Inspiring Excitement and Passion about History and the Humanities
First off, I had an article in The Digital Reader yesterday about NYPL and their Library Simplified project. If you’re at all into libraries, ebooks, and innovation, they are a good group to be watching. So, this week in books. I just finished Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which I had initially purchased in paperback…
Normally in these Writing about Reading segments I talk about industry specific eBook topics. And on that note, I did buy my ticket to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October today. Nearly 300,000 people and five days of book industry madness. I’m excited! But beyond that, I want to talk about my self publishing journey, which…
Ok, so I didn’t drop off the face of the planet before now. Those of you who follow my personal blog as well will know that I broke my shoulder in Chicago at the end of January. I had a nasty surgery with another fracture during surgery when my bone fragmented when the pins went…
I recently finished After Birth by Eliza Albert, a book that struck me because it was described as being honest about the period after a baby is born, which is always portrayed as being this beautiful joyous angelic time, but in reality is anything but. For a lot of women (myself included) it was a…
In my seemingly never-ending quest to get rid of all my physical books before we move (and buy an ebook of ones worth keeping, but getting rid of the physical book either way) I’ve been going through the stack of books that I’ve kept around which look interesting. One of these was Worldly Goods: A…
This past week I’ve been reading two books, one of which, by the previously-blogged-about-and-Monty-Python-esque Howard of Warwick was a murder mystery set in a monastery near Lincoln, and the other, a fairly scholarly book about King Oswald and Britain around the time of Bede, was mind-numbingly boring, though based on the Amazon reviews, I’m clearly…
It seems that my love affair with most chick lit is coming to a sad and ugly end. Maybe it’s because I’m not 28 and single any longer, but it just doesn’t appeal to me. Most of what I read that passes for contemporary romance is ridiculously unrealistic, trite, sappy, and has one dimensional characters….
Another fantastic Oyster find, I devoured Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the End of the World by Joan Druett this past week. It’s a true story about two simultaneous shipwrecks on Auckland Island in the 1860’s (though they never met each other, being on opposite ends with a mountain range in between them). Auckland Islands is…
When I lived in the UK one of my favorite things to do was go to Cambridge where I’d attend evensong service at King’s, and then go to the Cambridge University Press bookstore on the corner of King’s Parade and the market street, and I’d buy a book that made me look eminently intelligent and…
A few months ago Amazon announced they were also entering the ebook subscription service, which I wrote about previously, by starting Kindle Unlimited. The new service is a direct competitor to Oyster and Scribd, and while I love the promo video, that’s about the only thing I love about it. Here’s the thing; Amazon is quickly…