Tag: Books Page 2 of 3

Zombies

On March 28, 2014

Why are we so fascinated by Zombies? This morning io9 posed this question and it got me thinking about why I love zombie fiction.

Zombies are so fascinating because they’re a blank slate. Because they have no personalities or characteristics other than undead. They can be anything.

They can slowly shamble towards you. They can run, hopped up on viral powers. They can morph into hideous beasts. They can overwhelm you simply by their relentless pursuit. They never tire. They never stop.

They can be anything that fits the tale to be told. I enjoy zombie fiction and have read numerous books about them. What keeps me coming back is how different they are.

Often times it’s not the difference in zombie, but how the surviving humans relate and interact with them. How much is known about them? How are they viewed? Is it a noble profession to quiet the undead because they too were people once? Are the zombies hideous creatures unleashed from hell as punishment?

Are they walkers? Biters? Zom-Zoms? Z? Zed?

They’re one beast with many names. And because they’re a blank slate they can morph to be anything. That’s what makes them so appealing.

There are tales of zombie love stories. Zombies as pets. Zombies capture the imagination because they are us. They’re relentless molds we fill with our fears, hopes and emotions.

Piles of Digital Books

By Carl

On May 22, 2013

In Observations

I love to read. I fell out of it for a long time in college when I was overwhelmed with underwhelming books and papers to get through. But now that I am past all that, I have found my love for reading again.

I have torn through books on the cheap. I love the Kindle Paperwhite. Despite it’s silly name, the backlit device is perfect for reading in bed, on a beach, at the pool, on a subway train, or anywhere at all. It is light enough to read for hours without even being any heavier than a paperback. The light makes it ideal for reading at night or in low light.

But the Kindle is not the whole story. I also read a lot on my phone. I use the Kindle app for the iPhone. First on my 4, and now on the 5 with a taller screen, the beautiful Kindle letters are crisp and I can take it with me anywhere.

It’s perfect for reading over lunch, or when I can steal a few minutes out of the day to catch up with the character’s lives I have become a part of as I follow their tale.

To feed my reading addiction on a small budget, I use a couple of resources.

Book Gorilla

The first is Book Gorilla. The site is deceptively simple. When you sign up, it asks you to select categories of books you enjoy reading. Then, every day you get a single email from them with a list of discounted or free books from the Kindle store that match the categories you’ve chosen.

It’s not perfect and many days I don’t buy anything, but there have also been days I’ve picked up a half-dozen books for less than $5.00. I look forward to seeing that Book Gorilla email everyday because I never know what to expect.

Lendle

I haven’t used Lendle as much as when I first wrote about it due to the lack of books that are lendable thanks to the publisher’s restrictions. However, it is still my go-to place to see if a book is lendable and to find someone to lend it to me.

The idea is simple. Kindle books can be lent once to anyone. All you need is an email address. Lendle puts those people with books to lend and those seeing to borrow together.

The Kindle Lending Library

The Kindle Lending Library is the only one of the bunch that requires having a physical Kindle. Both Book Gorilla and Lendle will work with the various Amazon Kindle apps, or the web-based reader.

The The Kindle Lending Library works just like a library with some restrictions. First, you must own a physical Kindle device and have an Amazon Prime account. Once you have both, the selection is still small but often many popular books such as the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series are on it.

The Lending Library allowed you to borrow one book at a time and only one book per month. I will often look to see if any of my Book Gorilla suggestions are included if I’m on the fence about purchasing them.

I love GoodReads not so much as a social network to talk about books and to share them with people. But I love it as an introvert’s network. I keep track of [what I have read](http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4729067-carl-holscher?shelf=read). I like to know how many books I have read. I keep a healthy to-read list there and I dutifully mark down each book I’ve gotten through so I can look back and feel proud at all the time I’ve spent reading.

The Amazon eBook Cycle

By Carl

On March 28, 2012

In Observations

It starts out innocently enough. I am reading a story about the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers. The story focuses mainly on the Hunger Games trilogy but also touches on a handful of other books and series.

Many of the books mentioned I have read but I am interested in some of the others so I take the logical progression of search the name, find the Amazon link and add it to my book wish list.

This is where Amazon gets you.

Most of the time, the book is $5 or $10 so I add it to the list for later. I figure when I am on the hunt for something new I’ll pick it up.

Only, today when I found The Knife of Never Letting Go I found the book was $1. Normally, it is $10 but today, it was a single dollar. I don’t know for how long or why but it was.

So I bought it.

This is how Amazon gets you. Ever since the Kindle and their iOS apps reignited my love of reading, I’ve added to my list of books to read. Sometimes I look for sales, other times I use the wonderful book-lending service Lende which I reviewed.

My list of books to read is growing out of control and every week I am adding more and more. I love to read and I love Amazon’s enabling of my reading but they need to stop the madness. I have too many books and there is no sign of stopping.

Is there such a thing as reader’s guilt?

What did you read as a kid?

By Carl

On December 16, 2011

In Observations

Reading through Gwen Bell‘s letter this morning, she talked about reading as a child. She took the conversation to Google+ and asked three questions.

Why did you read what you read as a kid?

Who or what encouraged you to read?

As a kid, was it the quality of the writing or the quantity of it that mattered to you?

The more I thought about it, the more I wrote so I turned it into a post here instead of a comment there.

1. Why did you read what you read as a kid?

Reading was my escape as a kid. We didn’t have cable TV, and to this day can’t get it where I grew up. Books are where I got my adventures and stories. I was always a voracious reader. I would often read a book during classes in school when I was bored or already knew the material.

I got yelled at more than once for having my nose stuck in a book instead of paying attention to the teacher.

I grew up in a small, rural town in northern Virginia. Berryville was a town of about 2,000. I grew up reading because it offered my imagination a place to go and stories to live out which were more exciting than the cows and apple orchards surrounding the farm.

When I was young I read a lot of Encyclopedia Brown. I loved the detective tales. Perhaps it’s because my dad was such a huge Sherlock Holmes fan but I loved those stories.

When I got older I found Roald Dahl. I fell in love with The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, Danny The Champion of the World and of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The Chokey in Matilda and the dream bottles in The BFG captured my imagination growing up. The BFG resonated with me because I was such a big kid. I was always the tallest kid in my school until 8th grade when I had a math teacher who towered at 6’8″ barely eclipsing my 6’4″.

I never read any of Dahl’s adult books which I didn’t even know existed until a couple of years ago. They lack the magic of his children’s work.

I’ve read his autobiography, Boy which was enlightening and gave me more insight into the man with whom I had shared many hours of my childhood.

2. Who or what encouraged you to read?

Both of my parents encouraged me to read. They were both college educated and knew the value of education in life and wanted me to have the same advantages of a good education. It also provided endless hours of entertainment and information.

Part of my love of reading came from both parents having owned and worked in the printing and copying industry.

They founded Circle Graphics then Copy General and with it came my love, borderline addiction, to reading. Much like my father, I am barely able to walk past a poster, sign, pamphlet or anything else with words without stopping to investigate.

3. As a kid, was it the quality of the writing or the quantity of it that mattered to you?

I don’t remember thinking of either of these when I was a kid. I would say quality because while I read a lot, I read specific authors or series.

Once I found Encyclopedia Brown, I read lots of those books. The same went for Roald Dahl. Once I found his books, I read nearly every children’s book he wrote. Many of them I read more than once and in every case was highly disappointed by the movies in every case.

Fun Fact: I never read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory growing up. Sure, I had seen the movies starring Gene Wilder but I hadn’t ever read Dahl’s original until I was in high school.

Sites I Love: Lendle

By Carl

On September 21, 2011

In Observations

When I was young I would tear through books. Then when I got to high school and college I had to do a lot of reading for school which mostly killed my delight in reading. Reading went from a pleasure activity to a rush to keep up.

The Kindle has completely changed the way I read. It reinvigorated my desire to read for fun. It opened my eyes to all the amazing books out there. I don’t even mean Amazon’s Kindle device. I do all my reading on an iPad at home or the iPhone when I used to take the subway to work. Despite owning a Kindle, I haven’t actually seen it since the day we got it, my wife entered her credentials and said, “This is my kindle now! See? It says Annie’s Kindle.”

My renewed love of reading did not come with a budget to match so I turned to Lendle to borrow Kindle books so I don’t have to pay for everything I read. Amazon announcing they would allow lending of Kindle books for two weeks was a partial answer. Just because Amazon was allowing lending of books doesn’t mean I could find people to borrow books from. Lendle has filled that gap in a really simple and elegant way.

What is Lendle?

Lendle is a free book lending service. It is the online equivalent of handing a physical book to a friend.

How do I sign up?

You can join Lendle by signing up via email or using a Facebook or Twitter account.

How much does it cost?

Lendle is free to use. You can sign up and start borrowing books for free. When you lend books, Lendle will actually pay you per book lent a small sum to urge you to continue to lend. There are other book lending sites that require you pay them for the privilege. Lendle is not other book lending sites. Lendle is completely free.

How does it work?

To understand Lendle, you first need to understand Amazon’s Kindle; both the device and applications.

Lendle only works with Amazon’s Kindle eBooks. No Nook, no Sony eReaders, and no plain PDFs are supported.

For the book to be lent through Lendle it has to be a currently available title on the Amazon Kindle Store and the publisher has to have enabled the lending rights to the book.

Most books Amazon sells through the Kindle store are lend able. The only exceptions being books which the publisher or the author have specifically asked not be lend able because they’re still living in the dark ages of technology where the internet is scary.

Amazon will allow you to lend each eBook one time for two weeks. ((This is an Amazon limitation, not Lendle’s.)) While this is nowhere near as good as handing them the physical copy but it attempts to replicate the experience.

Lendle’s role in all this is a middleman putting those who have books to lend together with those who want to borrow books.

How does the Lending work?

When you sign up, you are given a several Borrows. This is the number of times you can request a book from other users. You search Lendle by author, title or keyword for books you want to borrow and click the Borrow button.

When you select a book to Borrow, Lendle looks at the list of people who have made the book available to lend and will email the borrow request to a number of people. The Lender will click a link in the email taking them to an Amazon page to lend out the book.

They complete the lend and the book is sent to the Borrower’s account on Amazon. The borrower is then notified by email the book has arrived and can download it to their Kindle, or a Kindle application running on any device. ((Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android device, or Amazon’s own Cloud Reader.))

Then in two weeks, when the loan has ended you will receive an email stating the loan is over and the book has been returned to your library and the Borrower will receive notice the book is no longer available to read. The entire process is completely painless.

How do I add my eBooks to Lendle?

Adding books to Lendle is as simple as searching the title, author or keyword of the book and clicking I Own it. The book is then added to your library. As a perk, you get additional Borrow requests for making more books available. In addition to encouraging growth by handing out more Borrow requests Lendle also pays you for each successful lend.

Wait, I can make money just by lending?

Yes. Lendle Pays You To Lend Books!

The money you earn is based on the value of the book lent. In addition to earning money when you lend, the site is completely free to use. Whereas some other sites will try to make you pay to get books lent to you, Lendle lets you join and borrow books for free.

What are you waiting for?

No really, why aren’t you at Lendle signing up?
Go to Lendle.me and you would be so kind, use my referral code NDI3KLZP. I get more Borrow requests, no cold hard cash or anything but it also adds you as my friend. And I like to think of us as friends.