As with any habitual reader, there are always more books on my "to be read" list than I can ever actually get to. Several of the ones I started over on Goodreads have not yet been finished (especially the writing books with exercises in them, which I hope to start remedying shortly), and I've added several more that I actually do have a shot at finishing.
So for 2015, here's my initial pass at a prioritized reading list, to be added to at will, with preliminary notes on why I'm reading what I'm reading, if anyone actually finds that of interest.
Nalo Hopkinson, "Midnight Robber"
Dan Wells, "Partials"
(I've signed up for the 2015 Out of Excuses Writing Workshop and Retreat. I"m already familiar with the work of Mary Robinette Kowal and Brandon Sanderson, and I'm perusing Howard Tayler's "Schlock Mercenary" online, so this is me catching up on what the other authors have been up to.)
Catherynne Valente, "The Habitation of the Blessed" (Audible)
E.E. "Doc" Smith "Triplanetary: Lensman #1" (Audible)
(I commute about a half hour to work each way, so I get a fair bit of listening time in - Audible and podcasts FTW...)
Jim Hines "Rise of the Spider Goddess"
Jim Hines "Unbound"
Anne Bishop "Written in Red"
Anne Bishop "Murder of Crows"
Cherie Priest "Maplecroft"
John Scalzi "Fuzzy Nation"
Elizabeth Bear "Karen Memory"
Gail Carriger "Prudence"
And more to come...
Showing posts with label E-Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label E-Books. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
E-Books, Dead Trees, and Writing
Woohoo! The box from Writers' Digest arrived yesterday, and I now have my own shiny new copy of Characters, Emotions and Viewpoint to pore over, mark up, and learn from (as well as the other 4 books in the "Write Great Fiction" series. Now to make sure that the task of writing up the exercises doesn't actually interfere with getting started on learning to actually write creatively...
We went shopping this weekend, and took a look a the Barnes & Noble Nook line of e-readers. B. and I are quite happy with our Kindles (though we're seriously considering getting a second one each, tied to each other's Amazon account, since sharing isn't particularly easy on the Kindle...). I picked up a copy of the first book in Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series, B. picked up the first of Jeanne C. Stein's Anita Blake novels, and then we went to Tattered Cover to cleanse our souls a bit.
Sadly, we found that we're just not liking Tattered Cover nearly as much as we used to. I've had this conversation with other book lovers and TC fans, and the theater space just isn't quite as cool as the old space in Cherry Creek. The downtown branch still has a lot of that atmosphere, but the Colfax branch is closer to us. The business of selling books is rough even in the best of times, and the pressure of e-books and online sales is taking its toll, sad to say. Thing is, keeping the kind of inventory on hand that got us hooked on Tattered Cover in the first place is nearly impossible for a brick-and-mortar store anymore - which creates a really vicious circle for bookstores, as customers who used to be able to pop in and trust that they'd be able to find at least one copy of any given book in a fairly extensive series (say, the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs or the Company novels by Kage Baker) find that this is no longer the case and turn to Amazon. We found a number of books on writing, style and grammar - but it was a much smaller shelf than we were expecting, honestly. I replaced my missing copy of Strunk and White, and found the parody version A Manual of F*cking Style (which I'm loving). B. picked up a grammar workbook, and I found The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, which looks like a great deal of fun.
I'm also finding that I like my Kindle a lot more than I thought I would. The advantages of electronic copies of books have long been obvious to me (my back still twinges at the thought of carrying a weekend's worth of so-called "light reading" around in a backpack), but I hadn't realized how quickly some of the quirks of book handling would seem to be irritating - marking your place with a bookmark, turning pages, keeping a stack of current reading by the bed, schlepping half of it into the den or downstairs, etc.
We went shopping this weekend, and took a look a the Barnes & Noble Nook line of e-readers. B. and I are quite happy with our Kindles (though we're seriously considering getting a second one each, tied to each other's Amazon account, since sharing isn't particularly easy on the Kindle...). I picked up a copy of the first book in Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series, B. picked up the first of Jeanne C. Stein's Anita Blake novels, and then we went to Tattered Cover to cleanse our souls a bit.
Sadly, we found that we're just not liking Tattered Cover nearly as much as we used to. I've had this conversation with other book lovers and TC fans, and the theater space just isn't quite as cool as the old space in Cherry Creek. The downtown branch still has a lot of that atmosphere, but the Colfax branch is closer to us. The business of selling books is rough even in the best of times, and the pressure of e-books and online sales is taking its toll, sad to say. Thing is, keeping the kind of inventory on hand that got us hooked on Tattered Cover in the first place is nearly impossible for a brick-and-mortar store anymore - which creates a really vicious circle for bookstores, as customers who used to be able to pop in and trust that they'd be able to find at least one copy of any given book in a fairly extensive series (say, the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs or the Company novels by Kage Baker) find that this is no longer the case and turn to Amazon. We found a number of books on writing, style and grammar - but it was a much smaller shelf than we were expecting, honestly. I replaced my missing copy of Strunk and White, and found the parody version A Manual of F*cking Style (which I'm loving). B. picked up a grammar workbook, and I found The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, which looks like a great deal of fun.
I'm also finding that I like my Kindle a lot more than I thought I would. The advantages of electronic copies of books have long been obvious to me (my back still twinges at the thought of carrying a weekend's worth of so-called "light reading" around in a backpack), but I hadn't realized how quickly some of the quirks of book handling would seem to be irritating - marking your place with a bookmark, turning pages, keeping a stack of current reading by the bed, schlepping half of it into the den or downstairs, etc.
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