Dates are subject to change...
January
"Red Carpet Suicide" by Perez Hilton - Honestly, I'm just excited (hoping) to see it do bad.
"Andre the Giant" by Michael Krugman - This guy was the hero of every kid on my block, when I was little; I even had the action figure. Coincidentally, there is also slated to be a movie about him this year.
February
"Losing My Religion" by William Lobdell - Spiritual memoir by former Los Angeles Times religion writer.
"Fool: A Novel" by Christopher Moore - Maybe now I can finally understand King Lear.
March
"Mental Floss Presents Be Amazing" by the Editors of Mental Floss - This book looks like it will be the ultimate "how-to" guide to doing things you never knew you wanted to know how to do.
May
"Pygmy" by Chuck Palahniuk - I'm not really a Palahniuk fan, but this description alone intrigues me: "The Manchurian Candidate meets South Park"
"Let Story Guide You" by Donald Miller - One of the few Christian writers out there worth reading.
Showing posts with label future books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label future books. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Amazon Kindle - Day One, Out of the Box
I'm going to spend the next week giving an overview of basically every Kindle feature. I think at the right price it will be in the hands of every book reader (or even Web reader) in the very near feature. If you hate the idea of eBooks, then just ignore me. If not, then read on.
Today, I'll go over the overall look and feel of the device; over the next couple days, I'll show you what the free Internet looks like (yes, free), and some of the other less talked about features.
The first thing that really struck me about the device was the box; you can tell a lot from a gadget by the amount of time spent in packaging. The box is basically shaped like a book (creative, right!); I put my box on my bookshelf.
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| From Kindle |
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| From Kindle |
When I turned the Kindle on for the first time, it look fake--I didn't think words could ever be so clear on something. It's just like words in a book. When I took it outside there was absolutely no glare.
The first thing you see when you turn on the device is the main menu. On this menu you can sort books by title, author, or most recently read/added. You can also choose to show only magazines, newspapers or books. When you stick a 4 gig card into the Kindle, and load it with thousands of books, this main screen becomes problematic...it would be nice to have the option of hiding some of the books; otherwise you'll spend twenty minutes hitting next page to get to the book you want.
What really separates the Kindle from Sony's reader is the ability to download books without a computer. In less then a minute, you can go to the store, pick the book, and have it downloaded onto your device. And there's a huge amount of books already available (unfortunately, there's not many magazines). You also have the option of previewing as many books as you can fit; the previews usually contain about 20 to 50 pages, which is enough to help you know if the book is worth reading.
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| From Kindle |
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| From Kindle |
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| From Kindle |
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Books of the Not So Distant Future
There's not enough book gossip in this word; this blog entry is the best book news I can come up with...it's the books I'm excited to hear more about in coming months. In no particular order here they are:
"The Wordy Shipmate" by Sarah Vowell (October 2008). Vowell's account of Puritans sounds exciting! Well, okay, exciting is the wrong word, but I'm sure it will be a fun read.
"Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member" by Kevin Yee (July 2008). As a former employee at Disney's Anaheim Mouse Trap, I'm sure this will be a fun read...doesn't look like much of a story though.
"Ask a Ninja Presents The Ninja Handbook: This Book Looks Forward to Killing You Soon" by Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols (September 2008). I think I'm more looking forward to this book to fail than to do good. I'm tired of seeing every blogger and their mother try to make a quick buck on a book, and I want it to end! Maybe I'm wrong, I hope that I am, but this book just looks like the blog; the trouble with that is who wants to read a blog in a book? The writers of blogs can make fine writers, but more often then not when they try to publish books, they simply rehash what makes their blog popular. I'm a blog writer who published a book, but you don't have to be a fan of one to enjoy the other.
"Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" by Rob Bell and Don Golden (October 2008). This looks like a pretty short, thought-provoking read. I'm a fan of Bell, so I'm sure I'll be a fan of this book.
"Indignation" by Philip Roth (September 2008). I always say I'm going to read Roth, but then I never do. Maybe this time I actually will...
And on the subject of publishing gossip, I recently heard that Amazon has yet to sell even 50,000 Kindles; some reports say it might not even be 20,000. All the buzz was on Kindle at the start of the month when Bezos talked at the Book Expo in L.A., and it's no wonder--Amazon knows how to spin a story!
I really want to have high hopes for the Kindle, because I think it has big potential in a dying publishing industry; but that same part of me wonders if the Kindle is going to be just like that thing Amazon pumped up several years ago...I think they called it the "it." A few months later they said "it" was actually the Segway...suddenly it was just a cool toy for yuppies and their friends.
When Toshiba is making a laptop that weighs about the same as a Kindle, then why would I want a Kindle? That's what you need to answer for me, Amazon! Because if I'm paying $360 for a book reader, then I want it to do so much more.
I think it would be great if there was a reader that let you read an authors book, and have the ability at anytime to see every bit of news about them, every blog they've written, and what's on their homepage. It's a great way to connect the reader to the author. I even could see the rebirth of the serial novel--writers writing chapters by the week and sending all their readers auto updates for a buck.
It seems like people are saying it's the either the death of publishing or the death of eBooks...I for one would like to see the two coexist.
"The Wordy Shipmate" by Sarah Vowell (October 2008). Vowell's account of Puritans sounds exciting! Well, okay, exciting is the wrong word, but I'm sure it will be a fun read.
"Mouse Trap: Memoir of a Disneyland Cast Member" by Kevin Yee (July 2008). As a former employee at Disney's Anaheim Mouse Trap, I'm sure this will be a fun read...doesn't look like much of a story though.
"Ask a Ninja Presents The Ninja Handbook: This Book Looks Forward to Killing You Soon" by Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols (September 2008). I think I'm more looking forward to this book to fail than to do good. I'm tired of seeing every blogger and their mother try to make a quick buck on a book, and I want it to end! Maybe I'm wrong, I hope that I am, but this book just looks like the blog; the trouble with that is who wants to read a blog in a book? The writers of blogs can make fine writers, but more often then not when they try to publish books, they simply rehash what makes their blog popular. I'm a blog writer who published a book, but you don't have to be a fan of one to enjoy the other.
"Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile" by Rob Bell and Don Golden (October 2008). This looks like a pretty short, thought-provoking read. I'm a fan of Bell, so I'm sure I'll be a fan of this book.
"Indignation" by Philip Roth (September 2008). I always say I'm going to read Roth, but then I never do. Maybe this time I actually will...
And on the subject of publishing gossip, I recently heard that Amazon has yet to sell even 50,000 Kindles; some reports say it might not even be 20,000. All the buzz was on Kindle at the start of the month when Bezos talked at the Book Expo in L.A., and it's no wonder--Amazon knows how to spin a story!
I really want to have high hopes for the Kindle, because I think it has big potential in a dying publishing industry; but that same part of me wonders if the Kindle is going to be just like that thing Amazon pumped up several years ago...I think they called it the "it." A few months later they said "it" was actually the Segway...suddenly it was just a cool toy for yuppies and their friends.
When Toshiba is making a laptop that weighs about the same as a Kindle, then why would I want a Kindle? That's what you need to answer for me, Amazon! Because if I'm paying $360 for a book reader, then I want it to do so much more.
I think it would be great if there was a reader that let you read an authors book, and have the ability at anytime to see every bit of news about them, every blog they've written, and what's on their homepage. It's a great way to connect the reader to the author. I even could see the rebirth of the serial novel--writers writing chapters by the week and sending all their readers auto updates for a buck.
It seems like people are saying it's the either the death of publishing or the death of eBooks...I for one would like to see the two coexist.
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