I’m currently in the middle of The New Space Opera but I will be another couple of days before I finish it. It seems that I read short stories much slower than I do novels. The first few stories are confusing me, though I have liked a couple. In lieu of detailed thoughts for the Sunday Salon, I will post up my newly acquired books since the last Piling On.
I’ve actually been pretty good. I have only acquired three physical books.
- The New Space Opera / Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, editors. EOS had a contest for some other book. I assume I didn’t win, but they sent me this out of their promo inventory. A couple of the stories were nominated for Hugo awards, so I figured why not delve right in.
- The Red Pony / John Steinbeck. One from the Michael’s Books free book pile.
- Volk’s Shadow / Brent Ghelfi (ARC). Offered to Sunday Salon participants, I volunteered. My only trepidation is that this is part of a series. I don’t usually jump in at book two or later. So when I get to it, part of my thoughts will be on whether it works well that way.
However, good as I have been with regard to paper books, I have been piling on in the electronic books. I finally received my O.L.P.C. XO Laptop a few weeks ago. It has an e-book mode
, where I can flip the screen over so that it lies flat. I’ll have an editorial review of my first real experience e-book reading in a day or two.
- Grey / Jon Armstrong. Released as a PDF (and in several other formats) by Night Shade Books to promote Armstrong’s nomination for the Campbell Award. I reviewed Grey last week, and it just wasn’t my bag.
- God’s Debris / Scott Adams.
- Infected / Scott Sigler.
- Lord of the Isles / David Drake. Part of Tor’s Watch the Skies program.
- Through Wolf’s Eyes / Jane Lindskold. Also part of Watch the Skies.
- Fallen Angels / Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn. Free download from Baen.
- The Mountains of Mourning / Lois McMaster Bujold. Free download from Baen.
- Primary Inversion / Catherine Asaro. Free download from Baen.
- The Disunited States of America / Harry Turtledove. Watch the Skies.
Reading through some older feed entries, I realized that EOS was giving away some e-books as well. I missed that the first time around. The first couple of books were no longer available, but they did have Raymond Feist’s Flight of the Nighthawks still up. So I selected Adobe format and downloaded. Turns out it is not Adobe PDF. It is Adobe Digital Editions, despite using the PDF logo and having a PDF extension. HarperCollins, EOS’ owner, wants everything all DRMed up tight. And the Adobe Reader doesn’t support tight DRM apparently, so they’ve switched to this other format. Philosophically, I differ with that, but I will play along. But what I don’t like is the bait-and-switch that EOS pulled. Don’t label it PDF if it’s not PDF. I intend to read all my ebooks on my O.L.P.C., which means I need PDF, HTML or another format that has a lightweight application. Digital Editions is built on Adobe Flash, which is decidedly not light weight. It also is crap for reading features compared to their PDF reader. I’ll grab the next book in Microsoft Reader or Mobipocket format (yes, I know those aren’t particularly Linux friendly formats either), but out of protest I will not be reading or reviewing Flight of the Nighthawks. Get your labeling right, HarperCollins.
Image of XO Laptop by O.L.P.C. is used under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
