Jul 09
I went to my favorite used bookstore. I had won $5 store credit there a while ago and was ready to spend it (I got Tanya Huff’s The Enchanted Emporium). Anyway, the guy at the front desk was awesome. He would say in this deep baritone sing-song voice, “I am free for the next in line!” When I was paying he said, “I have a special task for you. You have to think ‘let there be rain!’ all day.”
I replied, “Trust me, I’ve been thinking about that all week.”
He gave me a beautiful smile as he put my book in a bag and told me to have a lovely day. I walked out of the store feeling happier than when I had entered it and thought how nice it was to meet kind people.
Apr 29
Of course, this is the opinion of someone who:
- doesn’t like Apple products (please don’t send me emails/comments that start with “You iTouch/iPhone/iOther hating Nazi”)
- doesn’t believe in DRM restrictions (if I don’t allow Big Brother to come into my house and swipe my paperbacks off my bookshelves, why would I let Amazon?)
- doesn’t really have the money to afford a decent e-reader at about $250 a pop and then electronic versions of a book which can’t really be shared with friends easily and are still more expensive than a mass market coupled with a 30% off coupon from Borders or a used copy from Bookman’s.
Why am I talking about ebooks? Because I tried to find an e-reader program today to install on my computer so I could read some free ebooks I’d collected. And thus the headache began. I admit, I wanted a freeware version since I don’t read enough ebooks to warrant any kind of investment, but I did try many free trial softwares. And I came to an important conclusion: there’s too many different formats for ebooks and no program that adequately reads all of them. Even the ones that boasted reading “many different formats” ran into snags. I ended up having to download 3 separate programs. Some were very snazzy, but had sacrificed ease of usability for “oooh aaah” factor, while some were butt ugly, highly easy to use, but only allowed for one or two formats.
So until the day comes with someone makes an ebook reader with an ebook software that’s user-friendly and affordable, I think I’m gonna stick to the old school stuff of paper. And boy do I sometimes need my fix…in order to read what happened next in a new series I may be slightly addicted to, I drove down to Borders yesterday at 10pm (B&N changed their hours) and plunked down my money for the next book. Then spent five minutes in my car stroking the cover and going “My precious.” (not really…or did I? 
)
