Watch this space....

Ask you local library about ebook loans. An easy way to keep a reading "budget" while playing with your new Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony or Kobo reader.


From Library Journal reporting on BEA -- annual Book Industry Convention


Growth in demand just beginning
All four panelists described an exponential upward demand for ebooks. For example, Michael Colford, the Boston Public Library's director of resource services and information technology, said he expects the library's ebook budget to triple next year (FY12) from its current total of $105,000 (about 5 percent of the library's materials budget).

Current Events in depth

I love being able to get the right book (in most cases) instantly on my iPad when I have need background about current events, such as the current crisis in Japan.

I realized I knew Japanese history only vaguely, and very little about how they had gone from isolation to being an economic powerhouse so quickly. I found a wonderful overview, from pre-history to the present, in James Huffman's JAPAN IN WORLD HISTORY (Oxford University Press). Another book I have sampled but not read yet is Mary Mycio's WORMWOOD FOREST, about her many return journeys to Chernobyl after the disaster there.

By the way, if you have never read Ishiguro's ARTIST OF THE FLOATING WORLD, his short first novel about an aging artist in Hiroshima after the war, it is still my favorite of his many good books, even though it's not an ebook yet. I keep pushing that "I want to read this on a Kindle/Nook" button for backlist books by favorite authors, and I hope we'll see more and more of them reissued.

I've been snow shoeing to survive lately.....

Sorry for the hiatus. But I will be back soon with a lot of books to recommend.

Meanwhile, given this winter weather, you might want to go back to the best account of Scott and Amundsen's race to the South Pole, THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH by Roland Huntford.  And ask Random House to release an eBook, while you're ordering the paperback.