Walk For Freedom

Saturday I participated in a march for only the second time ever in my life, and it was one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had in a long time.

A21 (short for “Abolitionists in the 21st Century”) is a world-wide organisation which work against slavery and human trafficking. They work to rescue people from slavery, to support them afterwards (without the right support system 80% of former slaves are retrafficked) and with police in the vulnerable countries to help it from happening in the first place.

The statistics are sobering… there are more slaves now than at any other point in history (a staggering 40.3 million… and that’s just the ones they can prove. A more realistic estimate puts it at 125 million) with one person being sold into slavery every 30 seconds. And less than 1 in 10.000 of all traffickers are ever convicted.

Not many people are aware of the magnitude of the problem, however. So to spread awareness A21 arrange Walks For Freedom around the globe. This weekend we had more than 600 walks in more than 50 countries. It’s the fourth annual walk, and fortunately this year I was able to participate.

It was a heartbreaking, poignant, amazing experience. I’m so glad I went. I wanted to cry every step of the way.

We met up at 10am at the National Museum to hear the speech given by Philip (the manager of the Danish office of A21) and to get our T-shirts and our bandanas. To represent the fact that we were walking for real people, we would all be wearing bandanas with names written on them over our mouths – we were speaking out for those who couldn’t speak out for themselves. As we were supposed to wear all black otherwise, I’d managed to meet up with another woman at the trainstation who was obviously heading the same direction. We struck up a conversation and really clicked, so we decided to do the walk together. (And yes, I added her on FaceBook afterwards – it would just be too weird to share such an incredibly intense experience, and then never see each other again!).

At 11:45am we lined up outside the musem, and started walking, single-file, through the pedestrian streets of Copenhagen. Phil later told me that we’d been more than 320 people… meaning we probably stretched out 150-200 meters! Being in the middle of it, it was hard to tell, but every time we turned a corner, I could see the long snake of people in black, with yellow bandanas tied over their mouths, stretch out for ages in either direction. People we met also kept commenting “wow, they just keep coming!”.

It was, of course, a completely silent march for most of us, but A21 staff and volunteers were walking with us to hand out fliers and talk to people around us. The reception was incredible. Most people actually sought out the fliers themselves, and had long’ish conversations with the people handing them out, resulting in a really positive and approchable vibe. Because there were so many of us, we were very careful about being observant and letting people through when they needed to pass us, and one woman who was there with two young girls stopped to say, “I think it’s wonderful that you’re doing this”.

While walking, we could listen to the podcast A21 had provided, with the full stories of the three people whose names we were wearing. One of those was a girl of just 4 years old who’d been sold into the sex industry by her grandparents and step-father. Heartbreaking.

The match ended an hour later, back at the National museum, where we all pulled off our mouth gags and threw them into the air, to celebrate that Ivan, Eve and Amy had been rescued. They were free. And every day – thanks to organisations like A21 and others – more are following them.

My legs and back were aching like crazy for the rest of the day, but I am SO glad I went. What an amazing experience.

#walkforfreedom

 

Podcast 5 and 6 – Two BookTube Videos

Social Media Book Tag

(I did MySpace twice – the first was supposed to have been tumblr instead)

Dewey’s 24-hour Read-a-Thon

 

Podcast 4 – Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

My apologies for the horrible light. I don’t know what happened there.

On the Needles:
Terra Linda by Romi Hill
Sleeves by Martina Behm
Puzzle Pieces by Megan Ellinger
Sock Yarn Blanket by Shelly Kang

Off the needles
Vanilla Socks
Tiny Minion by Kelly Vu

Between the Pages
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

 

Podcast 3: Christmas in July

On the Needles:
– Elfe by Astrid Schramm. Knit with Fiber Optics Yarn in the Dusty Plum to Olive colourway on size 4.0mm needles.
– Braided Swirl Socks by Emily Wood (testknit). Knit with Lana Grossa Meilenweit on size 2.25mm needles.
– Terra Linda Cardigan by Romi Hill. Knit with Drops Merino Extra Fine (in this case talking about quality and not weight!) on size 6.0mm needles.

Off the Needles:
– Wombat blanket by Paula Berman. Knit with Marks and Kattens Nissegarn on size 8.0mm needles.
– Monkey Socks by Cookie A. – the No Purl version as recommended by CraftyPancakes and with a Fish-Lips-Kiss heel. Knit with Fyberspates Vivacious 4ply on size 2.5mm needles.
– 4 ornaments for the Christmas in July craft-along. Two were Christmas Baubles by Mona Smith. The other two were made up by myself. Knit with Lammy Yarns Lurex on size 3.0mm needles.

Coming Up
– Sleeves by Martina Behm.
– More ornaments

Between the Pages:
– Written in My Own Heart’s Blood by Diana Gabaldon
– Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
– Witches on Parole by Debora Geary

Just Finished:
– Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky

Events
I participate in the Christmas in July CAL hosted by the Just One More Row podcast and the Year of Projects challenge on Ravelry.

 

Podcast 2 – Start-itis

In which I have startitis and want to knit all the things.

Glenn Cooper’s “The Keepers of the LIbrary” has also been published as “The Librarians”

And it’s called NaKniSweMo! Perhaps one of these days I’ll remember!

 

Podcast 1 – Read-a-thon

Welcome to my very first video podcast! I had lots of fun making this, so hope you’ll enjoy watching it.

Made a few mistakes in filming… the sweater for NaKniSweaMo (or NaSweaKniMo) should be 50,000 stitches of course – not just 5,000.
Also the savoury fingering is 400yards per 100grams… not 100 meters.

 

Managing your Kindle Collections

I love my Kindle. I do not love its way of handling collections. It’s a hassle to organize books into collections, and I like having my books organized, so just having all of them in the “root” of my Kindle wasn’t going to work for me. On previous ereaders it was possible to create folders while having the ereader connected to my computer, and organize the files that way. The Kindle didn’t work that way. Besides, collections are more like tags than folders, as each book can be assigned to more than one collection.

Fortunately there are various programs out there that help you manage your Kindle collections. I’ve tried out three of them and will give a brief (or not so brief 😉 ) review of each.

Kindle Collection Manager
This was the first one I found. It’s free and does the job it was made for. It’s main disadvantage is that it doesn’t visually show which books have been added to collections, so if you’re looking at the main overview (“all books”), you have to remember how far you’ve come and which books you’ve already sorted.

Kindle collection for Calibre
I thought this would be perfect! A plugin for Calibre to keep my books organized, what could go wrong? Quite a bit unfortunately, and this turned out to be the least useful manager of the lot. In fact, it ended up undoing quite a lot of the sorting I’d done.

The problem arises if you have books on your Kindle that aren’t in Calibre (which I do) and want both types of books to be in the same collections (which I did). Calibre overwrites the collections on your Kindle, so rather than just adding extra books, it deleted the original collection and added only books from Calibre to the new collection – leaving me with hundreds of books no longer sorted

As an additional hassle, the plugin doesn’t seem to be able to handle books in multiple collections. Instead it creates a new collection that is a concatenation of the two original ones (e.g. “Currently reading, fantasy”). I quickly stopped using that one.

Kindlean
Last, but definitely not least. Kindlean is so far without a doubt the best collection manager I’ve found. It’s free for the first 100 books, if you have more than that (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?) it costs US$19.95. I’ve found it to be well worth the price though!

Kindlean offers a nice-looking interface that allows you to edit the meta data on books as well as adding the books to one or multiple collections (either by drag-and-drop or by editing the meta data). So far I’ve encountered a few books where I couldn’t edit the meta data (I got either an “UNKNOWN” error or the ever popular “Object reference not set to an instance of an object” error which all programmers know to hate), but out of 475 books I think I encountered 5 of those, so I’m assuming corrupt books rather than an actual bug in the program (appart from usability issues anyway 😉 )

Of the three, I would recommend Kindlean as the best program, but the two others do have the advantage of being free, and can be equally helpful once you’re aware of their limitations.

If you know of any other collection managers, I’d love to hear of them 🙂

 

If You Liked… Try…

I love giving out book recommendations, and fortunately people seem to enjoy asking me for them 🙂 This seemed like as good a reason as any to add a new feature to this blog.

If You Liked [book] try [book].

I do, of course, take requests 🙂

All links go to GoodReads.

If you liked The Maze Runner by James Dashner: try Singularity or House of Stairs by William Sleator.

If you liked Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: try Erec Rex by Kaza Kingsley or Companions Quartet by Julia Golding.

If you liked Little House by Laura Ingalls Wilder: try The Year of Plenty by Rebecca LeeAnne Brammer.

If you liked Divergent by Veronica Roth: try The Giver by Lois Lowry or Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

If you liked The Host by Stephenie Meyer: try Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (and vice versa).

If you liked Room by Emma Donoghue: try Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.

If you liked The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: try The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins.

If you liked 11/22/63 by Stephen King: try Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.

If you liked Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs: try Divas Don’t Knit by Gil McNeil.

If you liked The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis: try by Lev Grossman

 

Top Ten Literary Pet Peeves

10. Abundant Grammatical Errors I don’t mind the occasional typo, but do have your book proofread! I’ve mentioned the horror that was The Christmas Wish before and that is a perfect example of how to convince me NOT to just ignore mistakes. And don’t ever, ever, ever write could/would/should of. It literally makes me want to shudder, and I hate that I just had to write it here myself.
Worst offender: “The Christmas Wish” by Karen Farrell Jaworski

9. Unnecessary Unhappy Endings Some books have to have unhappy endings, I get that, but if everything looks as if it’s going to end perfectly, only to fall apart within the last 5 pages, then that’s unnecessary.
Worst offender: “The Partner” by John Grisham

8. Unrealistic Happy Endings I’ll be honest and say that I generally prefer a happy ending to an unhappy one, but I don’t want a happy ending by any means possible. I hate reading books where 95% of the book has people being utterly mean and cruel to each other, and then have everything fixed up, lickety-split in the last 5 pages. I don’t want to have to read through 395 pages of unhappiness to get 5 pages of happiness! It’s just not worth it!
Worst offender: “My Sweet Audrina” by V.C. Andrews

7. Lack of Pacing I guess this one is linked to the two above. Don’t try to fit the closure of a long novel into two short pages. Give the resolution the page-time it needs, or the book will end up feeling rushed and badly written.
Worst offender: “The Nany Diaries” by Emma McLaughlin

6. Love Triangles From Gone With the Wind to Twilight and pretty much every paranormal romance since. Give it a rest already! Love triangles and a love for “Wuthering Heights” (which is pretty much a literary pet peeve all in itself!) do not a good novel make! I could cope with it in Twilight because at least the chemistry was believable – NOT something I can claim for most of its subsequent clones.
Worst offender: “Evermore” by Alyson Noël

5. Evil Characters Who Aren’t Brought to Justice for Their Evil Deeds Also known as the “Death is too good for you, so why did you just die?” pet peeve. I know real life isn’t like that, but in books I’d like my villains to be held accountable for what they’ve done, and too often authors end up just killing them off instead. Deeply frustrating.
Worst offenders: “Still Missing” by Chevy Stevens and “A Week From Sunday” by Dorothy Garlock

4. Umbridge I couldn’t figure out how to sum it up, but really to anybody who’s read Harry Potter, her name explains it all. Characters that are too evil to become villains we love to hate. Characters that we hate to hate and who end up ruining an otherwise good book for us. I doubt I’ll ever reread OotP.
Worst offender: “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” by J.K. Rowling

3. 10.000 Book Series I love series as much as the next person, but I want to be sure that there is a resolution to whatever main arc the series is about before I start out on the journey. One thing I loved about Harry Potter is that we knew from the start that there would be only 7 books, so we would eventually get a resolution to Voldemort. Whenever I start a series that’s a WIP I worry that the author tires of the series before its completed, and we will forever be left without closure.
Worst offender: “Animorphs” by Katherine Applegate

2. Cliffhangers Look, if there was too much plot to fit into a book of a given size, then write a longer book! Don’t write us off with a cliffhanger that basically turns the book into half a book! There are exceptions, of course. I don’t mind it in “Blackout”/”All-Clear” because Connie Willis originally intended for it to be one book, but was told to split it up into two by her publisher. Nor do I mind series where the main plot is left unresolved until the last book, but the plots of the individual books are solved in each one. An example of a series that does this perfectly is Harry Potter. Each book is a book in itself as well as a chapter in the longer book that contains the entire series.
Worst offender: “A Voice in the Wind” – Francine Rivers

And my all-time biggest pet peeve…
1. “And Then He Woke Up And It Was All A Dream”-Endings Or the lesser known but almost as annoying “And Then It Turned Out That He Was Schizophrenic”-Endings. Thankfully they are few and far between, but they absolutely ruin books for me. Especially if – as was the case with one memorable book – I saw it a mile off and kept thinking, “No! They can’t pull that one. Really? They’re going THERE? Sheesh!”
Worst offenders: “Thr3e” by Ted Dekker and “Tell Me Your Dreams” by Sidney Sheldon

 

Retail Therapy

I have never really understood retail therapy. Spending money on stuff does nothing to increase my level of happiness – more often than not I’m hit by buyer’s remorse afterwards and end up feeling worse than when I set out.

There is one exception though (of course there is, or I wouldn’t be mentioning it here) – retail therapy absolutely works when it comes to buying books! I hardly ever suffer from buyer’s remorse even when I’ve just dropped hundreds of kroner on books, because I know it’ll be worth it. I get pleasure from buying books, having books arrive in the mail (long live The Book Depository and their worldwide free shipping!), looking at books, reading books and having my favourite books stand on my shelves afterwards. That’s a lot of value for a very small price!

One of my favourite authors is Neta Jackson, author of the “Yada Yada Prayer Group” series. That series has done more for my faith than any other book – non-fiction and fiction both – and I’ve been reading pretty much everything she’s written since I first discovered her. Thanks to GoodReads‘ “new releases” email, I just discovered that she has a new book out next week! (“Stand By Me” – first book in a new series but with the same characters as “Yada Yada” and “House of Hope”).

I literally squeed out loud when I read that mail, and immediately went to TBD to order it. The mere act of ordering it gave me great joy all by itself, and it hasn’t even arrived yet!

Doesn’t mean I’m not impatiently looking forward for it to do so though 🙂

 

Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart A Little

Top Ten Books That Broke My Heart A Little
My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult I know this book gets a lot of flack for being emotionally maniputive, but it honestly worked for me. I loved it, and it broke my heart.

Rilla of Ingleside – Lucy Maud Montgomery I have to warn Lars whenever I’m reading this so he knows not to worry if (when!) I start crying.

The Time-Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger I never fully realized how tragic the book actually is until I watched the movie together with somebody who hadn’t read the book. I still love it though.

The Other Side of Dawn – John Marsden The final book in the “Tomorrow” series. I can’t remember when I’ve last sobbed this hard over a book. All Ellie and her friends have to go through… Horrifying!

Flowers in the Attic – Virginia Andrews This book was a trainwreck! I was horrified but couldn’t look away. One of the few books that broke my heart and didn’t put it back together again.

The Last Battle – C.S. Lewis Okay, this is heartbreak of a very different kind, but this description of Heaven is the most beautiful I’ve ever read, The term is over, the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning.. Amen!

New Moon – Stephenie Meyer Those four pages with just “November”, “December”, “January” and “February” written on them? Shivers down my spine every time. Stephenie Meyer could not have found a more poignant way to describe exactly how those four months were for Bella. Sometimes less really is more. Elaborating would have made it too heavy-handed. I know Stephenie Meyer isn’t the best author, but those four words show better writing skills than I’ve seen almost anywhere else.

Dragonfly in Amber – Diana Gabaldon All the Outlander books are heartbreaking in some way, but this one more than most. Jamie and Claire are such an awesome couple!

If I Stay – Gayle Forman One of the few books where the heartbreak wasn’t contained to just a couple of chapters, but was spread out throughout the book. An amazing book, but so very, very sad.

Hate List – Jennifer Brown A different kind of heartbreak than most of the books listed above. This shows what can make a person crack, and the repercussions not only to the obvious victims, but also to people thought on his side.

 

Language of choice

One question I get on a fairly regular basis is why I read so much English and so little Danish. Fair enough question, and as the answer is a composite of many different factors, I thought it appropriate to answer here.

In the following I use “English” as an umbrella to cover all books written in this language. I know that some are English, some are American, some are Australian etc. etc. etc., but it just gets to cumbersome to have to write that out every time.

Reason One: Whether English or Danish, I generally prefer to read books in the language they were written. The only exceptions are books I grew up with before I learned English (e.g. the Narnia chronicles) and authors like Shakespeare where the level of English is just a tad above my capabilities. I don’t care to read books in Danish just for the sake of them being in Danish (same goes for English though).

Reason Two: English books are generally cheaper Even in Denmark. This goes double for ebooks.

Reason Three: There is a larger selection of books by English authors This means that even if the percentage of good books is the same, there is a larger number to chose from (I know the same is true of bad books though…). And the selection of Danish ebooks and audiobooks is ridiculously small.

Reason Four: It’s harder to find books by Danish authors. Not just because there are fewer in number, but because in pretty much all bookstores, libraries etc. novels in Danish are all lumped together, so it’s not immediately obvious whether any given book is written by a Dane or merely a Danish translation. Books in English (here at least) are more likely to be English in origin.

Reason Five: I have very few favourite Danish authors I know, I know, what is cause and what is effect? But regardless, I know of four Danish authors I’d include on my “favourites” list, one of those is only there because of exactly one book, and another stopped writing books some 40-50 odd years ago. I know of no contemporary dependable* Danish writers of chick-lit or fantasy for instance.

* = always read-worthy.

Reason Six: Most of my owned books are in English See reasons 1-5 above. And as I want to get through my tbr-mountain, I read a lot in English.

Reason Seven: I like sharing books with other people One of the very best things about reading is sharing book recommendations with other people. Pretty much everybody I share books with in Denmark are able to read English, but pretty much nobody I share books with elsewhere are able to read Danish. So if I want to discuss books online, I have to read books that are either in English or have been translated to English.

Reason Eight: Not all the books I read are even translated to Danish And the collary: even if they are, it may be ages before they’re published in Danish. Not all books are as popular as “Harry Potter” that they’re translated immediately. I don’t have the patience to wait for Danish translations to be ready when the English ones are right there.

Out of all of these, reasons one and seven are the two most important ones. Reason seven determines my choice of author, and reason one determines which language I read that author in. They all count though; and in fact, I’m sure I’ll think of more the minute I click “Post” here.

 

Organizing Books

If you’ve known me for even a brief amount of time, you’ll known that I’m ever so slightly OCD when it comes to arranging my books. At home my books are sorted into four categories: fiction, non-fiction, textbooks and cook-books. Within each category (with the exception of cookbooks) they are sorted first alphabetically by author, and then alphabetically by title (with the exception of series which are arranged by reading order instead of alphabetically). I love organizing books, and my sisters have been known to ask me to come over for the sole purpose of getting me to arrange their books for them! (Love sisters who know me!)

As the Internet became more and more versatile, book listing sites began to slowly pop up around the place. During the years I have been a member of several – some with more success than others.

I think the very first one I joined was Chainreading.com (I also think this site is no longer active as I haven’t been able to access it for quite awhile). It was very basic and unfortunately not all that good. On Chainreading you could list books you wanted to read, books you were currently reading, and books you wanted to recommend to others. There was no way of listing books you had read, but didn’t like. And so, even though I liked the interface, I quickly moved on.

Lists of Bests wasn’t much better though. At least here you could list whether a book was “worth consuming” or “not worth consuming”, but that was it. Again, I quickly moved on.

The first site I really fell in love with was Bibliophil.org. Now we were talking! Finally a site where apart from just adding books to a list, I could sort into sublists according to genre, add a rating and a date for when I read the book! The interface was pretty primitive, but I could live with that, considering that it had all those other things going for it. It wasn’t really much of a social site, but I could live with that, as long as I could properly organize my books 🙂 I think this one is slowly going too though – I can still access the site, but I can’t log on…

Then suddenly along came LibraryThing. I clicked over to see what that was all about, and loved the look and feel of the place, so I was all ready and eager to sign up… until I discovered that the site was only free for the first 200 books added. Any more than that, and you had to pay for a permanent account. I don’t remember the amount any longer, but more than I was willing to pay when I had other options. Since then I have actually signed up because of their First Reader program, but have to say that while they do have their interface and a few other things going for them, as a whole, it doesn’t seem as ‘polished’ as site as others.

Same goes for Shelfari. Again, I like their way of displaying books, but that’s about it.

Finally I found Goodreads! And I’ve never looked back since! Goodreads let me do everything that Bibliophil did, but was much more userfriendly and had a much nicer interface. So now I’ve found my little spot on the web. I can organize my books to my heart’s content, it’s easy to add new books even if they aren’t in the database originally, I can write reviews and add quotes. In addition to all this, I can share my love of books with others. Goodreads is a very social site, and I love sharing book recommendations with others, commenting on their reviews and getting comments on my own. One of the best things about reading, is sharing my love of books with others – this site makes it even easier for me to do so, and I love it there 🙂

That’s not to say it doesn’t have its disadvantages. I’d love a more advanced search and an option to list writer aliases, and add reread dates, but I can live with that.

 

Booklending.com

Shortly after I received my Kindle, I discovered Booklending.com – a site where Kindle-owners can put selected ebooks up for loan and borrow from each other. You sign up and link your account to your Amazon account, and books you loan will automatically be available for download to the device of your choice.

At first glance, Booklending.com seems a terrific site. A library for ebooks, what could go wrong?

Fortunately, not much. It does mostly deliver what it promises, but there are a few glitches it would do well to get sorted out.

The biggest problem is their search function. With one field for both title and author search, and no option for combined or advanced searching, searching for a book is a bit hit-and-miss. You might be lucky that the book you are searching for is the very first result, or you may have to browse through page after page of irrelevant results. This is of course especially noticable if you search for a book with a name in the title, because you will invariably also get all books by authors of that name.

This is a huge detraction to the useability of the site. At the same time the search is also rather slow, which wouldn’t be too big an issue in its own right, but is annoying when combined with the other issue – especially when the search ends up returning no results! I have not quite been able to figure out when this happens, because it is not a matter of whether or not a book is lendable – perhaps it’s whether or not it exists as an ebook at all? That would make sense, and would seem a reasonable filter to put in.

A smaller problem is the availability of books, but I do know that this is not the fault of Booklending.com but rather that of authors and/or publishers not wanting their books to be available for lending. Still, it does get frustrating to look up book after book and receive the result, “Ask the publisher to make this book lendable.”

For books that are lendable, there tends to be only very few people offering the book up for loan – if any. This means a long waiting period – I requested a total of fifteen books back in July, received 2 within the first week, and then none since. Again, this is only Booklending.com’s fault insofar as it hasn’t advertised sufficiently, so not enough people know of the site.

Before you ask, no, I haven’t put any up as being available to lend myself. Not because I don’t want to, but because Kindle books are only lendable if you have an Amazon account with a US address.

Thankfully I haven’t yet encountered a book that wasn’t available for loan outside the US. I don’t know if that will turn out to be an issue or not. I hope not, but could fear that it will. Amazon’s fault rather than Booklending’s except if it turns out that I’m only told this when I attempt to download it, rather than when I request the loan.

However, with those big but still workaroundable issues out of the way, the loaning process itself is a breeze. Apparently I got lucky with the first book I requested, because within half an hour I received an email telling me that the book was now available for download through my Amazon account. I accessed the account, acknowledged the loan and had the book sent to my device exactly like any other book I’ve bought from Amazon. Since a loan is, by definition, temporary (or ought to be, anyway), the book remained in my account for two weeks from the time I acknowledged the loan, but in that interval, I could donwload it to as many devices as I wanted to. After the two week period was up, the book was automatically removed from my Amazon library, and returned to the owner. I didn’t check, but I would assume this meant that it also disappeared from my device the next time I synced it.

So A+ for idea and lending process, C- for search function and useability of site.

And publishers – please make your books lendable. I promise you that it’s a good idea! Of the two books I’ve had on loan, while one was only so-so, the other was so terrific that I immediately recommended it for translation into Danish! Surely that’s a desirable outcome?

For the rest of you – by all means sign up! My complaints aside, it’s a terrific idea, and as one of the issues is the lack of people with books to lend out, the more people I can get to sign up, the better! 🙂

 

E-Readers – A review

Through the years I’ve had several different e-readers – some vastly more enjoyable to read on than others.

Palm: Tungsten T5
My very first e-reader was a Palm. I pretty much only used this when I had no other reading material around. It served that purpose well enough, but I got frustrated by the very small screen, so never really got fond of using it as an e-reader. I think I only ever read 2-3 books on it in the 4 years I had it.

Nokia E72
After 4 years, the Palm had reached the end of its life, and I needed a replacement. Since my phone was up for an upgrade at the same time, I got a Nokia E72. My two main requirements for the phone at the time was that had to have a decent calendar and some sort of e-reading functionality. Unfortunately I ended up being rather disappointed by the latter. While it did have the option to display PDF and DOC-files, it didn’t have a bookmark function and opened the files at the top whenever I accessed them. Since at the time I only used an e-reader to read for short periods at a time, that wouldn’t do.

BeBook One
In November 2009 I finally got my hands on a real E-Reader. I chose the BeBook One because at the time it supported the most formats by far (lit, doc, rtf, txt, pdf, epub, html – just to mention the most common ones). At the time I received it, I’d never had my hands on any other e-readers, so I had nothing to compare it to. I loved the ease of it, and especially that I no longer had to worry about how many books I could bring on vacation, but it was relatively low-tech, which especially showed in that it took an extremely long time to turn pages – as much as 3-4 seconds for some formats and lengths of books. Being as fast a reader as I am, that both really slowed down my reading experience, and made it less fluid.

My sensible self was satisfied with it. It fulfilled its purpose, and that’s really all I needed it to do. My geeky self thought it would be nice with something a bit more high tech though.

Kindle Keyboard
Two years later, I finally caved and got myself something more high tech. I had been resisting getting a Kindle pretty much every since they came out, because I didn’t (and still don’t) agree with many of the business decisions Amazon has made in regard to selling E-Readers and E-Books. I still think it’s pathetic that I have to purchase both Kindle and books at Amazon.com rather than Amazon.co.uk, and am even more annoyed that even within amazon.com, there are some books that aren’t available in Denmark.

Fortunately I don’t have to use Amazon for my purchases at all (not once I have the e-reader anyway), and most of my books I get elsewhere, and then convert via Calibre to Kindle format. So I try to put aside my annoyance with Amazon, and just look at the Kindle itself for this review.

And doing that, I have to say that I love it. It’s easy to use, and the pages turn instantly, so I get the proper ‘feel’ of reading a book – to the point that I have caught myself trying to physically turn pages more than once. I cannot give it a higher recommendation than that.

I haven’t yet used the audiobook feature, but since I have an audible account, I’m pretty sure that it’s just a matter of time, considering how handily it supports that too.

My one complaint is that it’s somewhat cumbersome to organize books. The Kindle support ‘Collections’, but it takes a lot of clicking to move books between collections. Also, it would be a huge bonus if it had an automatic “Recently read” collection as I’m often reading several books at once. That is a minor nice-to-have feature though.

Conclusion
I have yet to try a Nook, a Kebo or a Sony E-reader, but of the E-readers I have tried, the Kindle gets my vote.

 

E-Readers

E-Readers (and E-Books) have long been the source of much contention. Are they better than physical books? Worse than physical books? Will e-books eventually make physical books obsolete? The opinions are many and varied with about as many people arguing pro as con.

Personally, I think E-Readers are terrific in addition to physical books. In my world, e-books will never replace physical books, but there is a time and a place for both and there are just some situations where e-books are so much handier than physical books. Take my post from last week as an example – I used to have to lug around tons of heavy books whenever I went on vacation. It took up valuable luggage space, and made my backpack even heavier than it had to be. With an e-reader I can just bring one gadget about the size and weight of an average paperback, and I’m good to go!

I have had some sort of e-reader since 2005. I started out with a Palm Tungsten T5, graduated through an unhandy Nokia phone through to the BeBook One, the Kindle app on various other gadgets and finally the Kindle Keyboard. For each upgrade reading e-books became more and more handy and hassle-free, and I’m now at a point where I definitely wouldn’t want to be without an e-reader of some sort.

But for pure coziness of reading, I still prefer physical books. There’s just something special about the act of turning pages that doesn’t quite translate to pressing a button on an e-reader.

An e-reader is really best for reading from A-Z. Flipping through a book to look for something specific is almost impossible as I tend to remember where things were written by how the book “feels” (approx. how many pages are left, was it on a right or a left page etc.) rather than the specific page number.

Apart from the sensation of reading paper books vs. e-books, there’s also the issue of a physical library vs. a digital one. I’m proud of the library I’ve managed to put together by now. I would like it to be bigger, but who wouldn’t?! 😉 I like looking at my books, picking out old favourites to read a page here and a paragraph there. I like seeing a wall full of books and knowing that I’ve read them all. Looking at folders on a computer just isn’t the same. Also I like having guests comment on my books and loaning books to others – and most people I know feel a LOT more comfortable browsing bookshelves in a living room, than browsing folders on a computer. The former is perfectly acceptable within etiquette, the latter definitely isn’t unless expressed permission has been given.

An e-reader is a lot more egoistic than physical books. Mum didn’t bring along enough books when we were on vacation together last. Had this been BER (Before E-Reader 😉 ) I could just have given her one of mine to read, as I was bound to have brought several, but we couldn’t very well both use the e-reader at the same time, so I couldn’t be of any help. And I like being of help!

Will the market for E-readers continue to grow? Absolutely! Will it completely replace physical books? I highly doubt it. Collectors and bibliophiles such as myself might choose to extend their libraries with an e-book collection, but we will never let go of our physical books completely. The touch and feel of them (as well as their decorative value in our homes) is too special.

 

Travelling Light

… or perhaps that should rather be travelling not-so-light, because back in the days before E-readers became the norm, my reading material took up a considerate amount of space in my luggage whenever I travelled. No matter how long or short the trip, I wanted to make sure I had brought enough.

The days up to a vacation would find me eagerly perusing my bookshelves – mentally while at work, actually standing in front of them while at home. It was the eternal, reoccurring and not at all unpleasant question before a vacation – how
many books should I bring? It almost never failed that I brought too many books with me, but rather too many than too few! I’d hate to risk suddenly running dry and had learned to live with the fact that this mindset always meant that my suitcase was heavier than it needed to be.

More importantly than how many to bring was the subsequent question which ones should I bring? Old favourites – known and loved, books I knew I would be able to disappear into? Or some of the newly acquired, books I’d been wanting to read for awhile, but never got around to? Thick ones with many hours’ worth of reading material, or thin ones, so I could bring more? With a personal library of almost 1000 books the possibilities seemed endless.

The destination this time was Italy – a skiing vacation with some friends. Sure, we were only going to be gone for 4 days, so one wouldn’t think there would be much time for reading, but this was a yearly trip we took together, and unfortunately the two last years, I’d managed to either hurt myself or get sick on the second day away, and therefore couldn’t go skiing for the rest of the trip, and both years only my eternally over-estimated book supply had meant that not even this made me run out of reading material. Of course I wasn’t exactly planning on hurting myself again this year, but one never knows and I wasn’t going to take any chances! Finally I decided to bring at least 3 books… 4 if they were suitably thin.

I ended up picking a somewhat varied selection – something for every taste, in order not to get tired of any specific genre: a mystery novel, which I usually don’t really read much of, but which I had been asked to review; a 500-page “door-stopper” that had been lying waiting for me to make time for it for ages by now and which in and of itself ought to be able to keep me well entertained for a day or three; and then – just to be on the safe side – an old favourite that I could run to, if both the others turned out to be completely impossible after all. At the last moment I also threw my Palm into my handbag – it is definitely not ideal for reading, but even in these early days of e-books (before the advent of any “proper” e-reader) I had managed to get hold of no less than 20 e-books to keep on my Palm for cases just like this. Sure, I preferred “physical” books, but it would do if it had to. After all – beggars can’t be choosers.

With that decision made, my suitcase ended up being 1298 pages heavier, and I was ready to leave – fully knowing that no matter what, I would probably still fall for the temptation and buy a new book in the book store at the airport.

As it turned out, I ended up only reading one of the books I had brought with me – the 500 page chunkster a.k.a “Assassin’s Apprentice” by Robin Hobb. I had been introduced to Robin Hobb 6 years previously when my Maid of Honour and Best Friend Forever had almost made herself late for my bachelorette party because she was so busy reading the Liveship Trilogy (okay, exaggerated, but she would have been late if I had let her). Usually sharing my BFF’s taste in books, I knew that any author who could captivate her like that was an author I had to read.

As fate would have it, it took me almost 4 years to get around to purchasing the first book online (it wasn’t available in Denmark at the time), and another two years before I actually started reading it. Once I did, I immediately understood her appeal though, and was very annoyed that I hadn’t brought all three books of the trilogy at once, so I could move straight on to the next one.

And this is where my mad book-picking skillz paid off – though I hadn’t been able to find any of the books in Denmark, I did find all three of them in Italy! So for once I was delighted to give up on “the books in a series must match!”-mantra, went straight out and bought “Royal Assassin” and “Assassin’s Quest”, and didn’t even mind the extra 1000 pages dragging down my handbag on the way home, when it meant that I could start reading book two as soon as the plane took off.

 

Prologue

Brainstorming for names for blogs has never been one of my strengths. When I started this blog, all I really knew was that I wanted it to be related to reading in some way. Reading has always been my largest passion and my top priority hobby, and I wanted that to be featured somehow in the title.

For once I got lucky though – out of the blue, “Reading Bliss” popped into my head, and I knew I had found a winner. For me reading is bliss, and that’s all there is to it.

Reading is a part of life to me – I can’t remember when I last let an entire day go by without spending at least 10-15 minutes of it reading. I don’t think it has happened within the last 10 years at least. Most days, it’s closer to 2-3 hours.

I read to relax, I read to recharge, I read to relate to people, I read to broaden my horizons. Mostly though, I read to have fun. If I don’t enjoy a book, I have no qualms putting it down unfinished. I’ll give it a fair chance – 50-100 pages depending on the size of the book – but if I find that reading is a chore rather than a comfort, then I know it’s time to move on to another book. I gave up on reading books because I had to when I left school.

That’s not to say I don’t still occasionally read to educate myself, but as I’ve found as I’ve gotten older non-fictional books (and even, *gasp*, so-called ‘educational’ books) don’t have to be boring, and as long as they’re well written, I can get just as much enjoyment out of a memoir or an essay collection as out of the most exhilarating fantasy novel.

I hope to post here once a month – sometimes more, hopefully seldom less – sharing with you my thoughts on reading, and all the ways that technology has influenced it through apps, websites, and gadgets. Hope you’ll want to read along.

Maria