Bookcrossing - live to share, share to live

Here is my Books Read List for safekeeping, so I have it somewhere else besides my PC. Lost it before, when my computer died on me. I used to have it on BC, but lost it there for a while as well, when the website was redone.

I'm behind with my reading challenge for this year, but I have now read one book more than in the total of 2010, so it's not bad. I would be a lot further along, if I didn't read so much fanfic in between. But it's too much fun not to.

( my read booklist with links behind cut for safekeeping )

I just transferred my Kindle account from amazon.com to amazon.de. I noticed the German mirror site a few days ago, not sure how long it's been there. I hope I won't regret it. There seems to be a lot of content in English. All my settings moved as well, I just lost my Kindle wishlist. But I didn't have too many books on it, so it was a quick job to find those books again and create a new ebook wishlist. So far, so good.

I just pre-ordered Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris. Delivery date 3rd of May. I hope I can get it straight away at midnight... The price finally dropped from an outrageous 23 dollars something to slightly over 16 dollars. In the German Kindle shop I save a few cents, but that'll probably vary with the exchange rate. The ebook is 1 Euro more than the paperback. I can live with that!


Finally finished last night, just in time for Sookie:

Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Mysterious things are afoot in the town of York. A conspiracy of major proportions is tucked away somewhere.

As usual with Sansom, the story is alive with the sounds and smells of Tudor England. Descriptions are excellent. It's easy to get immersed into his world, you can almost feel, taste and especially smell it.

Page 122: "We walked to Stonegate as the sun rose up and the city came to life, keeping under the eaves as people opened their windows and threw the night's piss into the streets."

There is a surprising amount of swearing going on for historical novels.

When I read his books, it always makes me sad to contemplate how many beautiful things Henry VIII destroyed with his dissolution.

I keep jumping back to the computer to read up on historic events and characters mentioned in the books, it's always a very educational experience for me.

The whole question of succession regarding Richard III, the princes in the tower and the War of the Roses has always confused me a lot and now I get something else confusing thrown into the mix.

Some further reading that contains spoilers -- I suggest not looking at this until you have read the book:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_IV_o...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_%...
http://www.york.ac.uk/ipup/projects/york...

The last 200 pages dragged on a bit for me. At times Sansom's books seem to be a little too cosy, until the next twist hits you and the plot moves back to nail biting suspense.


Gave up:

A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M. Liu

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Giving up on this one. I made it to page 80 with several stops and starts.

I do not like the vague SF setting. It bothered me already in the first book -- it's hinted at, but not really explored and somehow it feels confined and claustrophobic to me. I know, sounds stupid, but I don't know how else to explain it.

And that the two main characters suddenly decide that they are soul mates and in love with each other after they have just met and barely exchanged any words -- it could work and it has in other books I've read -- here it just feels silly.

Not for me. Perhaps it would have grown on me after another 100 pages, but I'd rather read something I enjoy from the start...

Interesting discussion again over on ebooks on ebooks versus traditional publishing. The post is basically a collection of links to people that bash ebooks. Fairly entertaining. A big issue was the pirating of books.

I get the arguments and I can relate to some extent regarding piracy and how it damages sales and will maybe make books go away forever....!!?!

What I never get in this --people have always shared books, gotten them for free from others that got them for free from someone else. Just look at paperbackswap, bookcrossing, bookmooch and countless other sites like them. Nobody bitches that they damage sales. I have about 100 unread paper books on my shelf. I actually bought about 10 of them. Maybe 5 or so were presents, all the others I got through Bookcrossing and Bookmooch. How is that so different from downloading books for free from the Internet? Ok, piracy, illegal, sure. But the idea behind it is the same--someone gets a book and then shares it. Ok, Internet = higher turnover. But still... Maybe I'm naive.

Why not make it easier to lend and borrow ebooks freely? Why the restrictions? And don't give me the copyright argument. I mooch books from allover the world, surely those are copyrighted somehow as well and I still get them.

I am perfectly happy to pay for ebooks, if the prices are reasonable. In my case that means not more than the mass market paperback. Or Kindle bargains under 5 Dollars...

I am waiting for the new Sookie Stackhouse. Currently the ebook is listed at around 14 dollars for US residents and 23 dollars for others. I probably could have warmed up to the 14 dollars, if the paper book was only slightly cheaper. But over 20? No bloody way! It's almost as if they want to discourage peple from getting the ebook and push them onto paper.

In an ideal world I have bluetooth on my reader, you have bluetooth on yours and voila! I bought one DRMd book so far. I guess books bought in the Kindle store have DRM as well? I would prefer to boycott them completely, but that would limit my choices a lot.

I love that Calibre started collecting DRM-free books, I actually sent the guy a donation...

The read-a-thon starts in about 2 hours...