Helping Nashville Schools – please pass this information along

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Rebecca Brothers of Reader with a Capital R announced at the Book Blogger Convention that she wanted to help Nashville schools after the flooding there. There is an organization called Pencil Foundation, which links “community resources of both volunteers and materials with Metro Nashville Public Schools.”

The Pencil Foundation:
The Pencil Foundation has a school supply program. Rebecca describes it thus:

“Community businesses donate their unneeded office supplies, old letterhead, gently used office machines, surplus products, and brand new school supplies to the foundation’s “store”. Teachers from Nashville Metro Public Schools are allowed to make an appointment to “shop” there twice per school year (all items are free to teachers).”

Sadly this store suffered water damage during the recent Nashville flooding and over 2000 books were destroyed.

How people can help:
The Pencil Foundation is asking for donations so that they can hold a book fair in October, where they let schoolteachers take 30 books for their kids. Last year they gave away 6000 books in a day. You can donate books, your time, or plastic storage bins and shelving. If you are interested in donating our time or storage, Rebecca explains it further on her blog here. Since I know most people will probably find it easiest to send books, this is what they’re looking for (This is also taken from Rebecca’s blog):

Children’s books: board books, pre-school books, flap books, activity (coloring, sticker) books, picture books, young readers, beginning readers, children’s and young adult chapter books, and high school materials. Their most pressing needs are for books struggling readers at the elementary and middle school level can enjoy. High interest non-fiction books are as welcome as fiction. Many students are reading below grade level or are English Language Learners. Books in Spanish would also be greatly welcome. New or used books are great. As Ulli said, “A book can have many lives and last many years.”

This is the mailing address to send these books:
LP PENCIL Box at McCann ALC
1300 56th Ave North
Nashville, TN 37209

I’ve also made some buttons for this so you can put them on you sidebar or website. They link to Rebecca’s blog post 🙂





The Book Blogger Convention, Part 2

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I had the second part of this written and it was a lengthy article of wonder. All ready to go for a cut and paste into the blog. What happened? Well I had it saved as a draft in gmail (which is where I write my posts so I can work in it on any one of my computers), but as I selected it all to copy, I hit control+v instead of control+c. And then gmail autosaved right then. And control+z? DID NOTHING!!! I had a mini breakdown. It started with numbness then pain, then anger and depression. 😛 Anyway, (sigh, the acceptance phase), here we go again.

This is part 2 of 2 parts


The Marketing panel from very far away…
4) Marketing [2:00-2:50]
This was a panel consisting of Gayle [Everyday I Write the Book], Yen [The Book Publicity Blog], Ann [Books on the Nightstand], and Thea [The Book Smugglers]. Heather [Age 30+ Books] moderated.

The point of this panel seemed to be that to have a successful blog need to market it. You need to brand yourself, and have a particular niche. It sounds difficult, but really branding should be easy for bloggers – just be yourself and let the passion come through. Have a hook or an identity. The idea can rub people the wrong way, but it’s useful to have something, even if it’s a tagline, to say who you are. Anything can become your brand.

The panelists also said it’s important to spend time community building. For example, when The Book Smugglers first started, they responded to every comment.  All the panelists agreed about commenting. You can create dialogue by commenting on other people’s blogs as well. Another idea is to do guest reviews or have guest reviewers come to your blog. Having an event can also build community. Another Book Smugglers example is their event called Smugglevus which is based on Festivus and is basically a book love fest.  You could also create some kind of online book club.

Know who your readers are and go about finding them and connecting to them. There was some discussion of using social media like twitter and facebook to get readers, but not to spread yourself too thin. You don’t need to sign up for everything, just look at whats out there and choose a couple of things. If you are trying too hard it shows.

As an aside it was noted that if you have a blog, make sure your RSS is easy to find. Have a big ol’ link or icon so readers know how to add a subscription to your blog.

The discussion went to stats for a little bit. Publicists like to get stats so that they can decide whether a blog is popular and would reach a lot of readers. Many of the panelists felt like stats are an imperfect measurement (I don’t recall the exact wording here). A blog may have small numbers but hold a lot of sway over it’s readers in what it recommends. On the other hand, Thea from the Book Smugglers disagreed and said that they pay a lot of attention to their stats and are open with having a counter and with telling publicists their stats. [ How do I feel about this? I think it’s one of those hot button topics where people have strong opinions. Remember last year, the discussion after Katiebabs posted commentary on the Book Blogger Panel at BEA, 2009? Anyway, I personally have mixed feelings. I do want stats to go up so that I know people are reading my blog and I can have discussions with MORE people about books (yay!), but I also admit I don’t look at them all the time, and with three mirrored blogs, with different difficulty in getting stats from them (wordpress is good, vox is awful, LJ has stats for paid members and I wasn’t always paid), I usually find it confusing to figure out].

The final comment was that one of the panelists put up a survey to find out who their readers were and they were surprised by the results. They found out that they had a lot of readers who weren’t book bloggers or book publishing people. The recommendation was to know your readers. Survey them to find out who they are for example.

Blogging with Social Responsibility (sorry for blurriness. My camera’s zoom is awful)

5) Blogging with Social Responsibility [3:00-3:50]
Another panel with Zetta [Fledgling], Terry [The Reading Tub], Wendy [Caribousmom], and Stephen Bottum [Band of Thebes]. The moderator was Marie from The Boston Bibliophile.

In this panel, the two blogs Fledgling and Band of Thebes seemed to have a strong focus on their causes (race and LGBT in books respectively), while The Reading Tub and Caribousmom were book blogs which also tried to bring attention to causes important to them (Children’s literacy and pediatric cancer) but it wasn’t the main focus of their blogs.

I didn’t take notes for this panel so what I have here comes from memory. The main point of this session seemed to be that bloggers can affect change. The panelists brought up the recent outrage in the blogging community over the whitewashing in covers, and how bloggers got Bloomsbury to change its covers twice. There was a comment from the audience that sometimes bloggers don’t notice, such as the case when the cover for The Mariposa Club – where Latino characters were depicted as paler than the story described, and a fourth transgendered character isn’t shown at all. Zetta said she was disappointed in herself and in her community for not knowing about this, and said that bloggers need to use their connections and email other blogs to pass along this type of message. She also said it’s important to make alliances with other communities so that if there is overlap (like in this case where the LGBT and minorities are affected), they can work together in expressing their disapproval.

Another point I remember was that someone asked if anyone encountered any negative commenting on their posts because of their causes. Stephen Bottum said he didn’t have any angry commenters, and Zetta agreed that in her personal blog other commenters were good about redirecting the conversation back to the topic on hand, but when she posted on The Huffington Post she had more nasty comments and doesn’t post there anymore.

I liked this panel. I think that many people have a cause that they feel strongly about and that blogging is a good away to put it out there, even in a small way. Actually, at the BBC there was a blogger who mentioned wanting to do something for the schools in Nashville, who lost a lot of books due to the flooding, and here’s a link on how to help. (I made buttons, will post later)!

6) Impact of the Relationship between Author and Blogger [4:00-4:50]
This was another panel with Amy [My Friend Amy], Bethanne [The Book Studio], Kristi [The Story Siren], Beth Kephart [Beth Kephart Books], and Caridad Pineiro [Caridad Pineiro’s Blog]. It was moderated by Nicole [Linus’s Blanket]

I didn’t take notes on this panel either. So this is from my memory again and is basically a vaguely remembered summary. I think the first part of this was about how as people use social media and spend time online, they begin to develop relationships and sometimes this can put you in an awkward place when talking about a book written by someone you have a relationship with. The two authors said that they don’t review books. They may pimp their friend’s books, and say why they liked the book, but won’t say anything negative. Beth Kephart said that if she didn’t like a book she won’t say that, but she doesn’t lie either – she would just discuss why she likes her friend and describe the book they have coming out. The authors on the panel also said that authors should not engage with a reader who has written a negative review. Kephart says she tries not to read reviews, but occasionally reads reviews friends have sent her that were positive and she appreciates the time reviewers take to write reviews. There was an audience member who said they wrote reviews but wanted to become an author, and asked for tips regarding doing that. It seemed like there was no real answer for how to be an author and a reviewer at the same time, but the authors thought it was possible.

The book bloggers said that if they had a relationship with an author they would disclose this in a review (I think this was the Story Siren), but also said if they tweeted to the author once that they were reading their book, this didn’t count as a relationship (also – don’t tweet your review to an author if it’s a negative one!). Amy from My Friend Amy said that if she likes an author and has a relationship with them online, but then does not like a book, she may end up not reviewing it. It seems to be up to the blogger how they want to handle that situation. Some people still review the book, others find it too awkward and don’t.

——-
So there you have it. As you can see there were a lot of panels, but I was happy to be sitting down after walking around with 20 pounds of books for two days. For improvements, I think that I’d like to have had a longer break around 3 when I  started to flag, rather than having the small 10 minute breaks between sessions. Also I’ll bring a jacket next time – it was freezing in the conference room. Another thought is I’d like to see more genre fiction bloggers (romance for instance). Although it looked like the organizers tried to have diversity in book bloggers, there were more general fiction and children’s/young adult book bloggers than anything else (but then, there are more of those kinds of books at BEA).

Overall I was impressed with the organization and look forward to see it grow next year (which I think it will).

The Book Blogger Convention, Part 1

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Aha, I bet you thought I was done talking about BEA and the Book Blogger Convention didn’t you? Well I took a bunch of notes on the panels for the Book Blogger Convention and laziness prevented me posting about it sooner. I do want to use these notes though because it used a lot of my phone battery to take them and it almost didn’t last the night (making me concerned that I’d have to call my ride from the train station via payphone). So in honor of that phone battery that could, here we go.

By now there have been a couple of good wrap-ups of the BBC in my google reader, so I will point you to them as well:

  • Fantasy Cafe – did a very good overview which summarized the BBC panels and highlighted interesting points the panels made.
  • The Book Smugglers – A detailed breakdown of the panels at BBC plus commentary on each.

This is part 1 of 2 parts (I wrote up a post that was ridiculously long).

Overview
So what is the Book Blogger Convention? It’s pretty much what the name suggests – a convention for book bloggers. A few bloggers got together and decided to have a small convention close to the same time as BEA (probably knowing a lot of bloggers would be at BEA anyway). At first the convention had an upper limit to number of participants, but after the BEA organizers learned about it they offered space at the Javits Center (along with tickets to BEA for the bloggers). Now it’s affiliated with BEA. The website says that it’s goal is “to provide support, instruction, and social time for people who blog about books”.

I was pretty impressed by the Book Blogger Convention. For a convention in it’s first year, there was a big turn out. Lots of publishers and PR and authors knew about it and showed up the day before for a meet-and-greet. And the organization that probably went into the food, the goodie bags, bringing in the speakers, and the websites (both the main one and an online auction site) was staggering. It’s amazing what a handful of bloggers managed to do.

The Book Blogger Convention was a one day event (Friday, May 28th) which was simply laid out as a series of panels related to book blogging:

1) Keynote speaker (9:00-10:30)
Maureen Johnson started it all off as the keynote speaker. She was hilarious. I had heard her name before as I think she’s a pretty well-known young adult author and I’ve been meaning to read Suite Scarlett. After a speech which had me laughing so hard I could have cried at one point (and that’s not easy), I was really glad that Suite Scarlett audiobooks were part of our BBC goodie bags. She talked about becoming a writer, New York City, social media (likes twitter, hates facebook – I concur), book bloggers and more. It was 90 minutes long, but I was entertained the whole time.

2) Professionalism and Ethics in Blogging (10:45-11:45)
Ron Hogan of Beatrice.com was the speaker for this session. His presentation is available online here.

He said that bloggers should not let journalistic ethics be imposed upon them. The situations are different, and what may apply to journalism may not apply to blogging. He discussed how ethics are more about questions you’re asking rather than set of principles, and that you have to establishing rules of thumb by talking to people and seeing the situation. From his site he summarizes it thus: “just as I argued that bloggers shouldn’t be judged by somebody else’s standard of professionalism, they shouldn’t be compelled to accept somebody else’s code of ethics in order to be deemed trustworthy. I’m not a big fan of declaring adherence to a code of ethics as a shortcut to credibility”.

The example he presented for that was last years brouhaha about the FCC guidelines. Newspapers don’t have to say where they got their books from, and now the FCC doesn’t say bloggers need to say where they’re from. Some people still reveal where they got a book. Some don’t. In Hogan’s opinion, if you don’t say where a book is from, it doesn’t mean you’re secretive. It’s just not an important part of the conversation to you. It is not a hard and fast rule.

There was a brief question/answer session. Books on the Nightstand commented that people should get away from the words “free books” in terms of review copies that are sent to bloggers. They are not free when bloggers spend so much time and effort reading and reviewing the books. This was a good point. Another interesting point was a publisher who said that they were happy when bloggers couldn’t review something and gave them away to someone who would read it. I think the thought is that it’s going into the hands of someone who would appreciate it, not to say that they were OK if a blogger *never* reviewed a book they received.

I thought it was an interesting session. I’m not sure I agree completely that there are never hard and fast rules, but it gave me something to think about. To be honest, this was one of the sessions where the title itself made me think, “This could go badly.” I mean, book bloggers write reviews. Reviewers are opinionated. Telling people who have opinions about doing things professionally and ethically may not go over well. I also think that things can get misinterpreted online. I wasn’t surprised to see people criticizing some of his points, but I think putting video and audio online cut down on secondhand misunderstanding at least.

[Lunch]

3) Writing and Building Content (1:00-1:50)
This was a panel with Amanda [The Zen Leaf], Kim [Sophisticated Dorkiness], Betsy [A Fuse #8 Production], and Christina [Stacked], moderated by Rebecca [The Book Lady’s Blog].

This was a panel regarding coming up with interesting ideas for blog posts. I think I enjoyed this one just because it was like peeping into a window and seeing how other people work on their blogs.  They suggested a lot of different things to kick start your creativity but they all agreed that a blogger’s voice is unique and although it’s the usual first date cliche, people should “Be themselves”. Each person brings own expertise from their lives,  jobs, and experience. They also commented that your voice changes as you evolve. Just don’t try to be something you aren’t because if you force it, it will show in the writing.

They suggested that for new bloggers, memes are a good way to get your name out there and meet new people, but once people get to your blog, they need a reason to stay. One suggestion is to have series (one example was a series on bees, another was a series of 5 books that fit a particular topic), which is a way to keep readers interested in a topic, and pull them into your blog. One blogger in the panel says she has a series where she compares Harry Potter in hardcover to paperback and the UK versions and lists each minute difference.

No idea what to write? They suggested having a go-to type of post for these situations (examples were posting about chatting with their husband at bedtime, and a saved file with future releases to post about). A couple of the panelists said they had posts scheduled weeks out or were usually 3 weeks ahead in reviews (Uh… making me feel inferior), so they work on the timing when they’re not able to blog. Another suggestion is if you’re reading a long book, to break it down into many posts instead of just one.

All of these bloggers wrote long posts and most agreed they wrote down their thoughts on a book in a notebook as they read to help them with reviews later (I tried this last year by the way… I stopped because it takes too long. I’m more of a write what I remember reviewer).

Eyes Like Stars by Lisa Mantchev

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Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I
Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I
Lisa Mantchev

Is this not a lovely cover? It made me want to read it. Who is this blue-haired girl, standing at a stage entrance, with fairies circling around her? I wanted to know her story. I’ve been eying this book for a while, saw a couple of good reviews, and I finally bought a copy a few months ago.

The Premise: Beatrice (Bertie) Shakespeare Smith is a young woman who grew up in a the Théâtre Illuminata. It is an enchanted theater: within it’s walls live every character from from every play ever written, and magically they are bound there, putting on their plays. Bertie sleeps on stage in a makeshift bed, her best friends are fairies (Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Cobweb and Moth), and her family are the players and Managers of different departments. The problem is that Bertie is getting older, and she gets into a lot of trouble. After the latest debacle (involving a cannon), the irate Theater Manager decides that Bertie must Leave At Once. Bertie is desperate to stay and manages to convince the Manager that if she can prove herself useful, she won’t be thrown out into the street. Bertie’s friends the fairies and pirate Nate are helping, but elemental spirit Ariel wants her to escape and take him with her. In the meantime, the mystery of Bertie’s origins color the pot.

Read an excerpt of Eyes Like Stars here

My Thoughts: You know what this book reminds me of? One of those Disney cartoon movies. Bertie is a plucky orphan heroine, her fairies are the cute sidekicks (and comic relief), and Ariel and Nate are the handsome love interests.  To tell you who the villains are would give too much away, but they are worthy of Ursula and Frollo. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It means the book is entertaining and colorful, and there’s a lot of creativity, but it’s lighthearted fare made for a certain audience and not everyone may be in the mood for that. I have to be in a certain frame of mind for this kind of story I think, and so it took me a little while to read it all. It’s a fast read, but I read it in two spurts – the first half a month ago, and the second half this weekend.

One large facet of the humor in this book is knowledge of theater and of Shakespeare’s plays. I’m no theater geek but I know enough to pick up on some of the humor, although I suspect I may be missing some. When I get it, it’s amusing, so I think that a Theater/English buff will probably have fun with this book. One example that I loved is this (to set it up, Bertie’s fairy friends have smeared raspberry jelly all over the theater’s refreshment table):

“…pointed at MacBeth, who was holding up a cruller and muttering, “Is this a doughnut I see before me?”
Then he noticed the raspberry jam on everything and started to shriek. With a glare at the fairies, the Stage Manager bundled him off into the wings. ”

The love triangle in this book is one between Bertie,  Nate, a pirate who always looks out for her best interests (the good guy), and Ariel, a dark elemental spirit (the bad boy). Bertie is aware of both men physically, and she has a past with both of them (Ariel is more of a childhood favorite than a current one, while Nate is one of her best friends), but it seemed like Bertie treated the relationships with them as afterthoughts. It felt like she liked them for what they represented rather than for their own personal merits, but maybe this is because because the characters are sketched quickly and then didn’t grow past the first impression I had of them. There was more relationship development between Bertie and female supporting characters – Peaseblossom, Ophelia, and the Wardrobe Mistress, than there was between Bertie and her suitors.

The two things that dovetail to create the majority of the story in Eyes Like Stars are the Bertie’s adventures in trying to stay at the Théâtre, and the mystery of how she got there in the first place. The missteps that Bertie makes in trying to stay never seem to end, and much of the story is Bertie trying to keep on top of the latest disaster. At the same time that Bertie’s past comes to the surface. It’s mixed up in how the magic of the Théâtre works, which Bertie’s leaving brings up. The questions of Bertie’s past along with the magic of the Théâtre are world building elements that set up the start of a series. We don’t really get all the answers we want which leaves plenty of room for the next book, Perchance to Dream.

Overall: It’s a cute story, and good if you just want something entertaining (I think a theater and English background would help to enjoy the humor in the story), and not really dark (there are some low moments, but I felt detached from them). I found this above average for it’s original setting and premise, but the story itself didn’t truly grip me. You also may need some patience at the beginning when you’re thrown into life in the magical Théâtre Illuminata without knowing its rules.

Buy: Amazon | Powells | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Dreams and Speculation – 9 out of 10
Angieville – mixed review (I share her sentiments – again)
Karissa’s Reading Review – 4 out of 5 stars
The Hiding Spot – 10 out of 10
Fantasy Book Critic – one of their top books for 2009
On the Nightstand – loved it
Fantastic Book Review – 5 out of 5
The Book Smugglers – 8 out of 10
Presenting Lenore – “it’s not enough to propel me into a standing ovation, but it does earn a round of appreciative applause nonetheless”
Steph Su Reads – 4.5 out of 5
Giraffe Days – “With a playful tone, it’s fun to read, but I did sometimes get confused about what was happening”
Calico_reaction – Must have (positive review)

The trailer for Perchance to Dream:

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin

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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Book 1 (The Inheritance Trilogy)
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,
Book 1 (The Inheritance Trilogy)
N.K. Jemisin

I’ve been seeing lots of good reviews for this book but the cover wasn’t particularly pulling me in. It was reading an excerpt that sold me (and why I bought the book), but now that I’ve read it I have changed my mind about the cover – it’s not just a random fantasy castle. The column it sits upon means something, as does the dark figure with hair whipping around it’s face. I think I like the cover more after reading the book!

The Premise: Yeine Darr’s mother has recently died, and soon after the death Yeine was called to the palace in Sky, seat of the powerful Arameri family. Yeine expects to be killed off is surprised when her grandfather, who disowned her mother years ago, formally announces that she is now one of his heirs. The problem is that he already has two heirs – Yeine’s cousins Relad and Scimina. To be Arameri is to be utterly ruthless, and Yeine does not fit into this world although as a Darr she’s a leader in her own right. Yeine is being thrown into the mix without much knowledge of the family and the palace of Sky, including it’s four resident gods, who have been chained in human form by Itempas, the Skyfather.

Read chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3 of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

My Thoughts: This book started off very strong for me. I loved the world building and the beautiful palace of Sky which towers over the city of Sky on top of a giant, impossible column – a palace created by gods. When Yeine meets her relatives they don’t think much of her and her “barbaric” upbringing as a Darr. It doesn’t help that she is really half Darr and half-Amn, since her mother abdicated when she met Yeine’s father. (A minus for Yeine’s family, a big plus for me – I love a heroine of mixed race). It seems like a big clash of cultures where Yeine’s world is equivalent to a matriarchal, Amazonian, tribal society who are used to plain speaking, while the Arameri are a metropolitan, Euro-centric society who value treachery and maneuvering. The power is definitely in the hands of the Arameri, who have magic, religion, and four captive gods to rule the world, and who are ahead of the game of succession against Yeine.

The basic story of the universe begins with one god, Nahadoth, who represents chaos, darkness, and change. He is joined by his brother Itempas, who is his opposite – the god of order and light, and their sister Enefa was the gray in between, and bringer of Life to the universe. They also have children. If you have ever read Greek or Roman mythology you should have and idea regarding the things that gods do which seem dysfunctional and childish to mere mortals. This is the case here – their morality is different from Yeine’s and our own and sometimes their relationships are surprising.

The gods were fascinating characters. Yeine’s first encounter with them starts off with a bang when her cousin Scimina sics the most powerful of the gods, Nahadoth, on her like a horrifying hunting dog. The desperate race through the castle is riveting. Anyway, Yeine meets the gods and throughout the book she learns the real events that led to their slavery, rather than the story she was brought up to believe. The gods want to be free from the chains put upon them by Itempas and they have plans that involve Yeine.

Yeine finds herself manipulated from multiple directions. From the gods, and from her family, who have their own power struggles that she is not completely privy to. In the meantime, Yeine has her own agenda. She didn’t come to Sky because she was summoned. She wants to find out what really happened in her mother’s recent death. Her first suspects are of course her Arameri relatives, and so she asks questions about her mother and learns the family dynamics. Not all the answers are easy. Yeine’s mother, who she remembers as loving and open, was someone else in the palace of Sky. Somehow this is related to the current fight for succession.

I thought the multiple machinations were very clever in sucking me into the story. I wanted to know who was doing what, what had happened in the past and what was going to happen. This story is told from the first person POV, but throughout the book Yeine’s recalling what has happened to her and sometimes her memory is faulty. Once in a while, she backs up and restarts, and she has conversations with herself about what was happening or what will happen next. Not to say that the book was confusing – it was the opposite. The prose is clear and simple – it has a sort of young adult feel because of this. The hints of what would happen next were the most effective in keeping me reading to see if my guess was right.  Usually I was still wrong. There were a couple of plot twists I did not expect.

Like Yeine, I was drawn to the gods and in particular Nahadoth, although Sieh, his son, the god of mischief who usually takes the form of a child, was compelling as well. Sieh seems almost human in his need for comfort, but Nahadoth was temperamental and hard to read, like you’d expect from the god of chaos. The idea that a slip of the tongue from an Arameri in commanding him and he will happily kill them added to his fearful power. Any one of the gods is capable of horror beyond imagining. That’s why when the relationship between Yeine and the gods changes, it began to feel nonsensical.  After the narrative stresses how immense their power is, how time moves differently for them, how alien their minds are compared to a mortals, the idea that Yeine would mean much to them in the short time this book spans was difficult to believe. I allow that the gods shared the feeling of being trapped with Yeine, and she has another quality that draws them to her, but I struggled with anything beyond that. I can’t really go into detail without giving spoilers, but there was one part of the relationship where I thought the scene that I had trouble buying could have been removed completely and the story wouldn’t have really changed, so I don’t understand why it’s there at all.

Overall: This was a keeper. The writing let me slide smoothly into a story of treacherous families (both human and divine) living in a beautiful palace called Sky. Yeine’s impact on these families (and their impact on her), knocked my socks off, but I did have reservations regarding the extent of Yeine’s relationship with the gods, and because I struggled with that, the book was just shy of being on my uber-selective Blew Me Away pile (but it came very close). If I think about the reservation, I feel like saying “Don’t mind me. Read this book”. Basically – I’d recommend The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms because I don’t think everyone will have the reservation I did, and frankly, I loved rest of it.

I’m looking forward to the next book, The Broken Kingdoms (expecially after reading the excerpt at the end of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms). The cover (which may still be a work in progress, I don’t know for sure), looks excellent.

Buy: Amazon | Powells | The Book Depository

Other reviews:

Review at tor.com by Kate Nepveu – loves it “almost without reservation”
My Favourite Books – positive review
My World…in words and pages – positive review
Fantasy Cafe – 9/10
Fantasy Literature – “a very solid debut”
Fantasy Literature – “Almost perfect debut”
The Book Smugglers – 9 (Damn Near Perfection)
Fantasy Book Critic – “almost-perfect debut”
Starmetal Oak – A+
bookblather – positive review

BEA and the Book Blogger Convention: The People

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I had so many pictures to post that I had to separate the posts!

The Authors:
I met so many authors in their signings, but I didn’t really try to ask for pictures until the second day of BEA.  So here’s a few pictures of me and a few authors that were there.


Deanna Raybourn

I was really looking forward to meeting Deanna Raybourn since I’ve been loving her Lady Julia Grey series. Her signing for The Dead Travel Fast was the only book I had in all caps on my itinerary. I was so worried about the lines for the Harlequin signing Thursday morning, because the signing the day before was mobbed, I left another signing to wait early.

Me with the big grin and Deanna Raybourn

Me and Kevin J. Anderson

Actually Kevin J. Anderson is an author I haven’t read. I was going to see if I could pick up his book for someone but wow, they were popular and were all gone by the time I got there! The author was still there so I asked for a picture instead. 🙂 I need to try out his series one day.

Me and Jeri Smith-Ready

OK, my eyes are partially closed in this picture. Jeri Smith-Ready was the other author on Thursday I really wanted to meet since I’m a fan of her WVMP Radio series. She was signing for her new young adult book, Shade, at the Romance Writers of America booth, and I’ve heard good things in early reviews about it so I wanted to snag a copy and meet her. Another case where I had to make a choice and leave another line so I wouldn’t miss an author! This line was deceptive – it wound behind booths and looked shorter than it was. And Jeri Smith-Ready recognized me! 😀 Shocking.

The Bloggers:

I met so many people at BEA and the BBC that I’m afraid I’m probably going to forget someone. Let’s try (If I forgot you.. I’m so sorry!):

Wednesday night was a dinner with Stacey and Angie, then the A Celebration of Book Bloggers where we sat at a round table at the Algonquin Hotel and talked. The BookSmugglers have a picture of that.

Thursday was another dinner with book bloggers over at The Volstead. *pointing a the Book Smugglers picture again*. That was a lot of fun, and I stayed a little longer this night than the night before. Kristen from the Fantasy Cafe and I spent some time at a B&N before the party, which was nice. We had a weird cab ride where the cab driver was ARGUING with us over where we wanted to go, but he eventually decided the traffic wasn’t as bad as he thought.

Friday was ANOTHER dinner. I’ve been DYING to eat at Ippudo for months but my friends keep going without me! *shakes fist at them alllll*. Anyway, Angie and I made plans to finally eat there and Kristen, and Ana and Thea. Ah, the food was excellent. I recommend their pork buns and the Akumaru Modern Ramen which is what I ate. I was so happy to be finally tasting it, but let me tell you – if you ever go, be prepared for a longgg line ( I think we waited an hour and a half). Being exhausted kind of doesn’t help.

Kristen, Angie, Thea, and Ana

Yum!

BEA and the Book Blogger Convention: the Haul

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This year Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention happened in the same week in New York City. And I’m lucky since I live a short 40 minute train ride away from Grand Central (so convenient), so of course I went! I attended BEA on Wednesday, May 26th, and Thursday, May 27th, and then BBC was the day after that – Friday, May 27th.

It was really, really exhausting. I woke up at 7am, caught a train at 7:34, got to Jacob Javitts center at about 8:30, and then it was about 8 hours of being on my feet with about twenty pounds plus of books. Repeat for 2 days, then one day at BBC which involved more sitting, thank goodness.I knew about the pain because of going to BEA last year so I was armed with Ibuprofen and comfy shoes, but this year I also went to dinners after the conventions, which was lots of fun, but made each day longer! I got home between 9:30 and 11:30pm every day. 😀 But – would I do it again? YES. My mind may have been slow by 5pm, but I was comforted by the fact that most people were in the same boat, and this year I’m glad I got to spend some time just sitting and talking to people. I have pictures of some of the bloggers and authors I met which I will post later.

After last year, my goal was to try not to get as many books. I’m not really sure I succeeded. I believe I got 40 books last year in two days. This year I got 38 in three, plus another 4 picture books I got for my niece and nephew. I’m not counting sample chapters (2), comics (2), ebooks (2), or pop-up samples (2), and other stuff (bags, bookmarks, catalogs) to that count. I apologize in advance for the image heaviness of this post.

Day One:
I did SO WELL in the first day. I had willpower.

These are all the books I got signed – Zombies Vs. Unicorns (4 signatures: Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black, Justine Larbalestier, Alaya Dawn Johnson), Leaving Paradise, and Return to Paradise (both by Simone Elkeles, a YA author I have not tried but hear very good things about), Lady Lazarus (Michele Lang who explained that this book was fantasy rather than science fiction, but she described some very interesting historical elements), Jekel Loves Hyde (Beth Fantaskey – another YA author I’ve been recommended), Ascendant (Diana Peterfreund, second book of her series about killer unicorns, and an author Angieville recommends. I need to read her Secret Society Girl series too – something about a dude named Poe?), My Soul to Keep (Rachel Vincent. I must admit that I wasn’t blown away by the first book in the series, but maybe this book will be better),  Inside Out (Maria V. Snyder. A book I read and really liked),  and Dreadnought (Cherie Priest – this was an ARC copy so the type was black, not the brown of Boneshaker. Priest said she wasn’t sure whether the brown font would continue).

These are the books I didn’t plan on getting. Married with Zombies by Jesse Peterson and The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron were both from the Orbit booth and look great. One is about a married couple, on the verge of divorce who have to fight zombies together to survive. The other is a fantasy about a man named Eli Monpress who is both a thief and a wizard, and the blurb hints at a surprising plan to steal a king. Both look like promising first books in a series.

The L. Ron Hubbard and Michael Chabon books were given to me by a publicist and at the A Celebration of Book Bloggers by HarperCollins.

Sample pages from a Super Heroes pop-up book by Matthew Reinhart.
ebooks of Ascendant and Paranormalcy, and sample chapters from The Black Prism and White Cat.

Day Two:
My willpower went to pot this day. I blame Ana and Thea of The Book Smugglers who I walked around with in the morning. Girls – I shall send you my chiropractic bill.

This is the signed pile. Shift by Rachel Vincent, Salamander by Nick Kyme (Thea’s fault, but I must say – Space Marines? Sold), Hard Magic by Laura Anne Gilman (I need to catch up with this series), Fat Vampire by Adam Rex (a YA about a 15 year old, chubby kid who becomes a vampire – Ana and Thea’s fault.. It was a popular book though – a huge line for a debut author), The Rise of Renegade X by Chelsea M Campbell (she had cool embossers for Heroes and Villains depending on what readers said they were. I said “I have no idea” and got the Renegade” stamp! Makes me sound dangerous), Shade by Jeri Smith Ready (!!!) , Unraveled by Gena Showalter (this was an impulse one), The Dead Travel Fast by Deanna Raybourn (!!!! ) and Firelight by Sophie Jordan (has an amazing cover). I was the MOST excited about meeting Jeri Smith-Ready book and Deanna Raybourn. In fact I left lines for other authors so I wouldn’t miss them.

The Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime by Mizuki Nemura (Yen press book with a manga cover but it’s not a manga. It’s a short novel with some manga style pictures about a girl who is actually a demon who eats books – so I had to get it), Mostly Good Girls by  Leila Sales (a YA novel, The Book Smugglers fault), Rules of Attraction by Simone Elkeles, Beautiful Darkness by Cami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (sequel to the YA novel,  Beautiful Creatures which is still in my TBR. I seem to be a sucker for the covers), The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (recommended by a lot of speculative fiction readers I follow, so I got one), and Hero by Mike Lupica (Book smugglers fault).

I think I need a code for It Was the Book Smugglers’ faults. So lets go with “TBSF”. Drakula (handed out by a publicist at Sourcebooks. It’s a a YA version of Dracula, where everything is in texts, webpage views and emails), The Daughters Break the Rules by Joanna Philbin (TBSF), Dust by Joan Francis Turner (TBSF – I was interested since it’s a YA from the POV of zombies), The Sherlockian by Graham Moore (mystery related to the Sherlock Holmes books), Nightshade by Andrea Cremer (I picked it up because it was pretty!), The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima (TBSF), Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare (so many people were anticipating this so I decided to get one too. There was a stampede for it), and Mansfield Park and Mummies by Vera Nazarian (OK, I KNOW .. I did have that rant about monster mash-ups, but this was offered to me at a blogger dinner, and after two people recommending I try this I feel like the universe wants me to read it. I will keep my mind open).

These are the books I got for my niece and nephew. My niece is a HUGE Fancy Nancy fan so it was worth waiting in line for a looonnng time for the author’s autograph. Angie from Angieville recommended Library Lion, and the other two picture books looked charming so I got them signed for the kids too.

Sample pages for another pop-up book – A Christmas Carol, designed by Chuck Fischer

Comics. I picked up Killing the Cobra because of Mario Acevedo’s name attached to it.
Sense and Sensibility was a no-brainer. And I like the art in this one better than the
Pride and Prejudice comic.

Day Three:

I wasn’t expecting MORE BOOKS, but that’s what happened at the Book Blogger Convention. We all got a goodie bag that was full of books. There was also a cute booklight.   I’m not sure if I’m going to read any of these except Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti, which Angie of Angieville said was very good.

I’m also excited to listen to this audiobook (Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson) which came with our goodie bags. An author I’ve been meaning to try, and she was the keynote speaker at BCC. She was hiliarious.

The City & The City by China Miéville

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The City & The City
The City & The City
China Mieville

This was written up for a guest blog on Dreams and Speculation (formally known as Book Love Affair), so it’s cross-posted there. I know I’ve mentioned this blog before so go forth and check it out if you haven’t already. It’s one of my favorite speculative fiction blogs.

I’ve never read China Miéville before, despite hearing how good Perdido Street Station and Un Dun Lin were. This was one of those authors I would try “one day”. When I heard Miéville won the Arthur C. Clarke award for the third time for The City & The City, I thought, “Hmm, yeah, I really should try out his books when I get the TBR under control”. This might have been in a couple of years or never at the rate I’m going, but when Dreams and Speculation contacted me for a guest review and offered The City & The City to read, it jumped to the top of my priority list.

The Premise: When the body of a young woman is found dumped naked under a mattress, Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad is on the case. He lives in Besźel, a city that shares the same space as another city, Ul Qoma. At first the case looks like many before it, but as Tyador learns more about the young woman who was murdered, it becomes apparent that this is more than it first seems.  Conspiracies swirl around the investigation and Tyador has to cross the border into Ul Qoma to solve it.

My Thoughts: When I finished this book, closed it’s cover, and put it down, one word came out of my mouth. That word was: “Weird”.

The biggest mind bender for me was the setting.  Besźel and Ul Qoma are cities that overlap each other in the same spot.  Before I started reading, I assumed there was some sort of inter-dimensional magic involved and perhaps Besźel was on one plane and Ul Qoma was on another, but when I read the book I realized maybe that wasn’t it. People in Ul Qoma could see and hear (and smell) the people in Besźel and vice versa, so while they are separate, they are together. If you were in Besźel, you quickly unsee or unhear Ul Qoma, and if you are in Ul Qoma you unsee or unhear Besźel. This made perfect sense to the people in these two cities, who were trained from a young age to recognize the colors, clothes, and walk of their neighbors and to willfully ignore their existence. To enforce this rule, if someone were to actually interact in some way with the other country – perhaps mistake a Besź for an Ul Qoman, Breach steps in. Breach is the bogeyman which coalesces upon a person who has breached. Everyone fears it.

To me though, this was a foreign concept. While Inspector Borlú’s perception of the other country when he was in his own sounded like he was looking at it through some misty barrier, I began to wonder about the true nature of the separation between the two cities. Méiville sets the cities in our world, in what sounds like Eastern Europe. Do the rules of physics apply, or is this a fantasy? Is Breach magical or does it seem that way to everyone raised to revere it? Is it just in the minds of the people in the two cities? And how about the breaches which happen regularly, but people must expect?  If you unsee or unhear, you must see and hear first, right? There are a lot of these types of questions, and I have my opinion, but I don’t think there is a “correct” answer.

From there I wondered what genre The City & The City fell into. It was definitely detective noir, but was it also fantasy? Is it science fiction? Is it neither? It depends on how you interpret the setting, I think. Yes, Ul Qomo and Besźel are made up, which means there’s a lot of word building here I associate with speculative fiction, but I don’t know if the cities are separated by magic, or by science, or by societal rules. I had a really hard time deciding. Well, Wikipedia mentions that Miéville describes his work as “weird fiction”.

Wikipedia: “Weird tales often blend the supernatural, mythical, and even scientific”
Me: “Yup, that works. “

The setting is folded neatly into Borlú’s investigation because his murder victim has links to a third city. The one in children’s stories that exists alongside Besźel and Ul Qoma – Orciny. As you can probably guess by now, Miéville plays it cagey there too. Whether Orciny exists is intertwined in the investigation, because the murder victim may have discovered it. I enjoyed Borlú’s moments of brilliance that moved the investigation along when it looked like it was about to stagnate, but the existential dilemmas tangled in the crime solving sort of narrows down who is going to enjoy this book. I think if you’re a reader who enjoys Weird Fiction and this sort of clever setting, you’d be as happy as a clam, but despite the good writing and interesting world, I think while I read this, I wanted a twinge less headspace taken up with pondering the cities, and more pondering the murder.

I have the Random House reader’s circle edition of this book. It comes with a conversation with the author at the end of the book, reading group questions, and an excerpt of Kraken.  The conversation made me feel like I was getting some of the things the author was aiming for in the story so it was nice to read it, although it did reinforce my feeling of being teased.

Overall: A story that combines detective noir with a weird but clever genre-bending setting. I liked it – the prose is perfect and the world building (a very important thing in my enjoying a book) superb, but I think I wanted a little less cleverness, and a little more straight detective noir.  I’m giving this an actual numerical score for D&S’s archives – 7, leaning towards an 8. Can I say 7.5?

Buy: Amazon | Powells | The Book Depository

Other reviews/Link:
Fantasy Book Critic – “Beautiful prose, empty book”
Walker of Worlds asks if this book is really science fiction

Video of an author interview

Touched by an Alien by Gini Koch

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Touched by an Alien
Touched by an Alien
Gini Koch

Look at the cover! I love it. This cover plus this title = WIN.  I don’t think another title has caught the attention of the people around me as much as this one, but it’s unabashed in advertising what the book is about, which is a tongue-in-cheek action story about men-in-black and alien parasites.

The Premise: Walking back to her car in Pueblo Caliente, Arizona after a long day of jury duty, Katherine Katt witnesses an unbelievable event. She watches as a man who was raging at his wife after a traffic accident, suddenly change into a terrifying monster. People are screaming and running, except Kitty, who immediately springs into action to kill him. Shortly thereafter, she’s surrounded by good-looking Men-in-Black-Armani, who want Kitty to join their organization. It doesn’t take long for Kitty to figure out what’s going on, using her smarts to read between the lines and figure out what this organization really is (and what it has been doing wrong). In the meantime, handsome agent Jeff Martini makes it clear he’s pursuing her, but it’s hate-at-first sight (or is it?) from his cousin Christopher.

Read an excerpt of Touched by an Alien here.

My Thoughts: I think that the cover and the title for this book are perfect. They both convey the outlandish premise, the action, and the romance to be found inside. I’m really pleased that they are an ideal match for the story.  It feels good to have expectations because of a cover, and then for the story to deliver on them.

I think that many people would compare this to the Men In Black movies because of the similarities in the humor, aliens, and action, but I’d call it “Men in Black from the point of view of the woman who saves everybody”.  It’s a refreshingly original story despite the this inevitable comparison however. Kitty’s voice is unique in this genre – very fresh and irreverent without becoming irritatingly so. It has a light urban fantasy feel because of this voice, and I would say that Touched by an Alien is to science fiction as Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series (complete with hunky men everywhere).

From the get-go this book doesn’t take itself seriously. The world building shows the reader glimpses of ideas from comic books and movies, pop culture and history, but it’s a chaotic mix which isn’t really hard science.  It’s enjoyable if you just take the idea of alien parasites flying through space, attracted to people with volatile emotions, and the Alpha Centurians who have come to Earth to help defend it at face value.  Think about it too much and you’ll probably find holes. I think for the most part I was able to just read and enjoy what I read.

Kitty is likable in that she’s a heroine who thinks very well on her feet and doesn’t let people tell her she can’t do something. She goes for things without fear which had me cheering for her from the very beginning. When she first took the information from the Men-in-Black and figured out things they weren’t telling her, I was impressed. Her conversations where she explains her brilliant deductions along with the many question and answer sessions she shares with other characters is a way to convey information to the reader. It becomes an integral part of her personality, but when she kept doing this throughout the book, it felt like a technique that wore a bit thin for me, but I didn’t see anyone else comment on this, so perhaps it’s a personal preference. It also made things I found obvious but which Kitty hadn’t realized yet really glaring. At 389 pages, this book is a bit longer than the usual 300 or so, and there’s a lot of information and explanation of the aliens along with the breakneck action as Kitty and her agency fight the manifestations of Superbeings out to destroy them.

Kitty’s smarts didn’t come out of thin air – so when her mom and dad show up in the picture, it’s funny to see them make the same deductions that Kitty does. And then there’s of course the people of the secret agency.  Jeff and Christopher are the two who have the biggest parts of the plot, as the leaders of their particular divisions and in their complicated relationships with each other and with Kitty. I found a lot of the characters at the agency likable – most of them are nice and brave and smart, but since this is mostly a lighthearted story, the good guys are good, and the bad guys are very evil.

The romance in this book is mostly straightforward (there’s a bump along the way), and runs as a secondary story parallel to the main action. There are sex scenes that surprised me (in both timing and execution)!

Overall: This is a story that’s fun and flippant without crossing into campy or annoying. I’d recommend if you enjoy light science fiction, romance, and quick-thinking heroines with a irreverent voice. If you enjoy Lisa Shearin’s Raine Benares series I think you would like this one too, as both books have a heroine with a fresh, first person point of view, in a genre that usually doesn’t have that. I had a good time reading this, and plan to get the next book: Alien Tango (which has another awesome cover!) when it comes out in December.

Buy: Amazon | Powells | The Book Depository

Other reviews:
Katiebabs – B+
Tempting Persephone – loved it

Gini Koch interview @ Tempting Persephone (and Giveaway!! Ends May 28th)
Gini Koch’s website

First impressions of the B&N nook

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My birthday was last week, and because I’ve been hinting heavily since December, my husband got me a nook. I also got this t-shirt.

So far I’m really happy with it.

Opening the nook packaging:
OK – this was the hardest part of setting up the nook. There’s a cardboard slipcover over a clear plastic box housing the nook and it was EXTREMELY difficult to get off. Two people were needed to take that slipcover off, and I was about to KILL my husband for putting it back on afterwards. Then once the slipcover was off there were 5 steps in actually getting the nook out of it’s plastic case. It looked very pretty and everything, but 5 steps? Kind of ridiculous.

I really do like the design though. Reminds me of Apple’s products with the white, glossy nook and it’s white, soft rubber-covered USB cord which can be attached to a computer or to a plug for an outlet. Very 2010. The packaging of all the accessories also reflects that.

Navigating the nook:
There are very little instructions that come with the nook. The nook itself has a “Nook tour” and “Nook User Guide” which is in the “My Library” section of the main menu (it’s under My Documents). This is probably so B&N can update it along with a software update, which I thought was a good idea but it assumes you can figure out where the “Nook tour” is.

So far these are the menu choices when you are at the main menu:
1) The daily – software updates plus subscriptions to barnes and noble feeds
2) My library – your ebooks. I only uploaded 5 ebooks so far. They’re all under “My Documents” since I copied them onto the nook via the USB, not by buying them through B&N. So I don’t see their covers on the touch screen or on the “view MY B&N library”
3) Shop – takes you to the B&N bookstore
4) Reading now – takes you to the last page of the last ebook you had open. Love this.
5) Games – now chess and sudoku (I’m so addicted to the sudoku, even though I suck at it and can only do the easy)
6) Wi-fi – use to set up your wi-fi and turn airplane mode on and off
7) Audio – mp3s & I’m guessing audiobooks (I will let you know how this one goes).
8 ) Web (beta) – lets you surf the web (more on that below)
9) Settings – add contacts, edit your profile, register your nook, select wallpapers/screensavers, clock settings, wi-fi


Software Updates:
Back in March (I think), I went to play with a display nook and talked to a Barnes and Noble employee about the device.  She had told me that certain features like reading books in the store and page refreshing would be better in the “newer version” that was coming out in end of April or early May. According to her, the displays were showing these updates but the nooks you bought at the time didn’t have these features yet. Turns out she didn’t mean that there was a new edition of the nook hardware, but a update in the software (if I had known that I may have bought it earlier and just waited). By the time I got my nook last week it had one update to install which I did right away, and so I was pretty pleased with what the nook could do.  Also – I’m rather impressed that the B&N employee was aware of this update back in March.

Book binge did a review on the updates here

Protecting the nook
After playing around with the ereader I really got kind of irritated about all the little fingerprints I could see on the touchscreen window, and I wasn’t happy with the smudges on it’s back from holding it up either. So after a DAY I was in B&N buying an Industriell cover. It was $30 and is one of the cheaper covers, but I like it because it’s just plain black and it’s designed so the nook just clips into it (very securely) via a clip on the top and bottom, and it leaves plenty of room for me to charge the nook or put ebooks into it without having to take the nook out of it’s cover. I wasn’t fond of the covers that meant slipping the nook in and out of it to get to it or the covers secured on by straps. I am too paranoid to have a cover only secured by straps.

I also bought protective film for the nook which was another $15 (the Nook Matte Screen Film kit). This was very easy to put on and I had no bubbles although I kept getting cat hairs in there *shakes fist at cat* which were easy to get out. The most annoying thing was placing it so it was straight since there’s about a millimeter of room between the film and the edges of the nook. The protective film for the touchscreen was much smaller and didn’t cover all of the bottom panel, only the touch sensitive window. I wish it did cover everything. For $15 freaking dollars for what is essentially two stickers, it should.

I really think most people would want at least the cover so I would say mentally add $30 to $150 dollars to the price of the nook depending on what cover you get (designer ones cost upto $125, the cheap ones are $30) and whether you also add the protective film. There are also covers made by online retailers like JavOedge and Boxwave.


Customizing the nook
Yes I was all into this. It’s very easy to do. When you hook up the nook to your computer via USB, the nook shows up as a new drive (for me it’s E), and you see folders to copy things into

  • Wallpapers – just copy your 600×760 image to the “my wallpapers” folder. This is my favorite (sci-fi theme!)
  • Screensavers – just copy your 600×800 images to the “my screensavers” folder. A collection of images can be in it’s own folder. I downloaded Alice in Wonderland and Domo!

Nice sources for wallpapers/screensavers: nooklook & flickr

Downloading ebooks to the nook from the computer
For moving from your computer to the nook it’s like the wallpapers/screensavers. It’s as easy as copying your stuff into the “my documents” folder. I was able to copy my .PDFs and .epub files fine. It did not like .BBeB. I stumbled when I tried to open my .PDFs that were Adobe Digital Edition. For some reason I kept getting an error when I tried to read the books that were ADE, which is the case when they are from Netgalley. Apparently I was supposed to get the nook authorized first. So I opened ADE on my computer and selected the Library dropdown, and there was nothing about authorizing my nook there. ADE was just not seeing my nook.

Fix – delete the .adobe-digital-editions folder on your nook. Eject the nook drive (right click on nook(E:) and Eject), plug the nook back in, then start ADE. After that it automatically detected my nook and authorized it.

Reading on the nook vs. my netbook
I find it so much easier to read on the nook over reading on a netbook. Staring at a lit screen vs staring at something like paper is very different when you have a migraine. I get migraines often. The only issue I had when I was headachey and trying to read my nook was that it’s frame is glossy and reflected the light of my sidetable lamp next to me, which bugged me a bit. Shifting so it wouldn’t reflect helped but then the nook’s display was more in shadow. If you aren’t prone to migraines or light sensitivity I guess this is just a big ol’ nit.

The netbook is light and portable but the nook is even more so. When I have the power set to Airline Mode, the wireless is turned off and the battery lasts for several days. I have to charge my netbook in a matter of around 2 hours.  I was also able to put it up when I was on my treadmill (which I can’t do with my netbook) and played sudoku while I walked (running and sudoku? Couldn’t get my fingers to press the touchscreen at the right place – it was driving me crazy). I’m sure reading would be easier while running if increased my fontsize – I don’t have to deal with the touchscreen after that, since the nook has page turn buttons on it’s sides.


Audio
Just for this I copied an MP3 to the “my music” folder on the nook. You can listen to music via the Audio menu, or you can be reading an ebook, and select the “open audio player” option. The sound is pretty nice, and there’s volume control and shuffle options. I actually think the sound is better than my netbook which has a tinny sound (annoying).

Lending Books
So far I have only put books that I got elsewhere (not from B&N) onto the nook, and it doesn’t look like I can lend any of them. The lending feature is simply not there when I look at each book. I believe if I bought a book from B&N I’ll see the lending feature show up. According to the B&N employee I talked to I can lend my ebooks to someone who doesn’t have a nook as long as they have an email address. There’s a “Contacts” option under the “Settings” menu that allows me to put in names of contacts and their email address. I assume this is for lending. Editing the contacts is easy too.

I love the idea of lending but I’m not happy to hear that you can only lend a book to someone for 2 weeks and after that you can’t lend that book (I don’t know if it’s ever or to that particular person) again. WTF! I hope this improves because it doesn’t make the lending option that great in my opinion.

Reading books in the store
This is something rather new and came with the latest update. When I bought my nook cover I brought my nook to B&N to try it out. The wireless recognizes the store and puts a tiny B&N icon on the top of my nook display. When I’m in the daily I see coupons for nook owners in there. There was a coupon for a free dessert from the B&N cafe that I jumped on, but there were others as well. For the next month there are free ebooks available for nook owners to download.

When I go to the “shop” menu, there’s an option under each book to read the book while I’m in the store (“read in store” option only shows up in B&N). I tried to take a look at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson but while I could read an excerpt, when I tried to look at the whole book, I got an error!!! So that looks like a feature that still needs ironing out. I didn’t feel like trying other books.


Wireless & surfing the web
Pretty straightforward to understand how to do, but still not quite there. Pages don’t fit fully on the screen, and it’s a pain scrolling up and down and sideways to see everything or to zoom out to see the whole thing. Also clicking on links is really difficult and page loading isn’t fast. So it’s not going to replace my laptop anytime, although I do like having the option.