01:03 AM by pilotbob in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

Help up choose a book as the May 2010 eBook for the Mobile Read Book Club. The poll will be open for 5 days. We will start the discussion thread for this book on May 20th. Select from the following books.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
During the American civil war, five men escape from captivity in the Confederacy by hot air balloon. A storm blows up, and they are swept out to sea, eventually finishing up on a seemingly uninhabited island, with no resources other than a few odds and ends they have in their pockets. The book tells the story of how they manage to survive on the island using only their skills and knowledge.
The island, however, has a deeper mystery. The men are helped by a mysterious unseen agent from time to time, and the sub-plot of the novel is their attempt to discover the truth behind this mystery. The book has a real "sting in the tale" ending; I'd strongly recommend that you DON'T read any detailed summary of it prior to reading it, or it'll spoil the ending for you.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe
The Baron was a real man in the british army who was posted in various places throughout the British empire in the 1700's. When he came home he apparently used to regale all his friends and neighbors with tall tales based on his travels. They seemed to become wilder and and wilder flights of fancy and lies until he becasme legend. ...

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Kim by Rudyard Kipling
Kim is an orphan boy in India in the late 1800s. He becomes involved in an old Lama's search for a sacred river, and in a British spy ring, playing the "Great Game".
"The book presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road."
..........— The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. Ed. Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Brave New World is a novel by Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962), both still in copyright.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
(from the art of manliness):
Robinson Crusoe deals with mastery and morality. It addresses the ability of mankind to master his surroundings through hard work, and patience and faith, which eventually enable him to survive on an unknown island and able to cope with the difficult terrain, less-than-friendly natives and basically every wicked trial that comes his way. The morality addressed in this book is the eponymous protagonist’s rejection of his father’s advice to accept the happiness of the middle class life from which he was born. Against the wishes of his family, he runs off to sea to find adventure. It is not until Crusoe literally recreates a primitive approximation of that middle class life for himself on his island that he is freed.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:
Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

The Odyssey by Homer
In a way or another every western literary work comes from it.

10:53 AM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

B&N have released version 1.3 for the nook. This includes the follow features:

• Basic Web Browser
• Free (yes really) Read in Store
• Chess game
• Soduku game
• Improved loading and page turning speeds

You can find more information and manually d/l the update from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/new-features or just wait for the OTA update.

BOb

01:20 PM by pilotbob in E-Book General | News

This comes from Engadget:

Despite appearances above, this one supposedly has a 5-inch color screen, and packs an FM tuner along with the usual MP3 support, plus a photo viewer, 2GB of internal memory, an SD card slot for expansion, and support for most popular e-book formats (including DRM-enabled ePub books).

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/21/p...%28Engadget%29

From Paradim Shifts press release:

EER-051D: Unlike most e-readers on the market, the 5" EER-051D features full color TFT high resolution display with enhanced contrast panel designed for ease of reading and long battery life. It also features a full gamut e-book format compatibility, including: ANSI , UNICODE TXT ,DOC,PDF,HTML,FB2 ,PDB, EPUB (including DRM encrypted books). In addition the EER-051D is an Mp3 audio and Mp4 video player, has a built in FM radio and photo viewer and has 2GB built in memory plus an SD card memory expansion slot. Proposed MSRP: $129.95

The pic doesn't look like it has a color screen. And the name Delstar seems to be attached to it. Isn't that the reader Walgreens was selling that many people here had problems with?

BOb

01:29 PM by pilotbob in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

Help us select the next book that the Mobile Read book club will read for May 2010.

The nominations will run through Apr 27.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Apr 27.

Book selection category for May per the "official" club opening thread is:

May 2010
Classic (a book in the public domain that is still published and sold today. For example, it can be found as a pbook at Amazon.)

In order for a book to be included in the poll it needs THREE NOMINATIONS (original nomination, a second and a third).

How Does This Work?
The Mobile Read Book Club (MRBC) is an informal club that requires nothing of you. Each month a book is selected by polling. On the last week of that month a discussion thread is started for the book. If you want to participate feel free. There is no need to "join" or sign up. All are welcome.

How Does a Book Get Selected?
Each book that is nominated will be listed in a pool at the end of the nomination period. The book that polls the most votes will be the official selection.

How Many Nominations Can I Make?
Each participant has 3 nominations. You can nominate a new book for consideration or nominate (second, third) one that has already been nominated by another person.

How Do I Nominate a Book?
Please just post a message with your nomination. If you are the FIRST to nominate a book, please try to provide an abstract to the book so others may consider their level of interest.

How Do I Know What Has Been Nominated?
Just follow the thread. This message will be updated with the status of the nominations as often as I can. If one is missed, please just post a message with a multi-quote of the 3 nominations and it will be added to the list ASAP.

When is the Poll?
The poll thread will open at the end of the nomination period, or once there have been 10 books with 3 nominations each. At that time a link to the poll thread will be posted here and this thread will be closed.

The floor is open to nominations.

Official choices each with three nominations:

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
During the American civil war, five men escape from captivity in the Confederacy by hot air balloon. A storm blows up, and they are swept out to sea, eventually finishing up on a seemingly uninhabited island, with no resources other than a few odds and ends they have in their pockets. The book tells the story of how they manage to survive on the island using only their skills and knowledge.
The island, however, has a deeper mystery. The men are helped by a mysterious unseen agent from time to time, and the sub-plot of the novel is their attempt to discover the truth behind this mystery. The book has a real "sting in the tale" ending; I'd strongly recommend that you DON'T read any detailed summary of it prior to reading it, or it'll spoil the ending for you.

Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
When Arthur Clennam returns to England after many years abroad, he takes a kindly interest in Amy Dorrit, his mother’s seamstress, and in the affairs of Amy’s father, William Dorrit, a man of shabby grandeur, long imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. As Arthur soon discovers, the dark shadow of the prison stretches far beyond its walls to affect the lives of many, from the kindly Mr. Pancks, the reluctant rent-collector of Bleeding Heart Yard, and the tipsily garrulous Flora Finching, to Merdle, an unscrupulous financier, and the bureaucratic Barnacles in the Circumlocution Office. A masterly evocation of the state and psychology of imprisonment, Little Dorrit is one of the supreme works of Dickens’s maturity.

The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe
The Baron was a real man in the british army who was posted in various places throughout the British empire in the 1700's. When he came home he apparently used to regale all his friends and neighbors with tall tales based on his travels. They seemed to become wilder and and wilder flights of fancy and lies until he becasme legend. ...

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Copyright ended on september 2008.
Brave New World is a novel by Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurism. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final work, a novel titled Island (1962), both still in copyright.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
(from the art of manliness):
Robinson Crusoe deals with mastery and morality. It addresses the ability of mankind to master his surroundings through hard work, and patience and faith, which eventually enable him to survive on an unknown island and able to cope with the difficult terrain, less-than-friendly natives and basically every wicked trial that comes his way. The morality addressed in this book is the eponymous protagonist’s rejection of his father’s advice to accept the happiness of the middle class life from which he was born. Against the wishes of his family, he runs off to sea to find adventure. It is not until Crusoe literally recreates a primitive approximation of that middle class life for himself on his island that he is freed.

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:
Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever.

The Odyssey by Homer
In a way or another every western literary work comes from it.

07:00 AM by Alexander Turcic in Miscellaneous | Week in Review

Bite-sized MobileRead for your weekend pleasure:

E-Book General - News

• The Book Depository launches Ebookstore
• Sharp unveils new 3D LCD screen
• MobileRead Wiki is 4 years old

E-Book General - General Discussions

• Fiction in the Age of E-Books
• My Entourage Edge Review

E-Book Readers - Apple Devices

• Alice for the iPad

03:41 PM by DaleDe in E-Book General | News

April marks the 4 year anniversary of the MobileRead wiki. Actually it was placed in service on April 10th but there were only some token pages available at that time. Over the next couple of weeks there was quite a bit of work on the site. With the home page taking its final form on April 23rd. You can view the page by looking here. It remained the same for more than a year after that. It looks amazingly like the Main Page today although a few things have been added. No reason to mess with perfection, I guess.

It struggled through the summer and by August 20, 2006 it had 31 pages. Interest was pretty high with 21,133 views and 8 pages had more than 1,000 hits. You can review the history of the site at: Wiki Statistics.
Initially the interest focused on eBook Readers and that continues to be high on the list of topics. As a matter of fact the top ten list of most visited pages has only 2 pages that were not originally written in 2006. The iLiad initially got lots of attention and the last iLiad page only dropped out of top ten a couple of months ago. However lately the wiki interest has favored more generic topics with the exception of the top page, E-book Reader Matrix, which has more than a million hits just on the one page (yes thats 1,000,000). In 2006 there were only 4 devices to compare, the Sony 500, the iLiad, and two Hanlins, but today there is a huge number with more appearing every day.

April 1st this year saw the wiki reach 7,000,000 hits so this anniversary marks the vision of the original posters in making it a valuable resource for this community over the last 4 years. With your help it can continue to be a major resource here at MobileRead. We are adding a million hits about every 3 months these days.

Dale

08:00 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | General Discussions

I'm in the middle of writing a review of the Edge, and I wanted to take a moment and ask for feedback. Is there a topic you'd like me to cover, or a feature that you want to hear about? let me know.

I've written 3 posts so far over on my blog. The first post is a basic intro with the type of questions I'm planning to ask.

The second post covers how the Edge allows you to export pen based annotations.

When using the Edge, you can save the pen based annotations (and the page they’re on) as a PDF. You’re also supposed to be able to send that PDF as an email attachment, but that doesn’t seem to work yet. (Let me fiddle with that some more.)

I’m also pleased with the quality of the inking. BTW, now I understand why the Edge has a large bezel. It gives me extra space to rest my hand while I’m writing. This helps me a lot, because my penmanship was never very good to start with.

The third post is the first part of the body of the review. It started as a comparison of the Edge and a netbook, and went sideways from there. I can't give you a snippet from this one. It would make little sense out of context.

• Entourage Edge Review, pt 0
• The right way to handle notes
• Entourage Edge Review, pt 1

Questions? Thoughts? Mad Ramblings?

10:13 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | General Discussions

crossposted from The Digital Reader

The Atlantic just posted an interview of Paul Theroux, and like most all of his work it’s worth reading at least twice. Here is the intro:

For better or for worse, the age of the e-book is upon us. Analysts estimate Americans will buy on the order of 6 million e-readers this year—and by 2014, an estimated 32 million people will own one. What does the proliferation of Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other e-readers portend for the publishing industry? What does the e-reader mean for writers, for storytelling, for the place of fiction in the cultural landscape? We put these and other questions to Paul Theroux, who published his first Atlantic short story, “Two in the Bush,” in 1968 and his eighth, “Siamese Nights,” this past February, as part of The Atlantic’s Fiction for Kindle project. (These questions will also be the focus of a panel discussion featuring Theroux, Richard Bausch, and other writers at the Luminato festival in Toronto, on June 19.)

continued here