't have a Kindle you can read these books using your laptop or apps on other devices.

Archie's Been Framed manages to be farcical yet hard-boiled in the best James Bond tradition.  Amazing gadgetry, gastronomy, a bon-vivant lifestyle and murder are a wonderful combination.  I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Julius and his electronic side kick.  Knight Rider eat your  heart out, Archie is Julius' friend, assistant, secretary and nagger.  This is a series I'd actually pay to read.

The Noon God is a quick read from Donna Carrick, and I do recommend it.  The characters and investigation are a bit shallow, but that's understandable for the length of the book.  Carrick sucked me in and I was shocked when she revealed the murderer.  I'd really like to know if other readers were able to pick who-done-it better than me, and plan to read it again to see which clues I missed the first time through. 

It's as much a family saga as a mystery, with tragic characters struggling to overcome damage done by relatives (usually parents).  Not a cheerful book, but thought-provoking nonetheless. 
 

Dark Horse is great.  I've fallen for Jim Knighthorse even if he is narcissistic and talks to a bum who thinks he's God.   Actually, those traits endear him to me, and I was hooked by his story.  

Jim tries to prove his client, a high-achieving black high school student, didn't kill his white girlfriend.  The plot is tight and quick, and this book has everything a good mystery should.  Jim has a troubled past he's trying to resolve, and this is probably the grittiest of the three books reviewed here.  There are some moral dilemmas to ponder, too.   

Three good reads for free.  Actually my grandfather used to say nothing is free, and he would have pointed out that even a $0.00 Kindle book requires internet connection, a reading device, etc.  But this is as free as it gets, readers!

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BBB is a book haul linky party for bargain loving bookworms!

Want to join the party? Just visit the Bargain Book Bonanza page for the particulars.

If you have a bargain book post, please link up and share. We love to brag on bargains!

Bargain Book Bonanza (26): A Pioneer Kindle Freebie For Adult Fans Of Little House On The Prairie

 Welcome to Bargain Book Bonanza!

A book haul linky party for bargain loving bookworms!

Want to join the party? Just visit the Bargain Book Bonanza page for the particulars.


DeLynne is hosting this week!

Tracy wrote here ages ago about her Kindle, and at the time it seemed to me like some incredibly modern, foreign device.  We didn't have them here in Australia. 

But then my beautiful mother bought each of our girls (aged 14 and 10) one and we got used to them. My girls just love them and use them all the time.  

I do recommend Kindle for kids, especially since Amazon replaced both Kindles when they were accidentally damaged in separate incidents.  No questions, no need to return the old ones, just a new Kindle in the mail immediately.

But, I didn't have a Kindle (aren't all mums like that?) and kept thinking that one trip to the States I'd shout myself one.  Well, lo and behold Aussies can now buy the Kindle almost anywhere, and the very first time I saw it in Australia I just happened to have cash in my wallet (now that is a miracle!). I bought it before you could slide and release that power switch. 

So now we are a Kindle family (Hubby has shown absolutely no interest in an e reader of any kind.) and very happy.  I was a bit worried that I would start spending lots on books, since most of my reading comes from BBB-type sources.  However, I have found the Kindle very economical reading after the initial purchase.

I Googled 'free Kindle books'  and was overwhelmed with choices.  There are many sites that offer free e books, but so far I have stuck to the free category in the Amazon site.  One of my finds is Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart, written in the early 1900's.

Unlike so many stories of hardship and subjugation in the West (that poor Caroline Ingalls following Pa's every whim), this collection of letters tells a life full of joy and achievement.  

There is some sorrow, of course, but basically Elinore is a woman who chooses her destiny, seeks adventure, helps those less fortunate, and thrills at the landscape around her.  She makes friends, among them a French trapper, and enjoys an active social life while raising her family. 

Bring out the pioneer woman in you and read this book.  It's available in paperback, so even if you're an old fashioned girl you can read it, too.

Images from http://commons.wikimedia.org, all oil paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff.

If you have a bargain book, please share. We love to brag on bargains!

Phryne Fisher meets Precious Ramotswe

I inhabit a world where I might be killed by a snake released in my bedroom, stabbed while dancing, eaten by a crocodile, shot in a drive-by, or pulled from a train and hung from a water tower. Yes, I do love mysteries, but it would be easy to become paranoid. Lately I have immersed myself in two vastly different mystery series.

Not too long ago, my family and I attended Woodford Folk Festival (I wrote about it here). We had torrential, terrible rains, and camping was an exercise in endurance. But our nights were made more tolerable by curling up, each on his or her camp bed, with a book light and a good book. At one point our tent collapsed, breaking poles and wrecking the camp. All we were really worried about was the borrowed camping gear and the bag of Christmas present books, not necessarily in that order.

When gum-boot deep in mud, my distraction of choice was the Phryne Fisher series by Australian Kerry Greenwood. Surrounded by smelly muck, I escaped to the glamorous 1920's where Phryne (pronounced Fry-knee) has more money than she knows how to spend, luxuriates in expensive cosmetics, wears bespoke clothes, and solves mysteries while shocking society. She is a ballsy, unconventional woman with an amazing intellect who began her life distressingly poor, and I want to be her (after she got rich). The book covers are beautiful, each showing Phryne in one of the amazing outfits from the book. I even saved one illustration as my phone's wallpaper (I am truly a book tragic).



After purchasing all the books I can find from the series (there are 17, I think, and I have seven so far) I went to the library in search of another lady detective. And Mma Ramotswe came to mind. Alexander McCall Smith's creation is 'Botswana's only--and finest--female private detective.' She is, in contrast to Phryne, a woman of tradition and national pride with a strong moral compass. Mma Ramotswe's life has a quiet rhythm, and much of her detecting is done chatting politely to people over a cup of bush tea. There's a film version, too.



One of my friends tried to read Smith's series and found it boring. I love the gentle pace and evocative language. McCall writes just as I imagine Mma would speak, and I feel like I've already met Botswana's lady detective.

The two lady sleuths couldn't be more different. Phryne screams through Melbourne in a demonic Hispano-Suiza while Mma tootles across Botswana in her tiny white van, lovingly maintained by her fiance Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. One character is free with her favours, slim with hip bones jutting from milky white skin. The other is 'traditionally built' and honoured when someone calls her fat.

Phryne makes me want to take better care of myself while Mma makes me want to take better care of everyone else. Phryne makes me want more stuff and Mma teaches me that I don't need any more stuff.

They are both avaliable on Kindle (Phryne is here and Mma Ramotswe is here.) if you are trying to save bookshelf space.

However, if, like me, you are reading the traditional, paper versions, you'll need bookmarks. For Phryne I chose a Valentino exhibit bookmark with a vintage dress that Julia Roberts wore. For Mma Ramotwse I chose Emus by Aboriginal artist Yirra-Kurl.


If you are looking to escape from your everyday life (and is that not why we read?), then I can recommend either Phryne or Mma Ramotswe. They are vastly different from one another, but both wonderful detectives.

However, after reading of these ladies' escapes you might start looking over your shoulder.

Kindle Children’s Books

I never knew that my kids were dumb. Up until now I had thought them to be pretty clever, but then I browsed the children's Kindle book selection. There are some serious gaps in their reading. Enough with the Allison Miranda series and the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and pft on the L'Engle collection. My kids are reading drivel, I tell you!

Thank goodness for Amazon pointing this out. Otherwise they might have faced dire consequences in their academic future.

They are not reading Homer's Iliad! And they have not started on the Jane Austen canon, either. We are reading Emma, why not them?

According to Amazon, Dostoevsky is appropriate reading for little ones. Since Crime and Punishment is part of their everyday lives, see. Like they do the wrong thing and get grounded or a detention.

It's a huge oversight, but I don't believe even the school's Senior Curriculum has War and Peace, even though Amazon considers it a children's book.

Our long summer holiday is coming up and I may have to take back those fun books with attractive covers that I've set aside for Christmas and get my little girls something a bit weightier.

That's it! We are starting with Tolstoy!

How to become a best selling author:

1. Write a series with many parts
2. Give the first one away on Kindle.

     In fairness, I don't know how many books Kay Kenyon has sold, but I know she wrote a really good series in "The Entire and the Rose"  Few of us have the luxury of browsing through books all the time .  (Fantasy life pause. Go ahead, I'll wait,............... Ready? k.  ) A good series is a very nice find. This one falls into the science fiction/fantasy genre.  It's set a few hundred years from now when some of "us"  accidentally end up "over there", in another universe, one that's begun to look at "us" like "our" stars are the solution to "their" power supply problems.

The story opens after the protagonist managed to get back where he belonged, but without his wife and daughter and no one believes he ever went anywhere particularly interesting.  The series has the typical alien/future technology character, but it's also a story about what defines family, how we ultimately suffer when we try to use each other, how people cope when they're wildly out of place, how loyalties assumed to rock solid can change over time and how there's a larger purpose than we often see on the surface.

    
For Kindle users,  Bright of the Sky (Book 1 of The Entire and the Rose) is the über sample.  It's free. It's also so good you'll pay for the other books in the series, and because you like Kenyon so much, you'll buy an additional book (The Braided World) when you finish book four of the series, Prince of Storm.  Maybe compulsive book buying is a character flaw that I should addressed, but you see how my "best selling author" plan could work.  Either way, it's a good read, several in fact.

A quick note about the Kindle, and my on going love affair with it.  I'm as surprised as anyone, and every time someone asks me about it, I make them wish they hadn't.   The other night, I was waiting for a friend to show up for a dinner date and I was reading, from my Kindle.  I should get stock, I'm tellin' yah. I talked the waiter into giving his mother a Kindle, and Kathy of http://kathylovestoread.blogspot.com  and my personal favorite http://kathyisawino.blogspot.com/   (Sorry, Kathy, but I love the url's as much as I love the blogs!) awarded a word of the day prize to a post here at Mrs BG's, all because of the Kindle.

I know exACTly how this guy feels:
( thank you Aunt Deleese/Linnie)

The shame.

Hi. Uhm, my name is Tracy and, uhm, I, uh…oh geez.

Well, okay, it’s like this: I haven’t read most of the classics. It’s worse than that. I haven’t read any of the classics unless I was compelled to do so by someone with a Ph.D. who had the power to keep me from getting my B.S. I hang my head in shame, ask for lenience and wonder if I would still have had to spell check lenience if I had paid more attention to literature and less to “books.”

Still, I really gotta say, I’ve always found the classics to be a lot of work. My right brain doesn’t mind. My left brain objects and it does so vehemently, but I’ve been inspired by everyone here at Mrs. B.G.’s to rectify the situation.

Kindle has 49,990 books under the heading “Fiction Classics” so I decided to begin with the 140 ^th to correspond with what will be the 140^th post of Mrs. B.G.’s, this one. It turned out to be an Agatha Christie novel. Somehow that wasn’t quite what I had in mind, so I decided to start here:

“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition…”

I think my left brain likes her already.

The banjo, the side of my husband’s head, and the Kindle.

By way of introduction, I'm Tracy Cartmell and have been invited to contribute by the lovely ladies of Mrs. BG, two of whom happen to be my cousins: DeLynne by birth and Lesa, because my sister and I adopted her a while back and she hasn't had the good sense to block us. Being a book blog, you'd think I was going to talk about a book. Not so much.. I'm going to talk about 658,514 books. You might want to get comfortable.

Since my husband met a distant cousin who played banjo in a couple of local Irish bands, he’s been a groupie and I’ve tried to be supportive. The challenge has been that my idea of a good Friday night is a book, a glass of wine, and Ella Fitzgerald not watching him enjoy himself in a pub, with a pint, and Paddy Fitzgerald. A few weekends ago, I’d had enough and told him the only way I was going to be doing “this” any more was if I could bring a book. I love the man, but there’s only so much of the side of his head I want to see. Three days later I had a Kindle. He’d tried to “gadget” me earlier and I’d refused for the same reasons you’re resisting. You can find prices, pictures and operating instructions on Amazon’s website but they didn’t sell me. Using one did.

.

Pros:

· Feel. It feels like a book. If you read, you’ll understand how unappealing the idea of curling up with a slim laptop is. In my experience, there’s no comparison. It has the same heft, and hand feel as a paper back book.

· Access. They take care of the wireless connection to the Kindle store, but if I lived in a remote corner of the world, I’d check on coverage before I invested. What this amounts to is a bookstore at your fingertips.

· Tasting. I’ve never once bought or checked out a book without reading some of it first. Kindle allows you to download a free sample of the book before you purchase it. The samples are around thirty pages or a chapter. That’s plenty for me to know if I want to spend my money and more importantly at this point in my life, my time.

· Ease of use. I read, just not instructions. This wasn’t a problem with the Kindle because it’s ergonomic and intuitive. There’s a page forward button on both sides of the device that righties can’t appreciate until they’re reading in bed and want to turn over. Lefties will experience a more immediate happy.

· Abundance. At last check there were 658,814 books available and that doesn’t include newspapers, blogs and magazines that are now available in electronic form.

· Ecology. That’s a lot of trees that will keep holding birds and other wild life rather than print.

· It’s less conspicuous to bring into a bar than a stack of books.

Cons

· Cost. The model he bought is the smaller one, no bells no whistles and it sells for $199.00 US. The books are on average about 10.00. Reference books are more, but a lot of the classics are free and there is a large selection of other books at no charge. The only down side is you have to go to Amazon’s website to find them, then go back to your Kindle and search by title, or pay some guy $1.99 for “Free Kindle Books and How to Find them.” The library still wins the debate of economy

· Availability. Older books are often not available in Kindle form. I see that changing if these devices do what mp3 players did to CD’s.

· Ecology. Batteries and the devices they power don’t break down as quickly as paper, and one day, my Kindle will join my walkman.

· No back light, meaning, you’ll still need a light to read at night. Not a big deal unless, like me, you don’t like to keep your partner awake while you read.

· In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright, if technology “keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.” There’s something to be said for the smell of aging paper and a walking meditation through a row of books.