01:33 PM by pilotbob in Reading Recommendations | Book Clubs

Help us select the next book that the Mobile Read book club will read for September 2009.

The nominations will run through Aug 27th.
Voting (new poll thread) will run for 5 days starting Aug 28.

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

September 09
Mystery (can be from anywhere, including our library)

Must be available as an eBook!!!

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 Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot's first case, in which he investigates some strange goings-on in Styles St Mary, and has nothing more than a shattered coffee cup, a splash of candle grease and a bed of begonias for clues.

The Chinese Parrot (Charlie Chan Omnibus) by Biggs
Biggers, Earl Derr: Charlie Chan Omnibus. v4, 22 May 2009
An omnibus edition of the "Charlies Chan" detective stories of Earl Derr Biggers. This volume contains the following books:

1. The House Without a Key
2. The Chinese Parrot
3. Behind that Curtain
4. The Black Camel
5. Charlie Chan Carries On
6. Keeper of the Keys

If your view of Charlie Chan comes from the dozens of very bad, semi-comic movies made in the 1940s and 50s, then read these books and you're in for a pleasant surprise. The books have extremely well-crafted plots ("The Chinese Parrot" is my personal favourite) and are well worth reading.

Lady Molly of Scotland Yard by by Baroness Orczy
Feisty, brilliant, and beautiful; precursor of the sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn, Lady Molly, and her faithful sidekick and admiring chronicler Mary, began appearing in Orczy's entertaining stories years before the first Englishwoman did in fact become an officer of the law.

A Beautiful Blue Death by Charles Finch
Set in England in 1865, Finch's impressive debut introduces an appealing gentleman sleuth, Charles Lenox. When Lady Jane Grey's former servant, Prue Smith, dies in an apparent suicide-by-poisoning, Lady Jane asks Lenox, her closest friend, to investigate. The attractive young maid had been working in the London house of George Barnard, the current director of the Royal Mint. Lenox quickly determines that Smith's death was a homicide, but both Barnard and Scotland Yard resist that conclusion, forcing him to work discreetly. Aided by his Bunter-like butler and friend, Graham, the detective soon identifies a main suspect, only to have that theory shattered by that man's murder. Finch laces his writing with some Wodehousian touches and devises a solution intricate enough to fool most readers. Lovers of quality historical whodunits will hope this is the first in a series.

Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin
Loved it. This was basically 'CSI set in 12th century Cambridge.' The main character is a female doctor who is essentially a coroner. She examines remains and tries to find out what happened to them. She is loaned by Rome (Italy has female doctors in the 12th century) to investigate a series of child murders in Cambridge. I read this earlier in the year and loved it. There is some early subterfuge where she tries to hide that it's her who is the doctor because England doesn't have woman doctors yet, but the core of the story is the mystery itself of who is the bad guy.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers
When advertising executive Victor Dean dies from a fall down the stairs at Pym's Publicity, Lord Peter Wimsey is asked to investigate. It seems that, before he died, Dean had begun a letter to Mr. Pym suggesting some very unethical dealings at the posh London ad agency. Wimsey goes undercover and discovers that Dean was part of the fast crowd at Pym's, a group taken to partying and doing drugs. Wimsey and his brother-in-law, Chief-Inspector Parker, rush to discover who is running London's cocaine trade and how Pym's fits into the picture--all before Wimsey's cover is blown.

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

Once again, our weekly roundup of highlights from the past seven days of MobileRead:

E-Book General - News and Commentary

• Harry Potter Pirated Editions on Kindle Again
• Ebook readers at IFA Berlin, 4-9 September
• Sony PSP Digital Reader Service
• Kindle US Marketshare at 45%, Sony at 30%

E-Book Devices - iRex Digital Reader

• iRex DR100S Software 1.7 Has been Released

Miscellaneous - Announcements

• Meet-up in Phoenix, Arizona (US) Saturday August 29, 2009 at 1pm
• Meet-up at the Edinburgh (Scotland) Book Festival Saturday 22 August!

06:52 PM by RWood in E-Book General | News

In a recent study on e-book readers by the CleantechGroup they estimated that the total US market for e-book readers was slightly more than 1,000,000 units, increasing to 14.4 million in 2012. Of that, 45% were Kindles, 30% Sonys, and the remaining 25% divided among the remaining brands.

The focus of the study was to determine the life cycle impact of electronic book readers on the environment, in short, the carbon footprint. While they concluded that the number of units in use is too small to have any significant impact on the environment, they did conclude that:

... on average, the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use.

The report, authored by Emma Ritch, states: "Any additional years of use result in net carbon savings, equivalent to an average of 168 kg of CO2 per year (the emissions produced in the manufacture and distribution of 22.5 books)."

A summary of their findings can be found here.

02:59 PM by Nate the great in E-Book General | Deals and Resources (No...

Recently I had the freak occurrence of needing new reference books while at the same time actually having the money to buy them. I dug through the pile of borrowed books and noticed that several were published by Apress. (Yes, John, you can have them back now.)

I prefer to buy ebooks instead of paper copies, so naturally I checked the publishers website to see if they were available. I noticed a number of details. Apress is a pretty big technical publisher; if you're a SWE or in a related field look among your tech manuals for a black and yellow cover; it's their trademark.

The good news is that Apress publishes most if not all of their titles as ebooks. The not quite so good news is that the ebooks come in only 2 formats: password protected PDF and Kindle Topaz.

I, for one, don't buy PDFs. I've heard too many horror stories about PDFs mysteriously expiring and leaving the owner with no recourse except to buy the PDF again. I do not think Apress would do that; it's just why I avoid the format entirely.

Like many others, I don't ebooks in Amazon's Topaz format. Due to Amazon's ongoing mismanagement of the Kindle ebooks, I currently trust Amazon about as far as I can throw Jeff Bezos. It's good that the books are available on the Kindle; to be honest I'd like to see how they look on the DX. But I won't spend my money because I can't protect my purchases from Amazon (the DRM can't be removed).

I still bought the books, though, and I got them on Amazon for less than the ebook price. I just wish I could have them as ebooks.

UPDATE: A member pointed me at Apress's Deal of the Day. Each day a differnet title is offered for $9.99. Thanks Gary.

http://www.apress.com/info/dailydeal

09:15 PM by Abecedary in E-Book General | News

Just saw this and thought it might be of interest to some of you. Starting in December, you'll be able to download comics to your PSP. Now, what's interesting to me is the end of the article: "The company further teased that the Digital Reader functionality will eventually extend beyond comics. Nothing else was said, but digital books seem rather obvious." I could imagine some people using their PSPs as ebook readers. After all, the screen is fairly comparable to an iPhone resolution-wise. And integration with the Sony eBookstore would make perfect sense. Also IIRC, there were some mentions from Sony last month that they were shuffling around some divisions, and that they were aiming for better integration between the Vaio, Playstation, and Reader lines. This looks like it's one of the first steps in making that integration a reality.

Sony via ShackNews

01:55 PM by Adam B. in More E-Book Readers | iRex

From the iRex Knowledgebase

iRex Digital Reader 1000S software 1.7 has been released.

There are a few minor, but useful changes.

• Tabbed task manager - With the Tabbed Task Manager you can quickly switch between open files, applications and the last opened folder.
  
• Spanish and Italian language support - Support for Spanish and Italian has been added. You can change your preferred language in the settings menu.
  
• USB Charger detected - The device will now automatically detect when a USB wall charger is connected and it will no longer ask to export to the PC in this case.
  
• Bug fixes
  • Fixed bug where setting the date or time would crash the device
  • The Main LED is now always on when lights are switched off in the settings.
  • Various small bug-fixes

I've found the tab feature alone to be very useful.

Those not using the companion software can download it from here.

10:34 AM by poohbear_nc in E-Book General | News

Apparently badly OCR'd editions of 6 Harry Potter titles are now available again for $19.99 each - now listed as published by Amazon!

[Link deleted by moderator]

These editions have been available since the 16th. Wonder how Amazon will handle this situation? Amazon Discussion board posts indicate CS has been repeatedly notified about it.

10:15 AM by Nate the great in E-Book General | News

The IFA is a consumer electronics trade show held in Berlin every year. Several exhibitors will be bringing ebook readers this year.

Sony will be there (Hall 4.2/Booth 101). Currently only the PRS-505 is listed, so they might not be bringing the recently announced PRS-300 or PRS-600. I'm following up on this and will post new information as I get it.

There will also be a new Netronix distributor. It's a Netherlands based company by the name of Lubix. Based on the product description, they don't appear to have added to default firmware.

And we've been told that PocketBook, the Ukraine based ebook developer, will be attending. They do not appear to be listed as an exhibitor, so I can't guarantee the booth number (Hall 14/Booth 107).

I have 2 reasons to be interested in Pocketbook. The first is that hey developed their own firmware, including a better gui. The other reason is that Andrey, the sales manager, has said that they will be bringing all of their readers, the PocketBook 301, 302, and the 360 (their new 5" reader). Hopefully MR will be able to send someone to take a look at it.