Back to Blogging...... a Paperless Reader

I can't believe how much time has slipped by since my last blog post. The summer has passed quickly by, and I did manage to read several of the books on my Summer Wish List as I had previously posted. So here I am well into Autumn and finally returning to my blog.
One of the things that has captured my attention in the last few months was my birthday present, a Sony e-reader. I had wanted an e-reader for quite some time and since Kindle is so slow coming to Canada, I decided on the Sony PRS 505 model. Basically, I've gone completely paperless in my reading. The reader weighs about 9 oz and is enclosed in a leather cover to simulate a "book". The screen has several layers of grayscale technology and is essentially "virtual paper". There are various sizes of fonts and it did take me awhile to move away from large to smaller font sizes. There is no computer glare phenomenon with this device and I find that I read much faster because with a quick press/or toggle of a button, the page turns. The battery is good for about 7000 page turns. You can download text in pdf, lit form and the Sony files convert to lrf files. I have downloaded a converter that takes a file format such as .lit and converts it to .lrf and sends the file directly to my reader. I can purchase books through the online Sony book store and there are several sites where books can be shared or borrowed. Sony has reached an agreement with Google and over 500 000 texts in the public domain are available free online. (These are similar to Project Gutenberg files - so all the great classics are readily available. I've now got all my favourite Dickens and Austen novels on my reader.) My reader has 162 novels on the actual hard drive and then there are 2 slots for memory cards. I'm using one 2G card right now and have stored 1000 novels on this card and have 1.5G remaining. How amazing is that to have my own personal library at my disposal! I don't know if I'll ever read these 1162 novels, but to have the choice at my fingertips, wow! Its great for the cottage and works well out in the sunlight. Instead of carting a box of books with me in the boat, I bring my reader and my charger and I'm set. I also take it with me when I travel as it takes up such a small amount of space in my overnight bag. I can also download many work papers in pdf form to read while I am away. Ok, I've never done this, but its nice the option is available for me. There is the option to download my RSS feeds as well, but I primarily use this for my personal reading. I prefer to use my google reader on my PC for RSS, because then I can not only read these, but link to subsequent pages and view videos and pods, etc.
And speaking about personal reading, a few comments about Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. I read this with perhaps too much anticipation and felt really let down. I enjoyed the first two Robert Langdon stories, especially Angels and Demons and have to say that this third installment left me disappointed. Was it because of the location? Washington and Freemasons? I loved the European settings of the first two books. The Louvre, Paris, Rome, the Vatican... great history, very romantic. Maybe I've watched National Treasure one too many times, but I felt like I'd heard the storyline before. For me, very anticlimatic.
The other book that I'd been hyped up about was Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. Without being a spoiler, ewww! The leg bit put me right over the top. I also found the erratic time traveling confusing, trying to keep straight the events of past, present and future. The Clare/Henry age difference, nude man, young girl scenario was a bit creepy for me. Henry was a downer of a character all the way through, and although I liked Clare, she was quite the downer enabler. I felt that I expended so much energy to get through this book. Am I getting too picky?
I'm not finished with the books on my Summer Wish List, but I'm wondering if by creating this list, through my anticipation of their greatness, I've set my expectations too high?
I really want to be swept away by a truly great book. Any suggestions?

More Books to Read.....Need More Time

My summer reading list continues to grow. I believe by the time July comes I will have established a list worthy of many summers. I do read every day, but often can only squeeze in about 30 minutes between work, kids activities, my course work, and the crazy amount of time that I am glued to my computer. I love summer reading because I can languish in a story for undetermined amounts of time. Rainy evenings when the power goes out and we light so many candles (husband never impressed - major fire hazard - I let him be keeper of the flames) that we continue reading late into the night (husband also says this ruins eyesight, I've wanted glasses forever, but to date, eyesight still better than 20/20).

Favourite summer reading memories:

As a child, I spent my summers at a family cottage about a half hour from our home. The cottage is nestled on an embankment overlooking Lake Erie. There was a tiny community library where I obtained lending privileges and took out as many Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon books as my heart desired. These were the days of suncots that were as thick as a mattress, baby oil and not sunscreen, jumping from the front to the back seat on long car drives - if you were small enough you got up into the back window to make faces at passengers in the car behind you, visiting the corner store to buy penny candy -remember Mojo's?, playing at the beach and someone always getting scraped by that horrid metal protrusion on the tractor tire inner tube that like 6 cousins fit on at a time, simple card games like Hearts and War, sleeping on a veranda, where we thought it was exotic that our Mom's took our clothes to a Laundry Mat and we could get an ice cream at the Dairy Bar and the height of this sophistication extended to driving a ways out of town to the Kentucky Fried Chicken!!!!!!!!!!!! to purchase a Sunday buffet... the salads, the whole loaf of bread (remember that), everything but the white plastic Colonel Sanders bank. These were days that although I was outside from sun-up to sun-down, my books were never out of reach. I have to admit that I probably returned them to the library a little worse for the wear, maybe a bit dusty, grainy with sand, a splotch of baby oil, a dab of ketchup, but no books were more beloved than these.

So, today I will purchase yet another lottery ticket with a big dream of capturing that endless summer where everyday includes a good book. Wish me luck!

Here are my new finds:

In "Leaving India," Minal Hajratwala recounts her

family's journey to five continents.

What do you do when you meet the love of your life when you're six years old? And he's 36, but he's really only eight years older than you are? If you're Clare Abshire, you wait for each of his visits throughout the years until you meet him in real time.

Summer Reading List: First Ten Choices

Here is a list of the books I hope to read this summer.

1. The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
2. Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
3. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
4. Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards
5. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
6. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
7. Last Summer of You and Me by Mary Ann Brashares
8. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
9. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waught
10. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens