All About Books/Periodicals

[Klaudandus]

Whenever the school libraries would throw out books, I'd grab some -- they would normally put them in a shelf and it was labeled "free book". But district administrators changed the policy latter on the books, the libraries had to send the books to fixed assets first for disposal, and if you wanted a book, you basically had to go dumpster diving for them...

Before that, I managed to salvage several books on WW2, Theology, and compilation works of Borges, Poe and Lovecraft, oh... and And the Band played On, possibly one of the most depressing books ever.

[Fridmarr]

I'm wouldn't think that you would have to prove ownership after the fact, but I'm not 100% sure.

[Klaudandus]

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Pretend-This ... 0399159010

this book is hilarious

[Lieris]

I would love to hear from anyone who has moved their book collection and buying habits to Kindle. Any regrets, advice, stuff to watch out for, that sort of thing. You can't easily take your book collection with you if you move abroad, most paperbacks have next to no resell value and I hate the way the pages discolour with age so like with music, going digital seems really convenient. More importantly I think I would read a lot more.

I would as suggested previously in this topic just download my existing books instead of buying them again so my only start up cost would be for the Kindle itself.

[Klaudandus]

A friend of mine has the kindle and she loves it, I use my work-issued ipad as my ebook reader (hey, free ipad, I aint gonna complain) but it took me a while to get used to it -- at first, I'd get easily tired from reading on it, now i'm used to it.

I'd say in the last 40 days, I've read about 10-12 books or so.

[Koatanga]

We have 3 kindles in the house: Original, Touch, and Fire. My daighter has the original that was passed down from my wife when she got her Touch. I have the Fire.

My wife loves her Touch and uses it all the time. I love my Fire and use it all the time. She thinks the Touch is nice to read, while I like the convenience of being able to read without a light on. I also like that my Fire can view the video content I stream on my network, and that I can play android games on it.

Since becoming a Kindle family, my reading has gone WAY up. My reading time is at night mainly, before I go to sleep. Having a backlit device means I don't bother my wife when I read, I don't nod off and lose my place, I don't have a stack of books on my nightstand, and I feel free to read just a few pages and put it down if I am particularly tired.

The kindle is also convenient to toss into my laptop bag, so I can read when I am between clients.

I use the Calibre program (open source book manager) on my PC to organise my library. It can download metadata (series, reviews, synopsis, ratings, etc.) and store it with the books. It's also good for searching.

My only complaint is DRM-protected books when sharing them around the family. It's a pain, so we avoid them.

I like my Kindle enough to say I believe that printed books will go the way of vynil records in the not-so-distant future. It's a better experience for me than reading a real book. The ability to change font and size alone makes the Kindle superior to printed counterparts, particularly for those of us without perfect vision.

[benebarba]

Whenever the school libraries would throw out books, I'd grab some -- they would normally put them in a shelf and it was labeled "free book". But district administrators changed the policy latter on the books, the libraries had to send the books to fixed assets first for disposal, and if you wanted a book, you basically had to go dumpster diving for them...

Before that, I managed to salvage several books on WW2, Theology, and compilation works of Borges, Poe and Lovecraft, oh... and And the Band played On, possibly one of the most depressing books ever.

apparently this occurs similarly in libraries and at least some bookstores: the publishers give them a break on stuff, but they need to prove it's not being 'given away' or sold by destroying it in an approved manner.

I have some friends who work in libraries who've also told me about how they periodically destroy donations because apparently they have restrictions on the ability to sell them and someone decided that setting up a box o books for free wasn't a good use of resources.

[Koatanga]

The very idea of destroying books makes me so angry...

[Passionario]

Recently discovered Matthew Swift series by Kate Griffin. Best urban fantasy I've read in a long while.

[benebarba]

Picked up Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series after seeing John Carter. I splurged and paid .99 USD for an indexed version of the first seven books with illustrations that were made for the series back in 1915-1920 (IIRC).

Seriously enjoying the heck out of it. Apparently there are some decent free versions out there (yay public domain), but most of the ones I found were pretty much garbage (no index, bad formatting, missing pages, packing it with random pictures that they pulled from who-knows-where, etc). Though many of the pay ones weren't much better.

[Klaudandus]

Just got this
http://www.amazon.com/Gates-Fire-Novel- ... 0553580531

My beard is growing a beard

[Fenrìr]

So anyone else finish Book 14 of Wheel of Time yet/

[Nooska]

Haven't even gotten around to ordering it - still not done with the Earth's Childre series I picked up after rereading 12-13 early last year (I was thinking I could stretch them out to teh release).

That does remind me to go order the book though.

[jere]

I finished it around the 11th or 12th. It was definitely good. There were definitely a few plot points I didn't like, but overall I felt the book was really a good end to the series. It does move fast and doesn't seem to have the same amount of "luls" that the other books have. The chapter organization is a bit weird. One chapter is almost 200 pages long while the next one is like 4 pages long .

All in all, I was very pleased with it and plan to read it again once I finish re-reading Way of Kings and read the upcoming part 2 of that series. There are a lot of details in MoL that can be missed and affect how you see the story.

[Klaudandus]

The Rifters Trilogy, by the same guy that did Blindsight...

what's best... you can get them for free
http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
http://www.rifters.com/real/STARFISH.htm
http://www.rifters.com/real/MAELSTROM.htm
http://www.rifters.com/real/Behemoth.htm