Book club. What are you reading and is it any good?
 

Anybody interested in joining in with a Book Club?

Tell us what you're reading, is it any good, would you recommend it?

Books are so expensive and the library is a bit behind the times so i don't get the new titles. Tell me some good reads... no matter how old. I need a good book....

i'll start... 5* rating to...

Yann Martell - Life of Pi
Cormac McCarthy - the road

I'm reading a couple of different books. I've got three Stargate SG-1 novels on my Kindle that I'm in various stages of reading, and in actual book form, I'm reading Glenn Beck's "Arguing With Idiots". (I also have Glenn Beck's "Common Sense" on my Kindle, but havent read much of it because I had a vision problem when I bought it and havent gotten back to it yet)

I love to read. Next to crocheting and knitting, it's my other favorite hobby. I read all sorts of stuff. History, fiction, fictional historical novels. I draw the line at romance novels tho.

I do read fan fiction on the internet too. I love to read.

I'd never heard of a kindle. i thought wtf ?
but i've looked it up... i want one!! can you download the book onto a disc or computer or is it stuck in the kindle thing? sounds cool.

Besides the initial outlay of cost, do you think the Kindle is expensive to run?

How long do you get on the batteries? How do you download?
Does it plug into your computer and do you use the internet?

I was thinking of getting one for our summer place...we have no electricity and are remote in the wilds. But we can get on the internet at the laundromat.

How much does the Kindle hold?

I am visually challenged, so the Kindle isnt something I could use. I download audio books FOR FREE! from my local library. Most cities have this now. You download it to your computer, and switch it to your MP3 player or IPod. Take it with you in the car, or where ever. i LOVE IT! I have a nice sony Walkman that was pretty cheap. 4 gigs will go a looooong way. Dont worry about buying an 8 gig. Ask your local library if they do audio books on the computer from overdrive media. If you belong to the library its free! if you dont, you can chose the next town up, and pay a small yearly fee to belong to their library.

I am listening to Julie and Julia. A young woman embarks on a journey to learn french cooking, and will cook her way through a cook book in a year. the old fashioned cook book. it was made into a movie with meryl streep. Its a great book.

I am on the wait list for Dan Brown's lost symbol. I cant wait!

This summer on my trip I read "$20 a Gallon" by Chris Steiner. I rate it a 4 on a 1 - 5 rating. The book is what will happen "when" gas hits different prices, each chapter is the dollar equivilent to the price, chapter 7 is what will happen when Gas hit's $7 a gallon. He did lots of research and I recommend the book. One thing I read was that at $18 a gallon Walmart and big box stores go away, we will return to "mom and pop" shops and buy more local.

Now I am reading (ok, I am cheating and listening to the audio book" of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" I just started it but will let you know what I think when I am done.

I have a Kindle 1, so it's not got the same features as what's available now on the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX, but the the K2 and the KDX both have a nice feature where you can have the Kindle read your book to you. (considered an experimental feature, and it's not enabled for all books. Some publishers dont have it activated for their books)

I've had a few vision problems, and love that I can change the font sizes on my Kindle. Didnt help much when I had double vision earlier this year, but it helps at other times.

The way the Kindle downloads is thru the Sprint 3G cellphone network. (which you're not charged for) It takes about a minute to get a book downloaded, depending on where you are. If you're in an area that doesnt get Sprint, you can use your computer to download the book and transfer it to the Kindle with a USB cord. (probably always a good idea to back up your Kindle library on the computer anyways)

My Kindle probably holds more than the Kindle 2 does, since my Kindle has the option of using an SD card inside the Kindle for storage. I think the Kindle 2 holds up to about 1500 books. The KDX has a larger amount of onboard memory, but I dont remember how many books it holds.

I think my Kindle 1, without the card, holds about 1500 books. (I'm no where near that amount of reading material yet) I have a 4gb SD card in mine, so that probably increases what it can hold a lot.

You can download music and audiobooks to the Kindles also. With my Kindle, using headphones is annoying, because they put spot to plug headphones in the bottom of the unit. The K2 has the headphone jack in the proper spot on the top. (my dad has a K2, I should put some music on his and see how it sounds) The music playing ability is pretty basic, you have to use the keyboard and the CTRL button to control the music, but if you're just going to sit and read and listen to music, it's not too bad. Not an iPod, but at least with mine, the sound quality is pretty good thru headphones.

The screen is not backlit, so it's easier to read, not as harsh on the eyes as something backlit, like when I used to read on my PDA screen. The Kindle uses E-Ink technology. It's really cool. But, because it's not backlit, you need light to read it. But, collecting booklights that clip onto books is fun. You should see people on the Kindle forums, collecting covers for their Kindles, purses, skins (decals that you can decorate the Kindles with) It's actually kind of fun if you're into doing stuff like that. I'm one of the people who collect purses and cases for my Kindle.

So far as I know, to read your books, you HAVE to read them on the Kindle. I think there are people that have figured out how to hack the DRM (Digital Rights Management) and unlock the books to read on computers, but I dont know how difficult that is. It would be nice to be able to read the books in other digital/electronic formats too, so maybe someday Amazon will figure out a way for people to put the books on their computers without being too jerky about giving up the DRM (and hopefully the Author's Guild wouldnt be too sucky about it either. They're part of the reason that the Text To Speech function is disabled on the Kindle 2 for a lot of books...they whined and said the TTS was doing "performances". I thought the TTS would be great for people with vision problems. The TTS is one of the biggest reasons I want a Kindle 2 now)

The Kindle has a few limitations, but I still love mine. I still like real books too, but I'm really liking my Kindle right now while my left hand is a bit screwed up by the MS. My Kindle 1 is easy to hold, it's light, (have you read a Harry Potter book lately. Those books are heavy! even if you get the paperbacks! HP isnt available on the Kindle yet...) The Kindle has nice big Next Page buttons that I dont need a lot of coordination to press. It cant read to me like the Kindle 2 can, but it's so comfortable to read. I really do enjoy reading books on my Kindle.

When I go to the gym to walk on the treadmill, I take my Kindle with me. It sits on the little book ledge on the treadmill and I walk and read. I love that I dont have to fumble around with pages blowing around, and I can increase or decrease the text size of the words. It made the tediousness of walking on a treadmill a lot more fun. I cant wait till my MS flare is over so that I can get back to doing that again.

Currently, I am reading my textbooks. That's all the reading I have time for. LOL Actually, my literature book is pretty cool as it is full of short stories (it's an anthology). I love my anthropology book as well.

Before starting classes I read an interesting book - "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life." It was a tough read as it is a translation from French but really good. Pud's you may enjoy it as it has to do with the aboriginals in Australia and how they formed religious life. Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist that studied the aboriginals and wrote the book.

Recently, a friend of mine gave me a copy of "The Scalpel and the Soul" which was written by a neurosurgeon who is now disabled. She said he talks about patients and experiences from the physician's side as well as many other things. Hopefully I will be able to read it soon.

Well, here's the obscurity find of the day:

I just finished reading "The Last of the Titans", which is an autobiography/memoir of Ernestine Schumann-Heink, an Austrian-born opera singer who died in the early thirties.

Before you say "whuh?", Heink was someone whose voice my mother greatly admired as a girl. In fact, I have a letter written to my mother by Heink's secretary/assistant concerning a letter Mom had apparently written to Heink.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I found the book on ebay (written in 1928) and it has been fun to read. I did a little research on Heink and found out that she apparently put a positive "spin" on much of her life story! But I STILL liked it. Maybe I'll have to find a CD or something so I can listen to her sing.

Not that I know anything about opera, unless you count Bugs Bunny singing the Barber of Seville. :D

Not my usual read, but nevertheless. You asked!

My brother has his master's in opera and he and his wife sang with the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. I can't stand opera. LOL

Just for you . . .Give it a little and you will hear her sing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1DD1lNkrcs