Light My Kindle

The best book I’ve read all year has been Scott Sigler’s Infected (which I reviewed). It was fast-paced, immensely entertaining, and extremely well-written. I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat.

Needless to say I was thrilled to see Sigler mentioned on Amazon’s Official Kindle Blog alongside Stephen King, my favorite author.

Check out the full post, which is actually about teaching children that authors can be role models too.

I’m a huge Stephen King fan (as any casual reader of this site knows), so I was thrilled to see that his new collection of short stories, Just After Sunset, is available for pre-order on the Kindle.

I didn’t even know it was possible to pre-order Kindle books. After all, they don’t get shipped. I think it’s fantastic, though, that you can pre-order a Kindle book and have it arrive the day it’s available. I will definitely be on the lookout for more Kindle books to pre-order now that I know.

Amazon’s description reads:

Just After Sunset-call it dusk, call it twilight, it’s a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It’s the perfect time for Stephen King.

Click here to pre-order Just After Sunset for your Kindle. It’s also available for pre-order in hardcover. Both will be available on November 11, 2008.

Horror author Stephen King celebrates his sixty-first birthday today. As he is my absolute favorite author, this is almost a holiday for me.

It’s an interesting coincidence because both my husband and I are both currently reading King novels. He’s reading Hearts in Atlantis and I’m reading Lisey’s Story

So, happy birthday Mr. King. And many more…

There was a time when I was incapable of walking into a Barnes & Noble without spending $50. I loved to wander the aisles and find books I never would have sought out on my own. It’s how I started reading Christopher Moore’s books (the cover of You Suck drew me in like a moth to a flame). But things started to change…

My betrayal of Barnes & Noble started the day the Kindle was announced. It was love at first sight. Even the advertisement with the Kindle leaning next to a stack of books seemed aimed directly at me. Not only did the Kindle look sleek and super-gadgety next to the stack of enormous books, but I had just purchased two of those books at Barnes & Noble (Freakonomics and Lisey’s Story). I have yet to read one of them (Lisey’s Story) because of its ridiculous weight. I can’t read it on the train because it weighs more than the rest of the things in my bag combined. I can’t read it while lounging on the couch because I just don’t have the arm strength to hold that giant book over my head for more than fifteen minutes.

The mind-cheating continued as I lusted after the sold-out Kindle. I desperately wanted to drop $400 and wait my turn in line to get one. But I was saving for a wedding, and had another gadget to buy for my husband-to-be as a wedding present (a Canon Rebel XTi, if you must know). Luckily, he noticed my gadget lust, despite frequent trips to Barnes & Noble. He bought me a Kindle for a wedding gift. And while it was still sold out, the Kindle arrived promptly when we got back from our honeymoon.

The unboxing was a beautiful thing. Oh look! It comes in a fake book! How clever! Oooh…a leather cover. And look at that screen! Have you ever seen anything like it?

As I said, it was love at first sight.

Within minutes I had connected the Kindle to my Amazon account and had purchased my first Kindle book – On Writing by Stephen King (read my review here). I had been meaning to read this book for years, and within seconds I owned it, and I hadn’t even put my shoes on. I could tell the Kindle and I were going to be friends.

But what of my former love, Barnes & Noble? She didn’t sell Kindle books. After owning the Kindle for a couple of months, I had worked out this great system where I was constantly reading one book on the Kindle and one “real” book (to get through the stacks of books I had purchased at Barnes & Noble over the past couple of years, and never got around to reading). It was working so well…until a few days ago.

I was in Barnes & Noble spending a gift card I received for my birthday (everyone knows of my love affair with B&N). I had been thinking of picking up Jesse Kellerman’s new book, since I’m a big fan of his dad’s work. But when I saw the $24.99 price tag (which I wouldn’t have hesitated paying pre-Kindle), I immediately said to my husband, “It’ll only be $10 on the Kindle” and I put it back on the shelf. Worse, if I had been carrying my Kindle in my bag, as I usually do, I would have been able to purchase it, or add it to my Saved For Later list before even leaving the store.

So, while my love for Barnes & Noble hasn’t dimmed – I still go there and roam the aisles, or sit in the attached Starbucks (albeit reading my Kindle), and I even still buy the occasional book there – my Kindle has become my first love in books. It brings the bookstore to me, charges me less, and lets me carry all my books, magazines, and newspapers in one small 10 ounce package.

I’m not generally a non-fiction reader. I much prefer crime thrillers and Stephen King novels, and the occasional biography (which, let’s face it, isn’t always 100% non-fiction). However, when I started to read 35 Miles From Shore, I was immediately sucked in. The book tells the story of the only recorded open water ditching of a commercial jet. ALM Flight 980 landed in the waters of the Caribbean after running out of fuel. The author takes an interesting approach in not only describing the details of the doomed flight and its passengers, but also giving background on the chain of events that led up to the tragedy. Not only does it make for a more interesting story, but it gave the book a uniquely human element that I would imagine isn’t often present in books about disasters.

The book opens by explaining that most accidents aren’t a freak occurrence but rather the end of an unfortunate chain of events. In the case of ALM Flight 980, this is especially true. The author covers the choices made by the airlines, the crew, and the air traffic controllers on the ground that added to the inevitable end result. From the secondary fuel tank that was never added to the plane to the last second decision to head for their alternate landing destination due to bad weather, the author painstakingly researched every available detail about the flight and the events leading to the disaster.

In the process of revealing all the events that may or may not have contributed to the crash, we learn about all the people involved. We learn about the passengers, the crew, and even the rescuers. Reading about why each passenger was on the flight (last vacation before having a baby, returning home, business, etc.) really brought the story to life. Knowing that the author interviewed most of these people directly reminds the reader that this tragic story really happened.

One note about the endnotes in the Kindle version of the book – they work wonderfully. Typically when you read a book with annotations, they are either at the bottom of the page or at the end of the book. I typically dislike reading books where the notes are at the end because that means I have to stop reading and find the right annotation at the back of the book. However, in 35 Miles From Shore, all you have to do is use the scroll wheel to click on the line with the number and then choose the number from the menu. It takes you directly to the appropriate annotation, and simply hitting the back button brings you back to your place in the book. The only problem I found with this – and it’s a small one – is that the asterisk-marked pieces often land in the middle of paragraphs. However, once you’ve realized this, it’s easier to read around them.

I truly enjoyed the book. It was a fast read, unbelievably well-researched, and extremely interesting. Even if you’re not much of a non-fiction reader, this is an entertaining book that can capture your attention just as easily as a novel.

You can get 35 Miles From Shore in a Kindle version (with the fancy annotation stuff built in), or in a paperback version.

Julia Keller of The Chicago Tribune wrote a fantastic article about the connection readers feel with books, and why it’s so hard to abandon an unfinished book. She points out that turning off a TV show, walking out of a movie theater, and walking out of a play somehow make you feel less guilty than abandoning a book you just can’t get into.

I know exactly what she means. I have been trying to get into The Ruins on and off for about four months now. I never finished reading Stephen King’s The Stand because I read it when I was eleven-years-old and I was bored. I also never finished King’s short story The Sun Dog (from Four Past Midnight) because I was eleven-years-old and too scared to turn the next page. I never finished The Great Gatsby, even though it was assigned for my tenth-grade English class. And I have a biography of Dave Grohl (lead singer of Foo Fighters) that I put down three years ago and never bothered to pick back up.

All of them make me feel guilty. The author has her own list included in the article, and I’d bet every avid reader has a similar list of books they just couldn’t finish. She points out,

To abandon a book feels all wrong. If you do it, you look around warily, half-expecting to see your middle-school English teacher in the corner, giving you a gravely disappointed glare.

That’s only the half of it, really. While you do feel guilty in that “I didn’t do my homework” kind of way, not being able to finish a book has a stronger effect, at least on me. You know that elated feeling you get when you finish a good book? I get the exact opposite when I think of the books I never finished - I feel like I let myself down. The author seems to feel similarly:

Certain books just don’t grab you. So you let them go. But they never really go away, those cast-aside books, because their forlorn covers haunt your sleep. And sometimes, late at night, you could swear you hear them offering a sad little plea: “Can’t we try it just one more time?”

I have a hope that the Try a Sample feature of the Kindle Store will prevent me from starting books I don’t want to finish. At least I’ll be able to sample the writer’s style and a little of the story before spending money on a book.

You can read the entire article (which mentions the Kindle) on ChicagoTribune.com.

Black House is the sequel to one of my favorite Stephen King novels – The Talisman. The Talisman follows the story of a young boy named Jack who is on a very dangerous and very important mission. (You can read my review of The Talisman here.) Black House follows the adult Jack, but takes a while to get there.

The book starts extremely slowly. It introduces us to seemingly unimportant characters for several chapters before revealing Jack as an adult. While it took too long to get there, I’m quite pleased with the fact that Travelin’ Jack grew up to be an extremely talented police detective.

When we find him, the retired Jack is living in a small town where there have been a series of horrific murders. He lives in a beautiful house next door to a blind man with whom he has become very close friends. He has been trying to stay out of the murder investigation, but the town is desperate for help and Jack starts to get involved.

I liked the book, but I didn’t love it. There was too much going on, too many characters, and not enough time spent in The Territories. The magic of the first novel was that we were taken on a journey through a child’s innocent eyes – everything was magnified thanks to his youth. The few journeys we take to The Territories with the adult Jack has them appearing as a very matter-of-fact place. There was no magic in it this time.

I don’t think it was a waste of time, but I certainly don’t think it was King’s best novel. I enjoyed the interactions between Jack and his friend Henry, and I loved the Thunder Five (the motorcycle gang that helps Jack). The other characters, however, weren’t all that compelling. Even the bad guy, who is usually just as interesting as the good guys in King’s books, wasn’t interesting at all.

I’d recommend reading it since King and Straub have hinted at a third installment in the story of Jack Sawyer. It’s not a fast-paced read, and it’s not the best novel you’ll ever read, but it’s worth slogging through to read about Jack Sawyer’s future.

Get it for your Kindle.

CNet News reports that you can get three free Stephen King novels for your Kindle for jumping through only a few hoops. Carrie, The Shining, and Night Shift are all available on Fictionwise, and you can get them for free by depositing money into a Micropay account. Once the money is in your account, buy those three books (or only one or two of them), and the money will be automatically refunded. Of course, the catch is that you then need to use that money to buy other e-books on Fictionwise, or you lose it.

As someone who has filled my Kindle with a high percentage of Stephen King books, this is a very tempting offer. Judging from the Fictionwise site, this is a promotion they run often, with different authors and genres, so you should check back occasionally to see if they feature your favorite author.

As a Stephen King fan, I was surprised to find I had never read his 1980 novella The Mist. Then again, it was published four years before I was born. I read it over a couple of days while visiting my parents, and I spent a few nights reading into the wee hours trying to finish this terrifying tale.

The novella starts innocently enough with a thunderstorm on a lake in Maine. After the storm, the residents discover the power has been knocked out, several trees have fallen, and there’s a thick mist moving in over the lake. David Drayton and his son set out to pick up some groceries and they let their neighbor Brent Norton tag along despite their heated disagreements in the past.

The store is very crowded, as one might expect, and everyone gets set on edge when a man comes running through the parking lot shouting that there are things in the mist and they attacked someone out there. His nose is bloodied and he insists they shut the doors of the store. The people do so, as the thick mist settles around the store. Shortly after there’s a loud event, like an earthquake, that shakes the store and furthers the feelings of unease in the store.

This being a supernatural thriller, the creatures in the mist start to show themselves quickly. The creatures are quite terrifying, especially since there are so many different kinds of them. There’s the tentacle creature that grabs Norm right at the beginning. Plus huge bug-type things, huge bird-type things, and a monster whose size would put a blue whale to shame.

The novella hits on interesting territory by not only relying on the supernatural to scare the reader and the characters. The element of mob mentality is brought into the story through the character of Mrs. Carmody. Mrs. Carmody is known about town as a little bit of a crazy, and when the creatures begin appearing through the mist she starts to preach about the wrath of God. She tells the people that the creatures are a sign of end-times and that they must repent for their sins. Her crazy-babble starts to draw more people to her as the days pass and more people die. Her little mob shows just how far people will go when confined and helpless.

The Mist was a quick read, but a scary one. The paranoia and constant on-edgeness I felt while reading it was seriously intense. As someone who is prone to nightmares (I know, I probably shouldn’t read Stephen King before bed), this novella had me on edge waiting to see what would happen to David and his young son. I highly recommend the novella to fans of supernatural horror. I also recommend reading it before checking out the recent movie adaptation starring Thomas Jane. The movie is mostly faithful to the novella and actually complements it quite nicely.

You can get it for your Kindle or in paperback.

According to a WENN report from this morning, there are plans in the works to introduce an age-based rating system for books as there is for movies, TV, and video games.

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy that the recent move The Golden Compass was based on, is fighting the plans. He says the rating system would be damaging to young readers.

I happen to agree. As someone who skipped straight from the kid-friendly Goosebumps series to the teen series Fear Street when I was only about 8- or 9-years-old, and then skipped right up to Stephen King novels at eleven, I believe my reading skills would have suffered if I was prevented from reading the books I chose. Granted, I pulled most of these books from my mother’s bookshelf or the library with her permission, but my point still stands. It’s hard enough to get children interested in reading in the first place. Preventing them access to certain content would only make things worse.

For example, what rating do you suppose the first Harry Potter novel would have had? Safe for all ages? How about the seventh Harry Potter novel? Surely it would at least get a PG-13-equivalent. How many of the devoted Harry Potter fans would be prevented from reading the last few installments until they were older?

Worse, what if this ratings system were to be applied to non-fiction books as well? Would children be prevented from learning about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II because the content is too mature?

As an avid reader, I feel that a ratings system for books would be as bad as the banned books list we see every year. Of course young kids should read certain content (and sometimes I think I shouldn’t have been reading King novels at such an early age, but I turned out okay), but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the library or the local Barnes & Noble to police what kids are reading.

What do you think - should publishers put ratings on books? Should there be laws that require bookstores and libraries to comply?