Tag Archives: Books

Books

Epic reading month continues

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Three weeks to go before the vacation and two massive hardbacks down – I’ve just finished ploughing through all 800 pages of the latest Wheel of Time novel disappointingly quickly. I’m not sure what I’ll do when I finish it – I’ve been reading the series since the mid 90s, waiting for each new book to come out.

It may be sacrilege to say so, but I actually think Mr Sanderson (commissioned to finish the series when Robert Jordan passed away in 2007) is a better and more efficient writer than RJ – there’s been far less smoothing of Aes Sedai skits in his novels so far – but then Robert Jordan left a lot of story left to be told as we inch closer to Tarmon Gaidon. Only one book left in the series, depressingly, then I will need to bid farewell to another universe… unless, of course, the estate commissions some prequels… and I’m not sure how I feel about that!

Next two hardbacks to read, before I go on vacation and take only digital books with me, are Peter F Hamilton’s Evolutionary Void and the latest novel in Stephen Donaldson’s Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Any tips on what to dip into next? Is there any epic sci-fi or fantasy I’ve missed on offer in the Kindle store?

Thoughts on a comment appreciated Smile.

I’ve now got a strange hybrid image of Rand Al’Thor sitting in a multi-purpose hab unit within an abominator class GOU heading to blow the hell out of Shayol Gul. It’ll be very weird in my head by the end of the month….

Books

Seeing as I’m ploughing through epic SF/fantasy at the moment…

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It’s ‘Looking forward to Feist‘ month. By posting the embed below I’m in with a chance of winning the new hardback, out – you guessed it – early next month. Although given that Voyager sent me his entire back catalogue a few months ago, I can’t help but think I might not have the best chance of winning this one…

Whilst the various Midkemian adventures have in some ways got increasingly more ridiculous (how many more levels of bad can there be – they keep facing off the ultimate evil!) – it’s still a wonderful universe and I’m looking forward to the next instalment – which I gather may be the beginning of the end…

Update: the embedded countdown ticker below doesn’t seem to render in Chrome. Sorry! It works in (shudder) IE.

Books, Technology

I want to read my e-reader…

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So despite the fact that the prevailing opinion from my Twitter contacts and friends alike was that I should wait for the Kindle to grace the shores of the UK, the holiday in Denmark with three bulky paperbacks squeezed into a too-cramped rucksack and the impending implosion of my bookshelves into some minor singularity broke me, and I picked up a Sony PRS 505 from Play.com about two weeks ago. I’d seen my friend Rob with one and had a pretty good idea it would be decent, which its proving to be, and I had a feeling that the Kindle would be some time coming…

Here’s what’s good about it:

1) It stores lots of book in a sleek, elegant casing. I’ve shoved a 1GB SD card (at a cost of a not so princely £4) in there, which will cover me for at least 1000 books but potentially as many as 3000 – which is probably more than I’ll need on there

2) It works well with the open source Calibre, even under Windows7 RC1 64bit, which is something of a relief (as I gather the Sony software is its usual bag of decaying tripe)

3) The screen is amazing. E-Ink works like an etch-a-sketch, so reads well in any light. It also makes for…

4) …awesome battery life. Due to the etch-a-sketch nature of the device, it only draws power when turning pages. So one charge (by USB cable), will give you room for about 4000 page turns

5) You can get books. Waterstones has many, even if Amazon is probably banking on the arrival of the Kindle in the UK at some stage.

The not-so-good

1) I’ve already mentioned Sony’s software… the navigation on the device itself is not brilliant, no way to go directly to a page (that I’ve found as yet), not until you’ve made bookmarks (although it remembers what page you were last reading), and there’s no search functionality, ability to make notes etc. I’m also having some fiddling with page alignment (page numbers in middle of page, NBSPs, etc)

2) There’s no wireless connectivity – hence awesome battery life, but hey, if I want wireless, well, that’s what the iPhone I’m planning on getting will do…

3) The page-turning is not that speedy, although its not terrible

All in all, it’s up there with my Netbook in all-time useful purchases. I carry it around daily, have got through two novels on it in two weeks and will probably maintain close to that rate, saving valuable bookshelf real-estate, holiday packing and being stuck on the bus in between books…

Here’s a quick video demo from some dude on Youtube:

Cross posted on Chivalry House.

Books, Gaming, Update

Lotsa reading and some Wii

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I’m not even going to apologise, this time, for my latest bout of ignoring this blog. It’s been busy. Let’s leave it at that. Slap me in person, if you like.

I’ve spent my down time doing fun things – reading through the back catalogue of Robert Charles Wilson (following the excellent recommendations of Tom and Simon via Twitter), as well as the new Alistair Reynolds, the Sebastian Darke childrens’ books, the new Iain M Banks, and will soon be starting the Mike Carey (of Lucifer and Constantine fame) novels. I’ve got to this place where self-indulgence involves reading mountains of sci-fi and fantasy and its significantly healthier than pigging out on McDonalds so I’m running with it.

Have also been playing more of the new ‘Fire Emblem’ game on Wii than I’d like. This is a mediocre version of the brilliant GBA game that takes absolutely no advantage of the Wii control scheme and seems to have been scripted by a monkey prone to bouts of hysteria. The plot just keeps extending itself in explicable turns in order to cope with the fact that the game needs more missions to have justified its sticker price.

More excitingly, Wii Fit arrived last Monday and I’ve used it about 6 times, gaining some impressive and some not-so-impressive scores. It’s all part of my motivation to get fit, which has also seen me play squash for the first time in four years (admittedly only for 10 minutes, but, y’know…). Wii Fit also entertained about a dozen friends at the first BBQ of the season this weekend (mmm, chickan).

So, I’m busy, and I’m doing interesting things, and if you’d like to know what I’m up to find me on Twitter and Facebook as that’s where my social media output is going for the moment (book reviews on Visual Bookshelf, movie reviews on Flixster, random observations on life on Twitter).

Share and enjoy, people. Share and enjoy.

Books, Internet

The Victorian Internet

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I’ve been reading Tom Standage‘s book on the history of the telegraph this week. It is a fascinating read – Standage is totally accessible and every bit as brilliant as he gives the impression of being (he’s business editor at The Economist so I speak to him occasionally as part of my day job). Tom P and Matt made the point when they saw me with the book that it should be very short – simply reading “there wasn’t one” – but the parallels Standage draws to today’s Internet and some of the fantastic quotes he draws from makes it entertaining reading**.

A choice sample, James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald, writing around 1840:

“The telegraph may not affect magazine literature… but the mere newspapers must submit to destiny, and go out of existence.”

A conversation (and a destiny) that is very much going on today.

There’s another quote in there that I can’t find at the moment but talks about how the telegraph made it seem as it you were in the same room as the person you were talking to — which I found particularly amusing given that I spend quite a bit of time talking to journalists about how my client Cisco’s TelePresence achieves the same effect in ever-so-slightly higher definition…

Anyway, it’s an interesting read, and occasionally pops up cheap on Amazon.

** I admit freely that part of this fascination with all this may derive in part from the fact that I studied the History of Science at university and spend a increasingly large proportion of my time talking about the Internet’s impact on communications / news dissemination.