Avatar: The Na'vi Quest - Nicole Pitesa

Avatar: The Na'vi Quest is an adaptation of the Avatar movie by James Cameron. It's a short, 57 page, sparsely illustrated paperback. It's not really a novel. It does provide some interesting background on what to expect from the movie, and it does so without spoiling it for someone who intends to see the picture when it comes out. I look forward to watching the movie to flesh out this brief introduction. Recommended.

Shades of Gray #1 Noir, City Shrouded by Darkness - Kristie Lynn Higgins

Noir, City Shrouded by Darkness is one of those books I really struggled to finish. I hate to not finish a book I've started, so I stuck with it. Mistake. The book's got some good points but not many. I'm sorry. I know somebody went to a lot of trouble to write this but I have to ask why? I'm assuming they didn't have an editor because a decent editor would probably still have this in rewrite. My recommendation is don't read this. If you do you'll regret the time you wasted.

Hocus Pocus - Fern Michaels

Hocus Pocus is a sequel to Hide and Seek. The vigilantes are back in the USA and masquerading as rock stars to keep from being exposed by a supreme court justice. The justice is being blackmailed and threatens to expose the sisterhood if they don't help her out her jam. It's another convoluted but interesting adventure, with more people joining the vigilantes as things roll along. Highly recommended.

Rough Country - John Sandford

Rough Country is the latest Virgil Flowers novel. I have yet to read a book by Sandford that didn't make me lose sleep. This time Virgil is dealing with a murder at a mostly lesbian retreat. This is almost as frustrating for Virgil as trying to find the killer. You know he'll find the killer, but it's not a sure thing whether he's going to get laid or not :) This books got plenty of twists and turns. It keeps you guessing right up to the end. Very Highly recommended.

Nine Dragons - Michael Connelly

Nine Dragons is the latest Harry Bosch novel. Wow! Two continents, bad guys, guns, death, kidnapping, and a real twist in the end. Harry's life is changed forever. Very highly recommended.

Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris

Grave Secret is book four in the Harper Connelly series. There are no vampires in this novel, but who needs vampires? This story is part of a great series and this is a great book. Unfortunately when the book was over I was very sad. It has an unbelievable ending and wrapped up many mysteries, but melancholy would be the most positive description I can think of for this story. This book can really put your own life in perspective. Very highly recommended.

And for those who continue to dig for deeper meaning in this and other books, I have one message. Just suspend disbelief and enjoy the story. I love to read, and have since I was barely able to read. The best presents for me when I was a kid were books or bullets. But I hated literature classes because the search for themes, characters, plots, etc. destroyed any pleasure I got from reading a book. I never enjoyed David Copperfield or Moby Dick or Treasure Island when I was a kid, because I couldn't be a pick pocket, a whaler, or a pirate. I had to read for the deeper meaning. As an adult I've read all three and thoroughly enjoyed them. Down with literature. Up with reading. Stick your stodgy old literary analysis where the sun don't shine.

Death from the Skies! - Philip Plait

Death from the Skies! is a book to rid you of your nightmares. It does this by explaining in excruciating detail all the ways the universe can kill you. Some ways kill you slow and some get you very fast. The good part is Dr. Plait also explains the odds on them getting you at all, and that is vanishingly small. This is a fascinating book, but it contains more details than it needed. I would have preferred the Reader's Digest Condensed version, and I don't say that very often. It's still worth a read if you have the time. Recommended.

Publish Post

Pursuit of Honor - Vince Flynn

Pursuit of Honor is a continuation of the Mitch Rapp novel Extreme Measures. There are three terrorists left and the trick is can Mitch and his men find the terrorists before they strike again. You can't put this one down. Flynn ruins my sleep patterns! Very highly recommended.

Void Moon - Michael Connelly

Void Moon is pretty much a one-of for Connelly. He tends to weave characters back and forth between series but Cassie Black is an exception. Except for an unannounced cameo in The Narrows, this is her first and only appearance by Connelly. I went back to this book because it's another one I missed and I'm very glad I did. This is the story of a thief who needs to make the big score and finds herself pushed to her limits. Can you steal too much? She has to rescue herself and someone very dear. Will she do the right thing and which right thing? This is an excellent book. Very highly recommended.

Hide and Seek - Fern Michaels

Hide and Seek is number eight in Michaels' Sisterhood series. I jumped into this one in the middle because this is the first book in a trilogy called Rules of the Game, but that trilogy is just part of the Sisterhood series. The book still made sense on it's own. Enough of the back story is filled in to generally understand what came before.

This novel focuses on the Sisterhood, also known as the Vigilantes, who try and bring down a vindictive corrupt FBI director. The women of the sisterhood are a varied group, from truck drivers and florists to judges and lawyers. By the time this novel appears in the series they're also media heroes. This series is a good read. I've already started the second book in this trilogy. Highly recommended.

The Narrows - Michael Connelly

The Narrows is a catch-up book for me. This is the bridge that ties Rachel Walling and Harry Bosch to the Poet. I missed this story in the sequence and now I've bridged that gap. Both Rachel and Harry are great characters. Both have some trouble with authority and deal with it in unique ways. This time they team up in pursuit of a serial killer they both encountered before. The difference is Rachel killed him once already. This is a great book all by itself but look into the series that Connelly has woven these characters into to get the full effect. Very highly recommended.

Ground Zero - F. Paul Wilson

Ground Zero is Wilson's latest Repairman Jack novel. This is one of the best series I've found. I highly recommend you read them from the beginning because that's the way they're best understood. This is another stay up late, read at lunch, and generally have to finish novel. It's not the last in the series but close, and provides something of a cliff hanger. Excellent story. Highly recommended.

Frankenstein: Dead and Alive - Dean Koontz

Frankenstein: Dead and Alive is the third book in Koontz's Frankenstein series. I say series instead of trilogy for good reason. Read this book and find out. This story continues to follow the problems the new race is creating in New Orleans. There are some new monsters to add to the mix and some old ones to keep things interesting. I really enjoy the pace of this novel. Unfortunately more than I enjoy sleep. This book has been a long time coming and I wish I'd had time to reread the first two books in the series. If you haven't read them do so before reading this one. Highly recommended.

Spartan Gold - Clive Cussler & Grant Blackwood

Spartan Gold is a novel featuring the treasure hunting Fargo family. In classic Cussler fashion this book is part ancient history and part modern technology. The puzzles and action are both intense. Of course the story is completely unbelievable, but this is escapism, not reality. It's good to suspend your disbelief and get into the story line.

Maybe I'm just going through a dark period, but I don't care what kind of designer clothes, fancy cars, and gourmet meals the characters wear, drive, and eat. Maybe less of those trivialities and more substance would be appropriate. I like the book, but those pretentious details were more distracting than supporting. Highly recommended.

Living with the Dead - Kelley Armstrong

Living with the Dead is another novel in the Women of the Otherworld series. You really need to start from the beginning of this series to appreciate the later stories. This novel focuses on Hope's friend Robyn. Robyn is a nice normal human PR rep who gets tangled in a plot with clairvoyants, a half-demon, werewolves, a necromancers, and of course the Nast sorcerer cabal. By the times things get untangled Robyn's perspective on the world around her has radically changed. All the novels in this series are excellent. This one is no exception. Highly recommended.

Six Months of Kindle

I received my kindle in February of 2009. I've been using it to read books, magazines, blogs, and newspapers for over six months now. I still read paper books and magazines from time to time, but I actually miss the kindle when I switch back to dead trees.

I've read over 30 books on my kindle so I have some experience to work from. I also have a couple of reference books on the kindle that I search when needed. I subscribe to Reader's Digest on my kindle. For a while there I subscribed to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine too. I read those mystery stories to my Mom. I also tried the Chicago Tribune for a while, but I'm not a newspaper person. I also subscribed to a couple of blogs for a while, but I can follow blogs much easier on my computer. I already subscribe to too many paper periodicals, and in most of them the color pictures are something the kindle can't reproduce, so I'm sticking to paper for magazines.

I really like my kindle. Most of the things I've enumerated below are things you just can't do with a paper book. There's a short list of things you can do with a paper book you can't do with a kindle book. You can't riffle through the pages looking for pictures, diagrams, or maps. If there's a way to do this on a kindle I haven't figured it out. You can't lend a kindle book to someone else to read, or sell one on eBay when you've finished reading it. I miss those things.

I like being able to search kindle books the way I can search other documents on my computer. I like being able to turn pages with one hand and never have the wind blow my book shut or make me lose my place. I like that I can find lots of books for free and most for less than $10. I like the way the battery seems to last forever if I turn the wireless off. I love my tooled leather case from Oberon Design. I like that anywhere I am, I can order a new book and download it in minutes. I like that my kindle is small enough to fit in the pouch of my hoodie and is light enough to carry there.

I like that I can convert just about any file I have on my computer to a format that my kindle can read. I like that I can set bookmarks anywhere I want and go back to them later. They never fall out of the kindle the way they do from paper books. I like that I can read multiple books on my kindle and it remembers right where I am in each one. I like that I can look up a word I don't recognize right there and then, without having to carry around a dictionary. I actually find myself putting off reading some paper books I still haven't read so I can read something else on the kindle.

There are a few things I don't like about the kindle. Note, these are not comparisons to paper books. Rather these are design flaws or missing features of the electronic device or the books provided for it.

I don't like the way some books are not formatted well for the kindle. Some are obviously shoehorned in after the fact and are far from a perfect fit. They're readable, but it's annoying at times. Magazines and newspapers have this same problem when displayed on the kindle.

I don't like that the kindle doesn't have a touch screen. Come on! Even my phone has a touch screen. It's so intuitive these days that it's a huge letdown every time I have to use the little dip stick to navigate. Huge letdown.

I don't like that it can't read PDF files directly. The newer kindles can. It's just software people. Why can't my kindle be upgraded to do what the newer ones can? That's very disappointing.

Finally, the kindle costs too much. For the average person the initial cost is out of reach and the long term savings are very long. According to an AP-Ipsos survey from 2007, one out of four adults didn't read any books that year. If you throw out those non-readers the median for adult readers was seven books a year. I doubt that number has gotten higher in the last two years, so let's figure seven books a year.

Assuming the kindle lets you purchase a bestselling book for $9.99, and assuming the price of that same book in hardback would be about $16 on Amazon, you'd have to read about 50 books for the savings to pay for the current $299 kindle. That means the average reader would take over seven years to recoup the cost of their kindle. Too expensive.

All that said I don't regret buying my kindle one bit. I waited for version two to come out before I took the plunge, and I did a lot of research first. Basically I got what I expected. How many things can you say that about? The only reason I'd give up my kindle is for a touch screen color version. I'm waiting Amazon.

UPDATE: 11/29/2009

I installed the latest software release for my kindle and now I have PDF support. The update also enabled screen rotation, which is helpful for PDF files since you can't zoom in on them. It also extended the battery life by 75%. My battery life was great before because I leave the network off, but more battery life is always better. If you're interested you can win a new kindle at the noobie site.

The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown

The Lost Symbol is everything I'd expected. More mysteries, ancient symbols, and clues to follow. The action was good. The villain was superb. It will make an excellent movie if they do it right. The only let down was that Brown waxed pedantic at times. They'll leave that out of a movie if they make one. All you couch potatoes won't have to worry about it. Highly recommended.

Hostile Intent - Michael Walsh

Hostile Intent is a novel about terrorism, greed, and revenge. Devlin is a super secret agent of the government and he's the last line of defense for the country. He's called on to stop one terrorist act but things only get worse. Are the terrorists out to destroy the country or Devlin himself? The writing is not as great as Flynn, Ludlum, or Connelly but it's good. You don't want to put this book down until you get to the end. Highly recommended.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen - Janet Evanovich

Finger Lickin' Fifteen is the latest in the Stephanie Plum series. There are a few things you can always count on in a Stephanie Plum novel: blown up cars, escaping skips, fattening food, and lots of laughs. The old standby characters are there to please, and Lulu has a new cross-dressing boyfriend. Highly recommended.

The Scarecrow - Michael Connelly

The Scarecrow is a novel featuring newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy. He was the main protagonist in one of Connelly's previous novels, The Poet. FBI agent Rachel Walling is back too. She and Jack were lovers in The Poet, and things heat up again.

Jack has just been laid off at the paper where he works and he's determined to write a last best story. When he stumbles on a serial killer called the scarecrow he has his chance. But this killer is part of a team and the team is good at what they do. They make Jack's life very interesting. Very highly recommended.