Yay!

So, I have had a long dearth of reading for several years now. I've skimmed books, even maybe finished a few, but nothing impressive. I find my attention has been very short--probably a consequence of my ADHD and scrolling through the internet. So this year, I've decided I want to get into it again, as I have been a librarian who no longer reads. On Goodreads, I've joined the 2024 Reading Challenge in an attempt to read more. I set a reasonable goal, of 36 books, to try for.

I am happy to report I'm ahead of schedule, having read seven books so far this year. They're all non-fiction (I'm going to shoot for both fiction and non-fiction, print/e-books, and audiobooks. We'll see how it goes.)

Here's what I have read so far:

1. Shoulder Treatment: Guide To Recover From Shoulder Surgery: Typical Shoulder Surgery Recovery Timeline by Jaime Knecht
2. An Adult with an Autism Diagnosis: A Guide for the Newly Diagnosed by Gillan Drew
3. Very Late Diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome by Philip Wylie
4. The Shoulder Patients' Handbook: The Rotator Cuff Tear Guide by Paul B. Roache
5. How to Recover from Shoulder Surgery: Safe, Effective Recovery: A Physiotherapist Shares 40 Years Experience Rehabilitating Shoulders by Bruce Paulik
6. The Ultimate Guide for Shoulder Surgery Recovery: Your Complete Guide to Recovery, Tips, Strategies, Diet and Essential Must-haves to Speed Up Shoulder Surgery Recovery Time by Morgan Gray
7. Shoulder Surgery Recovery: Over 100 Tips and Strategies to Make it Much Easier by Anne Talmage Cooksey

Currently reading:

1. Looking After Your Autistic Self  by Niamh Garvey
2. Autism and Asperger Syndrome in Adults by Luke Beardon
3. Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes
4. Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna (audiobook) by Edith Sheffer
5. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

How about you?

Do You Read Faster On An E-Reader Or A Physical Book?

I'm not sure faster is necessarily 'better', though. I mainly read on my Kindle Scribe, but I don't always have the comprehension I have from an actual book. I tend to skip over words, I've noticed, although that may be my attention-deficit issues. But it seems it happens more with an e-reader than physical format. On the other hand, I can try techniques such bionic font and others in the hopes of counteracting that very problem, something I can't do with the physical book.

The other night

because it seemed appropriate, I downloaded Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year on Kindle, first published in 1722 and covering the great bubonic plague of 1665.

Up

I won't say early, because compared to the weekdays I've actually slept in, getting up right at 9 am. But in the 30 minutes that I've been up, I've started a load of laundry, started a loaf of bread making in the bread machine, gone out to the car to get some Diet Sunkist from my car, nicely chilled, and am now caffeinating. It's why I drink the stuff--I don't care for colas that much, preferring fruit flavour, but it's the only orange soda I've found with caffeine. That said, I know soda, in general, is not so good for me, particularly with artificial sweeteners (Diet Sunkist uses aspartame). So I have been exploring other options. I don't care for coffee or black tea. I've tried Mio Energy and Crystal Light Energy but they are artificially sweetened as well. So I'm still looking. And yes, I like water, but I need a little caffeine to get through the day or I'm like a zombie.

Also since getting up, I've also taken my insulin and Byetta (but not the oral meds yet--I'm at the end of my pill container and need to fill it up. I need caffeine before I do that, or I tend to put them in the wrong slot or even drop them, which is not good when you have cats, particularly a kitten, who is fascinated by all sorts of things dropping to the floor.

I did splurge just a bit yesterday, buying a Kindle book of a regular book that I have out from the library. It is called Orchid Modern: Living & Designing with the World's Most Elegant Houseplants By Marc Hachadourian, the curator of the Orchid Collection at the New York Botanical Garden. It's a lovely book, dealing with the history of orchid collecting, the different species, plant care, creating decorative projects like terrariums, creating a good environment for the orchids, etc., all in one substantial book and generously and beautifully illustrated. I really liked looking through it, but when it came to reading--and he has a good writing style--I found I was impeded by the relatively small typescript, no doubt small to leave room for the lovely pictures of orchids. So I got the Kindle book because while on my e-reader it would have been wasted, I normally read my books on my tablet now (which is not a Fire, but I use the Kindle application on an Android tablet. I say splurge because it was $10.99 and I don't have much money, and I am trying to get tyres soon. But it is such a lovely book. What can I say, orchids have a long history of causing mania, why should books about them be any different? Anyway, this way I can increase the text size to see what I'm reading. My glasses do correct to 20/20 both in general and with the bifocal, but the small print is still harder to focus upon. This, I think, is the most useful quality of e-books, that they can be manipulated in terms of settings so that anyone can read them who would normally have issues due to age or disability, and most books, particularly non-fiction ones, are not given Large Print editions. Also, you can blow-up images when needed on the tablet, something that the Kindle e-reader does not do hardly at all. Incidentally, I used to keep my Chrome settings at 95% and I knocked up the text and the rest up to a little above 100%. It helps immensely. No sense in getting eyestrain. I think the presbyopia is part of my hiatus from enjoying reading, so anything I can do to read more books is worth it. And I can also read on my laptop, which is a low-end 2-in-1 that folds back to be a very large tablet-like screen when you change to tablet mode and I have the Kindle application on it, as well.

Alright, I'm going to go get some breakfast. I'll probably write some more before I start my Sunday chores proper (although laundry is something I do on Sunday, that's for me, not the household, generally).

So, I've obviously been amiss at writing/blogging

I've been pretty much coming home, having a great meal, and relaxing a bit before bed, maybe listening to music, rather than getting on the computer. Sorry about that. But I've had to recharge well because we've had a lot (and I mean a lot) of patients come in this week, and it's been very, very busy. Today, though, I had an appointment and so I left at 1:30 pm. After the appointment, I made a couple of stops, came home, spent quite some time talking with a neighbour who is a co-worker's cousin and trying to organise a neighbourhood watch, and she told me about a meeting they're having on Monday nearby. Then I went in, ate a little something, and by 5 pm I was headed out to an appointment with my insurance agent, who likes his representatives to see clients at least once a year. That went well, I got a little refrigerator magnet out of it :), and then I stopped by the library to pick up a book I put on hold for YKWIA along with a couple for me.

Last night while looking up the said book on the library website, it reminded me to try using an application on my phone that they have partnered with, Libby, by Overdrive, which is a sort of one-stop shop for library e-Books and audiobooks. It was then that I discovered that there was one more, last, instalment of my beloved Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters, called The Painted Queen. It had been finished by another writer, I presume, as the credits are for both Peters and her. So I borrowed it in Kindle format. Here's hoping I have some time over the next two weeks to read it. Of course, I have all the others, mostly in paperback but the later ones are in hardback. So eventually I'll buy one.

Okay, I know it hasn't been exciting, but I really should turn in for bed. However, I may have some good news to share in the next few days, so be sure to stay tuned. Good night!

Before I was so rudely interrupted

I was going to write about two books I got when I stopped in at the library this morning shortly before picking up YKWIA for an appointment. One is A Field Guide to American Houses: the Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America's Domestic Architecture by Virginia Savage McAlester, which has all sorts of information on elements of house structures and also various styles and their origin. It's hefty. I saw the paperback version in the Barnes & Noble yesterday and made a note to check out the library for it. Next to it was Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets, by Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman. I have the Weird Kentucky book (I got it at a book fair years ago), but had never actually read the one for the United States. So I checked that out. While I'm waiting for my friend to get out of his appointment, I'll go check out the e-book I couldn't last night, if it's still available. And then I'll read for awhile till I get the phone call to come.

I really dislike

that the catalogue and any sort of e-book service, etc., goes down every night at midnight for the Lexington Public Library. I realise that maintenance has to be done sometime, but why not the wee hours of the morning, rather than a time when many of us night owls are still up and wanting to access our account, or check out an e-book. :( Also, if I try to log in to the mobile application Freegal, it locks me out of my account permanently and I have to uninstall and then re-install the application. So I've learned not to do that. But I was browsing and really wanted to get a certain book on my Kindle, and then, gee, got the 'unexpected error' message. I was hoping to avoid that since I was technically on OverDrive's website at that point, but it tried to interface with the library servers to log in. The thing is, I've never figured out when the maintenance is over, either. I've tried as late as 1:30 am and it's still been messed up. Oh, well, I'll try to check it out during a decent hour, tomorrow.

Yay!

I finished my library book, Big Girl: How I Gave Up Dieting and Got a Life, 3 hours before it expired! :) It brought up a lot of emotions for me, as I have an unhealthy relationship with food as well. A lot of it resonated with my own experience, even down to my use of audio to tune out the world and retreat in such a way as to hide from my problems. In the spirit of being more mindful, I plan on buying Intuitive Eating, the book which contributed to her experience (and which I had out from the library recently) and downloading it onto my Kindle tomorrow if I can spare $10. Also, I have been searching at home for a book that incorporates mindful eating that I have from a class I took probably 15 years ago called You Count, Calories Don't, and I finally found it today (next to a book on Eleanor of Aquitaine in the biography section--I have no idea why it was hiding there). Hopefully I can incorporate some of these principles into my own eating. I'm also checking the book UnDiet, which I had out about a year ago, again, as it's good for guiding you to a less-processed and healthier eating lifestyle.

Whew!

It’s been a weird day. I mostly did some things around the house, ate, and played a bubble shooter game on my phone without much success of getting through level 23 (it’s based off of Disney Pixar’s movie Inside Out). A had called me earlier today and explained that the snow ploughs had not made it to his street but that he was about to go out and do some shoveling. I asked him to give me an update later. About 2 pm he called and said the plough had been through, everything looked good, and he’d shoveled the walks and driveway for me. They were almost out of coffee, and we’re getting temperatures around 0 degrees tonight and tomorrow morning, so I figured conditions would just worsen, so I went out and spent a half-hour digging out my car with a broom and a dustpan. Yes, really. I do need to invest in a snow shovel, after never needing any for years. But last year we had over 10 inches in each of two storms two weeks apart, and this time, while the official measure was over 9 inches, A and I each have about 10 or 11, as our parts of town got more snow. Add the drifting from the wind and it could go up to three feet in places.

After digging out where I could (and I’m counting that as exercise for my Habitica application), and only falling down once into a drift onto my butt, I managed to get out of my parking place, and then there was a moving truck taking up most of the space near the curve to the exit from the parking lot, so I had to go through the snowier area. I got stuck on my street, which never gets ploughed as far as I can tell, but shifting into reverse and then into first and second gear (which I’ve never done using an automatic) and got out and down the road. The next street and the one after that wasn’t bad, just narrower. Once I got to Man O’War, things were just wet, except for slush where people pulled out of other streets here and there. None of the right turn lanes had been ploughed, though, so we were having to turn from the right straight lane instead. I went down Man O’War and then another road that I knew was a snow route just to be okay, not the normal back way I go. Then I got to their street, which was pretty decent, and into the driveway. A and I went and got a few groceries for each of us, stopped by Jin Jin and got Chinese food, and then I headed home, as I wanted to get back by dark and the sun was already low on the horizon. I got home shortly before 6 pm, managed to make it back into the very same parking place I’d been in, after negotiating my street again.

I came in and one of my floor lamps (the newest, which I got three years ago), was leaning awfully badly, so I tried fiddling with it, and it totally came apart and broke, much to my frustration. I decided to walk away from the lamp and eat my kung pao tofu and spring rolls and calm down a bit. When I went back it was obvious that it was broken and not merely unscrewed, and that it was designed somewhat poorly. I salvaged the heavy glass shades off of the torchiere piece and the two reading lamps, and I’ll get rid of the rest when I take things to the dumpster, then look for another one that is similar. It means the living room is a bit dark, having only the original floor lamp over by the computer, and nothing will come on when I flip the switch next to the door, but I’ll eventually get another, maybe when I get my tax refund and have a little money to spend. Who am I kidding, that will all go to bills, I’m sure. :)

So now that I have released the lamp to the Great Beyond and I’ve eaten, I feel better. There are plenty of things to do tonight, but my back and neck are hurting somewhat from wrestling with the lamp (the base was very heavy, and the whole thing was nestled in a spot in the corner behind the couch, which reclined while I was trying to line up the base with the pole and screw it back together. I probably needed two people to even get as far as I could, but in the end, the screw would not pop up to where the pole could be screwed in, and plastic parts, beyond the metal pieces that were giving me fits, just crumbled, especially up in the light. Fortunately I didn’t break any of the shades (I did break one once before when the lamp fell over, and had to replace the two small shades with something similar). In retrospect, the lamp has never truly been completely vertical at 90 degrees to the floor since then, so it probably was on its way out for some time and I managed to keep it going for awhile by leaning it against the wall and putting it between other objects. Oh, well.

To be honest, I think I’m going to lie down for just a little while and then maybe watch something on DVD. Or read. I don’t know yet. I did do a little reading last night, but the book was terrible in terms of grammar so I returned it. It purported to be a history of Rome, but it was very cursory at best, treating the entire period from the founding of Rome to Augustus Caesar in few pages, and I had doubts of it getting any better. Plus, it focussed on battles rather than much of (in my opinion) the more interesting history of Rome, the social and political aspects. Anyway, considering I’ve taken graduate classes where I had to learn the history of the Republic and the Empire pretty thoroughly, this seemed inadequate, more like a listing of kings and emperors. I already had to memorise the entire list of Roman Emperors, I don’t need another listing. What I wanted was a nice overview to jog my memories on certain aspects of Roman history, and was disappointed. The download included another book on the history of Aegypt and one on the history of Greece, but I decided to not even try those.

Okay, the bedroom and perhaps getting comfy with a book (or a Kindle) is calling me. Oh, and probably I’ll just fall asleep for awhile anyway. :)

This sounds like something YKWIA would do

--if he would even deign to have an e-book reader:

Man photocopies his Kindle to make physical backup

In what may seem like an act of either extreme whimsy or incredible paranoia a man has photocopied every page of his Kindle version of George Orwell’s 1984, creating a paper copy of the digital text.

The physical e-book is the brainchild of artist Jesse England who calls the project “E-Book Backup.” England originally carried out the project in 2012 though people seem to be picking up on it now. Here’s what a lame old e-book looks like when printed out and handsomely bound.

Are you listening, publishers?

Cory Doctorow: Libraries and E-books

Unlike every other channel for e-books, libraries are not the publishers’ competitors. They don’t want to sell devices. They don’t want to win over customers to a particular cloud. They just want readers to read, writers to write, and publishers to sell. They deserve a better deal than they’re getting.

One reason I like Adobe's .PDFs

So a friend found a freely-available book on the Internet he wanted to print out, but it was in Word format, meaning none of the pages lined up or the formatting was correct. After fiddling with the file for about an hour in a vain attempt to format it correctly and put it into a .PDF, I had a what-the-hell-am-I-doing moment and just put the title into Chrome's address/search bar and presto! A .PDF version of the same book was the first result, where the author had self-published. This had pictures, tables, the whole thing formatted somewhat amateurishly (hey, it was a fan writing their own handbook for a gaming system, so I'll cut him slack, even though he really does not seem to know the difference between a colon and semi-colon), but consistent with the table of contents and as the author actually intended it. Sometimes it's better to find the wheel rather than re-invent it, what can I say? All hail the Portable Document Format!

Here's an interesting take on the 'war' between libraries and publishers over e-books

The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries

'Libraries, like other consumers, should be free to buy any published e-content at competitive prices, to keep these items in their collection, and to loan them to their patrons. Anything less violates basic democratic principles …'--American Library Association

Libraries and big six publishers are at war over eBooks: how much they should cost, how they can be lent and who owns them. If you don’t use your public library and assume that this doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong.

In a society where bookstores disappear every day while the number of books available to read has swelled exponentially, libraries will play an ever more crucial role. Even more than in the past, we will depend on libraries of the future to help discover and curate great books. Libraries are already transforming themselves around the country to create more symbiotic relationships with their communities, with book clubs and as work and meeting spaces for local citizens.

For publishers, the library will be the showroom of the future. Ensuring that libraries have continuing access to published titles gives them a chance to meet this role, but an important obstacle remains: how eBooks are obtained by libraries.

It's an a good overview of the problems of e-books and the arguments on both sides, plus the author's own solution to pricing, which has some merit. This is the first of a two-part series, the second looking at the future of libraries. Whereas this one dealt with the 'Big Six' publishers, the other will look at small publishers, self-published authors, etc.

Yipee!!!

Not only are the Harry Potter books now available in e-book format, they're available from libraries using OverDrive.

And there was much rejoicing...

Good for libraries (and library patrons)

Pottermore and OverDrive link on Potter library e-book distribution

Pottermore has entered into an exclusive worldwide e-book and digital audiobook distribution agreement with OverDrive for public and school libraries, with the e-book distributor to manage hosting and digital fulfillment for libraries for J K Rowling's Harry Potter series.

OverDrive director of marketing David Burleigh said the e-books and audiobooks are not yet available, though libraries and schools can pre-order them. The “go-live date” is to be announced, he said. Worldwide, the e-books will be available in ePub on PCs, Macs, Android devices, iPhones, iPads and Blackberries, plus reading devices including the Kindle and Nook, with Kindle support in the US only. The audiobooks will be available in MP3 format.

I get the objection

but as a librarian and avid e-book borrower, it pretty much sucks.

Why can't you borrow that Penguin e-book from the library?

Starting today, if you go to your library to borrow the e-book of "Bringing Up Bebe," Pamela Druckerman's new book about parenting the French way, you'll come up with nothing. That's because its publisher, Penguin, has pulled out of its relationship with OverDrive, the vendor that supplies most libraries with e-books and audio books.

The change was unexpected, but it is not surprising. Penguin joins publishers Simon & Schuster, MacMillan, and Hachette Book Group in not allowing e-book library lending. As e-books have increased in popularity, major publishers and libraries -- who share the goal of getting books into readers' hands -- have found themselves bumping into a number of complicating factors that seem to put them at odds.

For Penguin, that issue was OverDrive's relationship with Amazon. A 2011 arrangement made library lending possible on the Kindle. Publishers have objected to the library loans being executed through Amazon's servers -- imagine walking into your public library then finding yourself at the Target checkout counter.

Keeping up with demand can be tricky

E-book library borrowing hits record pace: New tablet owners find a long waiting list for popular titles

Holiday sales of new tablets and e-readers have catapulted e-book borrowing at many of the nation's libraries, raising the question of how libraries can keep up with demand -- especially when some publishers still balk at e-book lending.

The demand for e-books at some major public libraries more than doubled so far in December and January compared to a year ago, causing frustrations for e-book users and librarians alike.

Drat

Penguin US halts library e-lending

OverDrive, the largest provider of e-books to public libraries in the States, posted this statement on its Digital Library Blog: "Last week Penguin sent notice to OverDrive that it is reviewing terms for library lending of its e-books. In the interim, OverDrive was instructed to suspend availability of new Penguin e-book titles from our library catalogue and disable 'Get for Kindle' functionality for all Penguin e-books. We apologise for this abrupt change in terms from this supplier. We are actively working with Penguin on this issue and are hopeful Penguin will agree to restore access to their new titles and Kindle availability as soon as possible."

Ebooks and the love of reading

For ebook devotees, reading is a whole new experience

David J. Loehr, a playwright who lives in southern Indiana, was taking his car to the dealership when a story on the radio caught his attention. A short science piece about "an obscure subject" gave him an idea for a new play.

Ordinarily, Loehr would have had to make do with jotting down some notes or trying to remember his inspiration. But since he had his iPad with him, he bought a few books on the subject and downloaded them as soon as he got to the dealership. He started his research for the play right there, while his car was being serviced.

"I can have all that research on a single tablet instead of carrying around 40 books," Loehr said.

Welcome to the future of books, where your entire library is as portable as a cellphone.

Like several of the people in the story, I haven't given up on physical books. But I'm much more likely to take a chance on an author I don't know or a book that I wouldn't necessarily read again with my Kindle because the books are cheaper and they don't add to my already immense clutter. I've actually bought a couple of books in hardback after buying them on the Kindle, because I did like them that much. Plus there are so many free classics, or collections of an author's work (like Dickens, Twain, or Welles, all of which I have) for a pittance. For less than $5 I bought all 15 Wizard of Oz books and am working my way through them, rather than having to track them all down and get the same matching editions. That sort of thing.

Plus, I've discovered that I read a little differently on the Kindle, smoother somehow. I go through books faster, without losing comprehension. I tend not to jump as much on the page, and at the end of the day, when my eyes are a little tired and my bifocal contacts a bit bleary, I can crank the size of the text up and it's easier to read. It's very portable, and as they point out, you can sync across devices. I can also read on the bus, whereas pages jostling add a dimension of movement that tends to make me motion-sick. So there are a lot of pluses. I once was so engrossed in a book on the Kindle that I totally forgot
I was on an electronic reader and tried to turn the corner of the Kindle like a page.

That said, I love books. I love the feel, the smell. I can't imagine not having access to them. And they don't require batteries. There are good and bad things about each kind of book, but I think a mix is the way to approach things, for me. I still buy both types, after all, and I check out physical books from the library and I'm excited that I should soon be able to check out books for my Kindle, too.

An NPR story looking at the challenges of libraries in the digital age

The Future Of Libraries In The E-Book Age

A lot of attention has been focused on the way bookstores and publishing companies are managing the e-book revolution. The role of libraries has often been overlooked. But when HarperCollins Publishing Co. recently announced a new policy that would limit the number of times its e-books can be borrowed, it sparked a larger conversation about the future of libraries in the digital age.