What’s your opinion on e-books?

So far, I’m middle-of-the-road on them. Here are some of my e-book pros and cons:

Pros:

• cost (I can’t afford to buy even a fraction of the books I’d want to read, and e-books are cheaper than regular ones)
• instant gratification (no waiting for delivery or a visit to the store; no waiting for someone else at the library to finish reading the book you want)
• environmental impact (no tree-killing, assuming you don’t print out the book)
• nearly unlimited storage (data takes up a lot less physical space than bookshelves)
• choice of format (you can adjust things like font size)

Cons:

• ‘fragile’ (you’d better make regular back-ups if you don’t want to risk losing them)
• inflexible (unless you print them out or have a PDA on which to read them you can’t easily carry them around to, say, doctor’s office waiting rooms, the gym, or the lunch table)
• tradition (us book lovers tend to just love the feel or smell of a book in our hands)
• sharing (e-books are generally licensed for one reader, and I often like to pass my books on to a friend, my husband, or the library when I’m done)

Looking at those lists, you’d think I’d jump for e-books. But the truth is I don’t. Part of it is that I’m a soul-deep book-lover, and part of the joy of a book for me is holding it in my hands and turning the pages. More than that, though, I find it just plain inconvenient. I read everywhere: at the gym, in waiting rooms, at the table when I’m eating alone. I don’t have a PDA and I find 8.5″ x 11″ printouts annoying to manage (not to mention they defeat a couple of the pros of e-books), so I can’t read an e-book at those locations. I also find it more comfortable to sit back with a cat on my lap and a book in my hands than I do to sit with an e-book on my laptop screen. There are also other things I can do while I read a physical book (and vice versa) that don’t work as well with e-books. For example, I often read books during the slow parts of computer games (travel time, etc.).

I keep feeling as though I should be more receptive to e-books, particularly as these days they’re becoming a common starting ground for new authors (especially in newer genres such as erotica). I’m also hardly a fuddy-duddy when it comes to technology—I’m a gadget fiend. Certainly I do read and review the occasional e-book. But given my tendency to start a new book over breakfast in the morning, e-books often sit unread on my hard drive for some time before I get to them.

What do you think? Is there a way to make e-books more inviting or compelling, something as easy to dig into as a paperback? Or will they always lack that certain something?

Two new reviews for you today: an advance review of Tate Hallaway’s fun Romancing the Dead and a belated review of the e-book anthology Boundless. (See what I mean about format delaying my reading?)

Last week I wrote an entry in my Epiphanies blog (it’s a place for posting writers’ exercises and such for people to play with) that explored my grandfather’s history just a tiny bit. He’s one of those people who has a naturally story-inspiring life, and I happen to have very vivid memories of visiting him and my grandmother as a child.

I don’t tend to think of technology in connection with my family. Which is odd, because my mother has been a programmer, and became a programmer at a time when that wasn’t a common field for women to go into. My grandfather was a chemist. I guess it’s just that when I think of that side of the family mostly what I think of is visiting my grandparents at their old rural house in the seventies and eighties, strolling through the apple orchard and swimming in the pond. My grandfather was born in 1900 and died in 1994; he wasn’t exactly around for the height of the internet age. So it was with some amazement that I heard from relatives we’d fallen out of touch with after my grandfather’s funeral, thanks to their having found that post that I made. Emails and addresses were exchanged all over the place, all because of a spur-of-the-moment blog post.

That feels kind of surreal, but very cool.

This morning’s review is of Val McDermid’s The Grave Tattoo. Also, I’ve posted a new T-shirt design at Caffeinated Chicanery and another at Gamers’ Heaven. The monthly newsletters with their subscribers-only sales go out tonight barring a hiccup in Cafepress’s software, so if you aren’t subscribed already, this is a good time to do so (there’s a form at the bottom-left of the front page of the storefronts). Since I’ve been reading & reviewing so many mysteries lately it seemed appropriate to do a mystery addict shirt:

Mystery Addict
Where’s the body?

I also couldn’t help adding to our alignment series. Don’t worry, we have plenty of stored-up design ideas to present to you this year:

chaotic brilliant!

Don’t accidentally kick over a heavy Maglite while holding a sometimes-skittish cat, even if she is a small cat.

If I had a camera, this is where I’d insert the photo of my right arm with its three bandaids and one gauze pad, plus a variety of other uncovered scratches (they weren’t actively bleeding, so I figured they didn’t need it). We actually did clip her claws recently; she just dug in particularly hard this time.

I got tagged for this one by Book Nut (aka Melissa) as well as Dolce Bellezza. So, what the heck.

a) What issues/topic interests you most in non-fiction? Cookbooks and writers’/creativity books are my favorite non-fiction books. However, I’ll pick up a non-fiction book on any topic I want to learn more about and then some, and I never know what that’ll be. I’ve reviewed books on subjects as diverse as poop, truffles (the mushrooms, not the chocolates), and composting. (Okay, the weird part is that in retrospect, those books aren’t so unrelated as they first appeared.)

b) Would you like to review books concerning those? I already do, quite frequently.

c) Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? I post my reviews on my own site rather than submitting them to magazines because I don’t want to be bound by artificial limitations on word counts or the need to be nice in order to make a magazine’s advertisers happy. I’d rather be able to write exactly whatever I think is useful or necessary in order to appropriately review a book. That said, I’m happy to use things like Amazon affiliate links and AdSense ads to make at least a little money at it. After all, I put a fair amount of time and thought into my reviews—they’re more than a hobby.

d) Would you recommend those to your friends and how? I often recommend books that I enjoy. If I don’t plan to need a book again I’ll also sometimes pass it on to a friend whom I think could use it.

e) If you have already done something like this, link it to your post. Heh, you can find all my non-fiction and fiction reviews at Errant Dreams Reviews. There are hundreds of ‘em—literally.

I’ve already linked back to Melissa and Dolce Bellezza above, and rather than tagging people this time around, just consider yourself tagged if you think it would be fun to do this meme. By the way, speaking of non-fiction, here are links to my two latest reviews: Margaret Mason’s No One Cares What You Had for Lunch and Jackie Mills’s The Big Book of Diabetic Desserts.

Oh, and while you’re here, check out this hysterical printing rant I found at book/daddy. Beware the volume, and be aware that the language is NSFW.

I’m almost a month late, but I did get tagged by Dewey on the ‘you make my day’ meme. To quote Dewey, because she said it best:

So let me start off by saying that every single person who reads my blog makes my day just by doing me the honor of reading my babbling about books. But I have to pick 10 specific people and say why they make my day.

The hard part, of course, is picking only 10!

Dionne Galace: Bam’s blog is one of the first places where I discovered that romance and erotica could be fun and delicious instead of silly. And that the silly stuff can be fun too—see also Bam’s cover snark. Then she posted in ten parts Bettie Sharpe’s awesome story Ember, and I embarrassed myself by becoming a raving fan girl.

Sharp Words: That brings me to Bettie Sharpe herself, who has written some absolutely awesome stuff. She’s an incredibly fresh and original voice in erotic romance, and she’s just plain fun as a person.

Treasure Tables: This meme has largely been making its way around the book-blogging sphere, but I have to mention a roleplaying-oriented site, Treasure Tables. They have great discussions regarding gaming topics of all kinds, and have on none-too-rare occasions linked to our roleplaying resources page or articles from it, which is pretty cool. They’re on hiatus—possibly permanently—but they have such huge archives of material that this hardly makes them non-useful.

The Ramblings of a Bildo: I don’t read as much of Bildo’s stuff as I’d like, largely because I’ve not been able to keep up with all the blogs I’d like of late, but he’s a fun writer. His comic is nifty, his art is silly and fun, his writing shows great talent, and I love to read his take on video games. He’s also a genuinely nice and thoughtful guy.

Bookgasm: Bookgasm posts reviews of books that perhaps closest match my own tastes in fiction. This is dangerous, of course, because it means that every time I visit I end up adding to my ever-growing wish list! They write very thoughtful reviews that tell me what I need to know in order to determine whether I’m likely to enjoy a book.

Books and Cooks: Tara shares two of my obsessions—books and cooking–and she’s a really sweet lady to boot!

Musings of a Bookish Kitty: Literary Feline and I have entirely too much in common, and I always look forward to her blog posts and her comments on my posts!

Nonfiction Readers Anonymous: I love Nonanon’s sense of humor and playful approach to books. I always enjoy visiting and chatting on her blog!

Thraveon: Besides being a close friend, Jervis is an awesome writer, among his many other talents. I love dropping by his blog to see what he’s up to (although sadly work has kept him too busy of late to keep up with his posting) when we’re not visiting him and his wonderful family to play D&D, cook, and do other fun things. We’ve also met a ton of other wonderful friends through him.

Burning Building: I have to toss this one in here as my latest fun find. Isaac writes some of the oddest posts and stories, and they’re really neat and imagination-expanding.

As Dewey noted, picking 10 is kind of an artificial limitation on what could be a far more expansive listing of very cool people. So if you aren’t listed here, that’s hardly a slight.

In theory getting noted on this list means you’ve been tagged or something, but I’ve always seen such things as optional, only to be done if the person tagged thinks it would be fun, so decide for yourself.

Today’s review is of Erin McCarthy’s upcoming novel Fallen.

I’ve read with some interest—yet stayed almost entirely out of—the discussion of romance author Cassie Edwards’s plagiarism scandal. For those two readers who haven’t heard about it yet, here are the basic, quick-and-dirty details as I understand them:

Cassie Edwards has written scads of ‘trashy’ romance books. You know—the kind that helped to establish the stereotypes that exist in most people’s minds when they think of the romance genre. She has tons of fans the world over. (Hey, that kind of novel became the stereotype because it sold. It isn’t something I’d read, but it has plenty of proponents.)

Not too long ago, thanks to Google, people started to notice that various passages in her books—ones that didn’t sound the same as the words around them—had apparently been lifted wholesale from various research books. If you want a blow-by-blow listing, you can find it at the blog that’s chronicled most of this: Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. Check the sidebar for the list of Edwards-related links.

Accusations of plagiarism started to fly. Cassie Edwards’s response was apparently to say that she didn’t know it was wrong to copy research material without attributing it. Leaving alone the fact that ignorance of the law is no excuse, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a writer not realizing that it’s wrong to take other writers’ words and use them as their own. It’s also extremely difficult to imagine a published writer who is completely and utterly unaware of the concept of copyright and what it means, which is essentially what she’s claiming.

Now, I can understand the idea that there are writers who’ve failed to adequately label their research when taking notes and ended up inadvertently plagiarizing a line here or there. I guess I’m somewhat generous by nature and that was my first thought when I heard about this, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t what had happened. First, the passages are far too long, frequent, and exact. They were clearly copy-pasted. Second, she’s apparently done the same with several novels. Yes, she plagiarized other fiction in order to write her fiction.

You might at this point be wondering why I’m bringing this up. After all, it’s very nearly old news. It’s clear at this point that she plagiarized, and that she’s going to keep claiming she didn’t know it was wrong, and perhaps even keep claiming that it wasn’t wrong, as stunning as that seems. (I’m also pretty amazed by the fact that so many of her fans continue defending her and claiming that the folks who exposed the plagiarism are just big ol’ meanies. I mean, she broke faith with her audience—she put forward others’ work as her own—and if I were one of her readers I’d at least want to know that.)

But here’s the deal: I had to bring this up today because this morning I stumbled across a magnificent article written by the guy who wrote an article on ferrets that she plagiarized: Move Over, ‘Meerkat Manor’. He explains what it felt like to find out his work had been plagiarized, and then what it felt like to realize what it had been turned into. And oh, it’s a hysterical read:

First I was angry. Then I had to laugh. To see my textbook descriptions of ferrets in a bodice-ripper, as dialogue between a hunky American Indian and a lustful pioneer woman who several pages later have sex on a mossy riverbank, is the height of absurdity.

And he’s right. Having read the copy-pasted material that apparently passes for dialogue in Cassie Edwards novels, I can’t imagine ever picking one up even out of curiosity now:

Let’s put aside for now that ferrets live on the prairie, where there are no bushes—never mind the forest where Edwards has set her characters. Seeing the cute animals, Shiona and Shadow Bear launch into a discussion about the cute little critters.

“They are so named because of their dark legs,” Shadow Bear says, to which Shiona responds: “They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail.”

Wow. Yeah, now that’s sexy pillow-talk right there!

I highly recommend reading the rest of Paul Tolme’s article, not only because it’s a hysterically funny take on the scandal, but because he takes the opportunity to use the unfortunate theft of his hard work to bring attention to something very important to him: the very real plight of these wonderful animals.

Before I sign off, here are my latest reviews: Val McDermid’s The Torment of Others and Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest.

Reluctant Romance Reader

Today’s Booking Through Thursday:

Here’s something for Valentine’s Day.

Have you ever fallen out of love with a favorite author? Was the last book you read by the author so bad, you broke up with them and haven’t read their work since? Could they ever lure you back?

I’m wracking my brains here, but no, I can’t think of one. All of my favorite authors have so far kept the faith with me. I look forward to checking out others’ answers to this question and seeing how often it’s happened for them.

I’ve posted several book reviews since my last post; all of them, for the first time in a while, are fiction—no cookbooks, no non-fiction. Weird, huh? Here they are:

• Memory in Death, J.D. Robb/Nora Roberts
• The Painted Messiah, Craig Smith
• The Flawless Skin of Ugly People, Doug Crandell

I also have the awesomest husband: I got a box of books for Valentine’s Day! It includes some Val McDermid mysteries (I’ve wanted to read her stuff ever since watching the British TV version of ‘Wire in the Blood,’ based on her novels), one of which I’ve already started in on. I just couldn’t wait!

I’m finally getting around to reading & reviewing some more fiction. Wheee! Today’s review is of P.D. Gilson’s Gaea: Beyond the Son, and I have two more novels that I read over the weekend and at the end of last week that I need to review. I finally read a Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb mystery out of curiosity, and I read Craig Smith’s The Painted Messiah.

I wanted to link to Murder By the Book today after reading this post by Sam Houston. Not only does it sound like a fantastic bookstore, but apparently one of the folks there got the bright idea to start up a publishing company aimed at reprinting now-out-of-print mysteries. You know the ones—where you go to buy book ten in a series by an author you just heard of, and you think you should start at the beginning of the series, only it turns out that books one through seven are out of print now? That always drives me insane! Anyway, these folks got the wonderful idea to try to fix that. Go visit Busted Flush Press!

Then, take a moment to watch this fontariffic video:

(Found via book/daddy.)

From this week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Okay, even I can’t read ALL the time, so I’m guessing that you folks might voluntarily shut the covers from time to time as well… What else do you do with your leisure to pass the time? Walk the dog? Knit? Run marathons? Construct grandfather clocks? Collect eggshells?

I have a tough time drawing a line between ‘leisure’ and ‘work’ time, since both are twined together. Thus, this is more a list of the kinds of things I do in general, between work & play:

• Play online games (EVE online and Warcraft being the two I play most), either with friends or solo
• Watch interesting TV programs or movies, usually on DVD, and not very frequently
• Read books of all kinds, obviously, both fiction and non-fiction
• Read fascinating articles on-line, and sometimes blog about them in one place or another
• Write—I used to freelance for RPG companies, but now I mostly write on-line. I used to write fiction, but now I primarily write reviews and other sorts of non-fiction.
• Design T-shirts and related items at Cafepress—this started out as a lark and turned into a semi-job
• Garden—I vastly prefer edible gardening to ornamental gardening, and I love getting into things like composting as a part of gardening
• Cooking—I could bake, roast, and chop all week and never get tired of it!
• Sampling good foods—okay, so this one isn’t so good for the waistline, but I never get tired of trying new and interesting foods
• Play tabletop roleplaying games with friends, anywhere from once a month to once a week
• Play with the cats

I think I’ve covered most of it!

Speaking of foods and cooking, today’s review is of a Betty Crocker cookbook devoted to Whole Grains.

Regular posting will return soon. I came down with a flu or cold (whatever comes with fever, congestion, aches, etc.) later in the day yesterday after going in for my second HIDA scan (to see if they can take my gallbladder out yet). I feel like I have perhaps two functional brain cells right now, and that’s an optimistic assessment. Mostly I’m spending the day sitting between the cats and staring at the computer screen with a blank look on my face. I’m pretty sure I’m not drooling, though, which is good.