What are you reading now?

I'd just like to say that I find it humorously ironic that a number of participants the the Summer Reading Program miss the line on the Reading Log that says prizes are available July 2. I guess it's compartmentalized reading.

A Riff on Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift wrote, "He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."
Polite Conversation. Dialogue ii. cited in Bartlett's Quotations.


I would say, "They are bold persons that first use e-readers in their 60s or 70s." In a way, I find the situation also analogous to walking--it seems simple and self-evident when one is doing it and has done it for a while, but the interplay of all the muscles and signals from the brain and the inner ear are quite daunting when one considers them as a list of things that need to happen in coordination. In e-reader land, the list of tasks to be accomplished at least once before they can start reading a book on the handheld machine can be annoying if not daunting.

Item 1. A person needs an online relationship (account) with the company that sponsors / subsidizes / sells the E-reader. If she doesn't have one, this is not necessarily "intuitive" to set up. And she still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 2. A person needs an "Adobe Digital Editions" I.D. and / or he has to register / authorize his e-reader with the email address from item 1 above. And he still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 3. A person needs to download and install on her computer and / or her e-reader Adobe Digital Editions, Overdrive Media Console, Blio reader app, or the OneClickDigital Media Manager. In the case of Adobe DE and Overdrive MC, she has to authorize those apps with the email address from items 1 and 2 above (which should be the same email address; I'm just saying...) And she still doesn't have any library ebooks yet.

Item 4a. A person needs to navigate the particular library ebook interface (another technical term) to choose a book, check it out and download it to the desktop, laptop, or e-reader.

Item 4b. Downloading the ebook may involved saving it to the desktop computer, laptop computer or the e-reader itself. If he downloads to one of the traditional computers, he will have to know how to move the ebooks to his ereader using his USB cable; if he downloads straight to his e-reader, he will have to be connected to wireless and know how to connect his ereader to that.

Providing that everything went smoothly without electronic or physical obstacles intervening, she may have a library ebook title now. Understandably, that's a lot of new stuff to get what one used to be able to just walk in the door and pull off the shelf. If you're are showing your father, grandmother, older friend or other relative how to navigate this process, be patient but not condescending. If it doesn't go smoothly at first, you may have to overcome something scary as oysters. Once they are reading on the machine, they should be happy as clams!

A Neologism for you

Sportsrighteous—one who is haughty about professional athletes’ ability and performance versus their broader philosophy.

e.g. “There’s so much more to life than baseball,” said the professional ball player.
        “Most B-Team guys say that,” said the sportsrighteous fan.

What We Talk about When We Talk about Ebooks

I love a mystery. A good murder mystery for entertainment, or solving less lethal mysteries as part of the job. I'm a public eye, or public detective. I help people find answers and entertainment. Lately the answers I've been asked to find have been about free ebooks from the library.

After some sifting of the clues, I can now tell folks how to search for and choose ebooks and eaudiobooks, how to download those books from the library for free and get them transferred to their machines--desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and dedicated ereaders.

Another successful solution, which like current / contemporary mysteries being written, has nuanced complexities. But usually, I'm able to help library patrons get past the fact that "there are no friendly machines."

A Timely Book for 2012 (kind of repeated from a previous post)

Twilight of the A-Pooh-Calypse-Oh!

A Story of the End of the World and Latin Dancing For the Very Young-----------------by Timothy Sparrow, 1998.

I was reminded of this because of the recent comic New Adventures of Queen Victoria:

And because I expect to be as disappointed by December 21 this year as I was during the (non) arrival of the Jupiter effect--the alignment of a bunch of the planets in the solar system-- on or near March 10, 1982.

Happy New Year

This is posted from my phone. How cool is that? In other news, I helped 4 patrons with their new e-readers, showing them how to download borrowed (free) books to their devices. In my recent experience, Android devices are the most painless machines for borrowing and loading books.

None of the patrons who needed help had Android devices.

This post-blank I'm typing in won't let me insert a picture. I'll have to edit one in when I get to a desktop computer.

My new year's resolution is to pay better attention to details.
Edit: Dell Streak7 uploaded a pic for me. This is a cat in the ruins of Ephesis.

Like the blonde girl used to say at the end of Hee Haw: That's All!

A book review after a long time missing

Small Steps by Louis Sachar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
*Look ma, no spoilers!*

This is a well-written book. After I read Holes which I thought was amazing and practically perfect, I couldn't dare to read anything else that Sachar had written for fear of disappointment. How could he write anything as perfect as Holes?
Then this book came out, and since it was some of the same characters from Holes, I read it. First of all, it's good; it's worth your time to read. And if it happens that you don't like the magical realism of Holes, this is straight realistic fiction. It does have a plot line that you probably have seen before: well-meaning protagonist gets into trouble and misunderstanding because of a too-clever, shady friend.

It also has elements of striving to meet and be friends with someone normally considered "out of their league."

Again, I enjoyed reading the book, and it didn't feel like a wound for being so much less than Holes as I was afraid some of Sachar's previous books would have been. The conflicts and obstacles faced by the protagonist keep the reader turning the pages. But Small Steps does weigh in as a lesser book than Holes.
View all my reviews