Lady Almina And The Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy Of Highclere Castle by The Countess of Carnarvon
I’ve read through chapter 7 now. Very interesting book.
Category: e-books
New (to me) Book Site
School has started back with the proverbial bang (read: I’m tired).
I found a site. Wishing I could remember where I saw it the first time, but I’ve racked my brain and just can’t seem to remember.
It’s called Gospel eBooks and they scout out free or inexpensive Kindle editions. Some of them look good. Some of them I would never pick up, but that’s the way of many sites.
This link is for the free page. I got The Secret Holocaust Diaries. I will have time to read again one day. . .
An irritation with Kindle
I don’t have the device itself, but the program is loaded on my computers and iPod Touch. I never paid much attention to the little location thingy because I just plowed through a book. BUT and this is huge, I finally was able to buy a Kindle textbook and I was so excited until I’m to use a rubric on page 129. No problem. I can’t figure it out, but it’s got to be able to convert to page numbers. I hit Google with my question. And the answer is:
ding, ding, ding
It can’t be done! There isn’t a way to convert. What’s more, Amazon has told multiple students that their way is superior. APA style even has a citation using Kindle locations. Well, whoopdidoo. That doesn’t do a student trying to find a specific location in a book a lick of good.
Nook on the other hand (who I have not been supporting as much as Kindle) does have page numbers. Guess who will be getting my ebook business in the future?
ebook ideas
There are some good ideas in this video – all related to the internet and connecting with ideas and others.
ebooks aren’t the invaders they might be – yet
In yesterday’s WSJ, there was an article called No Threat Yet. The public library has an amazing amount of titles to choose from, and colleges are also moving in that direction.
Yet, here I sit having just ordered my books for the next semester and I couldn’t get either one as an ebook. One of those courses was library technology.
The more I use ebooks, I think that I like them for informational type books, but I like reading fiction in a book with pages I can flip. Also, while I’d like an electronic version of the Bible, there is something about flipping the pages of it too. I’m frequently distracted by something else that catches my eye. I imagine that would be true of any book I spent a lot of time in.
Here is a library tour that Wendy sent me. Very nice. Has real books too.
Do School Libraries Need Books?
This is from the NYTimes. The school mentioned is giving away ALL of it’s books to make the library a digital center. Twenty thousand books are to be distributed.
This article comes on the heels of another I read about getting a Kindle into the hands of every grade-school student. I can’t find the article I read originally, but here is another on the same topic: The Government Should Spend $9 Billion Buying Every Kid A Kindle.
I probably wouldn’t have thought about this before, but now I’m in a Title 1 school and my first thoughts were about the kids – the kids that don’t have the advantages that my kids had. Are they well served at a school without a library? How will children who are 2 or 3 years behind in reading respond to words, story, information that is ALWAYS presented on screen? What will happen when the device is sent home and placed on the kitchen counter of a family that doesn’t have enough money for food? Transient rates are high in many Title 1 schools. What happens when a family moves and the device is not returned? I do not in any way want to sound judgmental but rather contemplative. I want to examine this from all angles, because once the government issues funding for this, we will be knee deep in it.
I’m trying to look at this from the eyes of a novice reader – that’s difficult because I’m not. But if every book to which a child is exposed (because the family can’t or doesn’t buy books) is on a screen, will that book have the same draw as one with paper pages? I don’t know, but I am curious about this phenomenon.
On this subject, one of ECU’s MLS professors summed her view up nicely (via email),
This discussion of the demise of the book came up when the radio appeared, and again, with the television, and again with the computer. Hasn’t happened – there are many more books published today for youth than there were with the first predicted demise of the book. It is not an either/or situation. This is about format, space, and timeliness of information. If the digital format is the best choice, then choose it, but don’t choose it because it is digital. It is similar to people choosing hardware first and then realizing the software they really want to use doesn’t work with the hardware. Determine the information/leisure reading materials suitable for the community you serve and then determine the most appropriate format, which may well be the book.
Free Kindle for Amazon Prime Customers?
Here is the article. There is another one linked within this one.
Interesting concept, but I kept thinking this is an odd trade off. A Kindle for your Amazon Prime subscription. I’ve been a subscriber in various years when I needed more books. Then at the end, there was this sentence:
It’s a bit ironic, though, that you might have to be subscribed to a program that gives a price-break on shipping in order to get a free Kindle, given that Kindle e-books don’t need “shipping” at all in the traditional sense.
Free books? From Amazon?
Yes indeedy – for your Kindle software – for which you do not need a kindle device. The software is downloadable to your computer.
So, if you don’t know if you’d like an ebook, check out the best selling Kindle offerings and see if you can find yourself a freebie you might like. Most of those books are 9.99, but some with some careful searching, you will find some that are at no cost or very inexpensive. Amazon keeps track of what you’ve bought so you can download it again if you lose it. Pretty cool.
They also have an RSS feed for new releases.
Readers for your computer
I’ve been playing around with reader software this morning. I haven’t downloaded Kindle yet, but I did download some other programs.
I downloaded Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles from FeedBooks to compare.
One is e-reader. It reads books with a .PBD extension. This morning I’ve only seen romance books (*bleh*) with this extension. This one has a nice index, but if I can’t find a book to download, not sure that’s a good feature. It looks like this one may layout like a book, but of course, I can’t tell yet.
The other is Stanza. It reads books with .epub or .PDF extension. But if you can get the book in PDF, why do you need this reader?I didn’t see an index on the stanza, but I’ve only got two books and they are both open. Very plain – like reading a web page on a white background. There are pulldown menus across the top (like a browser) that allow you to move about the manuscript. Stanza does have a download for IPhone or I Touch. I’m not finding a way to move around the book like they show on the IPhone video.
Sony Reader software looks like it may be a better choice. The book looks like a book and there is a search mechanism. The book cover even shows up. You can bookmark, highlight, search.
Free e-books
Biblical Archeology has some free e-books offered.
Jack Of All Trades 
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