Introducing Focus on Freading

Introducing a brand new weekly feature at Reading in Texas. I want to bring attention to Freading, an ebook service for libraries. I'm thrilled that my library has a subscription to Freading since the catalog contains many outstanding authors and much more of the “backlog” that other services that focus primarily on recent best sellers.

So, each week, I'll highlight books which have caught my attention at Freading.com. Sometimes, the featured books will be new additions to the online catalog. And sometimes they'll be hidden gems.

Now, I'll be up front with you. I primarily read mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy. I read almost no non-fiction and I'm not fond of romance, chick-lit, erotica, westerns, and military fiction, so these categories may not be represented very often. But, I'll try to pull myself out of my comfort zone from time to time and highlight books that aren't my usual oeuvre. And most of the time, the books will be ones that I have not yet read—but which are winding up on my “To Be Read Soon” list.

Freading and Kindle Unlimited

Last week when I logged into my library's Freading.com web site, I saw a bunch of new books from Open Road Media, including the Cadfael medieval mysteries. Most of those books are tagged "coming soon", though. A quick search online found that the Cadfael books will be released on 5 August, so I'm anticipating that their status on Freading will change on that date. Even nicer this week, I found that many books from RosettaBooks have been added to the catalog, and almost all of those are available right now. And, RosettaBooks is carrying a number of well-known authors such as Barbara Taylor Bradford, M. C. Beaton, Kurt Vonegut, Ben Bova, Harold Robbins, and Harry Kemelman.

On 18 July, Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service. One thing I've discovered about Freading and Kindle Unlimited is that there is a major overlap between the books which are available from the two different channels. Freading doesn't cost ME anything, because my library pays for the service. Kindle Unlimited will cost me $9.95 per month after a 30-day trial period.

Granted, the catalogs for the two are not identical, but as I said, there's a great deal of overlap between the two. Freading has the price advantage, but doesn't allow me to read on my Kindle device. I'm lucky enough to have a second reader (a BeBook mini) which is supported by Adobe Digital Editions, so I have reasonable access to the books from Freading. The advantage of Kindle Unlimited is that it supports my Kindle reader, but the downside is the price. I think that for now, I'm going to pass on Kindle Unlimited and get the books I want to read from Freading.

New books at Freading - 2014.07.14

This morning I took a quick glance at the new arrivals at Freading.com and found some very interesting titles had been added to the collection. The newest books still show "Coming Soon", so it may be a week or so before the books get loaded to the server. For now, it's fun to just look at the catalog and think which books one might want to borrow.

For the middle school set, the first eight books in Bonnie Bryant's Pony Tails series will soon be available. Horse-crazy girls will enjoy meeting May, Jasmine, and Corey; three girls with only one thing in common. They love ponies. The series goes on for eight more volumes, so let's hope that they show up at Freading as soon as possible. In the meantime, get started with Pony Crazy and move on to May's Riding Lesson, Corey's Pony is Missing and the rest of this series recently added to the Freading site.

Also for the middle school set—and maybe of more interest to the boys— are the Boxcar Children series. Now, these books have been available at Freading for quite some time. What's new is that Spanish translations of several of the books are now listed as "coming soon". It looks like their availability on Freading is tied to their publication date of 29 July. If so, then at the end of the month, Spanish readers can check out the first three books in the series: Los chicos del vagón de carga (The Boxcar Children), La isla de las sorpresas (Surprise Island), and El misterio de la casa amarilla (The Yellow House Mystery).

P.S. You can find the English editions of the Boxcar Children books here .

Adult readers may enjoy the Alan Graham Mysteries by Malcolm Shuman. This five volume series features archaeologist Alan Graham tackles both ancient and contemporary mysteries in Louisiana's Bayou country. And, these books show consistently high ratings at Goodreads.com. Start with Burial Ground and continue on through the rest of the series.

Teens aren't left out, either. You may want to check out fantasy novels The Zodiak Collector by Laura Diamond and Twell & the Army of Powers by Kate O'Leary.

Lastly, a group of books from Intercollegiate Studies Institute, A Student's Guide to ... offer a college-level survey of various broad topics—covering both fundamentals as well referring the reader to additional published books on the subject. Consider checking out A Student's Guide to Music History, A Student's Guide to Natural Science, A Student's Guide to Philosophy, or A Student's Guide to U. S. History, among many others.

Dewey's Read-a-Thon and Honor Harrington

'Tis that time of year again. Seems like the only times I update this blog lately are to chart my progress through the semi-annual Read-a-thon. And it's coming up again—starting at 7am (Texas time) on 22 October. I'm clearing my calendar and lining up the books that I want to read.

Speaking of the books that I want to read, most of August and September I was reading through the books in David Weber's Honor Harrington series rather than reading books that I had promised to send to my BookObsessed friends. I practically sailed through 5 novels—and then started in on the various short stories which fill in the gaps in the story line. (Wish I had started reading the short stories a long time ago and had kept up with the chronology.)

So, during August, I read four of the Honor Harrington novels: In Enemy Hands, Echoes of Honor, Ashes of Victory, and War of Honor. During the first weeks of September, I then read At All Costs. That's when I turned from the novels to the short stories and novellas to fill in the gaps. Those stories were published in five different collections and I decided to read them in order that they occurred in the story line rather than in the order they were written or published. Accordingly, due to the way that I keep my statistics, I don't get to count the pages until I finish the last story in a given book. And, fortunately, I finished reading Worlds of Honor in mid-September. I'm still reading the Honor Harrington short stories, so I completed Changer of Worlds this week and I'm well on my way to finishing The Service of the Sword.

Books mentioned in this post:

E-books and e-readers

Yesterday, I was following the May Blogroll over at NaBloPoMo and stumbled across Becky's blog called Musings from the Sofa. She had classified it as a blog that is predominantly about books, so of course I was interested in seeing how she was doing with her daily posts.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that she had posted a mild rant about e-books and e-readers. I felt compelled to respond. You should go read Emily's comments and criticisms. Here is my response:

I’m an e-book evangelist. To me the most important thing is the story. For a novel, short stories, even a biography, I really don’t care if the characters that I read are printed onto paper or rendered onto a screen. It *does* matter to me how comfortable it is to read. Therefore, I’m not likely to be reading on my laptop, netbook, or even a flat-screen monitor. But give me the e-Ink screen on a Kindle, Sony, Nook, or other electronic Reader, and I’m terribly happy.

My biggest complaint today is that most publishers haven’t taken e-books seriously. Formatting is often substandard—which the publisher would not accept in a paper book, but which they are glad to sell me in electronic format. And, I probably wouldn’t mind so much except that current e-book sales carry terms and conditions that basically say that I don’t *own* the e-books I buy. I can’t sell them or give them away after I’ve read them. Well, if the book must remain in my permanent library, it ought to be produced to higher quality standards.

I don’t need color. I don’t need things that move & wiggle. I don’t need to drag Internet content into my book. I can go get those things with my laptop or netbook. I need stories; at a fair price point; in a well-crafted product.

I still buy paper books—paperback only ’cause the hardbacks are too large, too heavy, and too expensive. I don’t think e-books will ever replace paper books, but they are great alternatives.

So, what do you think? Do you own an electronic reader? Do you use it? How often?

Of the 54 books I've read this year, 45 of them were printed on paper. This is largely related to the active book swapping that I do at BookObsessed and BookCrossing. I also loaned my Kindle to my librarian for a couple of months to give her an opportunity to see how she liked reading with it and to evaluate whether she might want to purchase a couple of readers for lending to patrons. I just got it back at the end of April, and I've already read two electronic books. I'm sure that the ratio of paper-to-electronic will change a bit during the year, but I'll still finish out the year having read more paper books than e-books. That's OK, though. It's the story that matters.

Kindle: Save For Later

In my wishlist post, I mentioned the “Save for Later” list unique to the Kindle. You can only add books to this list or remove them through the Kindle's network connection to Amazon's Kindle Store. Because it's rare for me to spend much time with the antenna turned on, I don't use this option very often, but it may be interesting to see what I've put onto my list.

The first two books I added to my list were by David Baldacci—Total Control and Saving Faith. (Yes, I know that these links go to the paperback edition pages at Amazon instead of the Kindle editions, but then I figure that there are fewer Kindle users than simply readers and the Kindle users can follow the on-page link to the Kindle version.) The very first book I read on my Kindle was Stone Cold, which I selected because I had just finished reading its predecessor, The Collectors in paperback. My thoughts were that the first book should be one that I was really interested in and which I was totally committed to reading. That way, if I wasn't happy with the reading experience, it would more likely be due to the device than the book.

Next, I added all three of the “Acorna's Children” trilogy: First Warning, Second Wave, and Third Watch. This series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth A. Scarborough follows the adventure of Acorna's twins Korii and Ariin as they travel—through time and space—trying to find the cause of a plague that's endangering galactic civilization and its cure. Since I had already read the first two books in the series in paperback, I didn't want to buy the Kindle editions right away. But, when I get ready to read the third one, I'll buy all three and read them in order. That will provide a nice reminder of what happens leading up to the last book.

And, since I'm such a fan of science fiction, I quickly added all of Elizabeth Moon's “Vatta's War” series. I've particularly enjoyed reading this series since I discovered the first book in 2004. It's now up to five books and I've only read the first two, so there's a lot of enjoyment there once I purchase and download the rest of the series, if not all of it. I read Trading in Danger in 2004 and Marque and Reprisal in 2005. That leaves Engaging the Enemy, Command Decision, and Victory Conditions. And, by the time I finish reading those, perhaps there will be another in the series.

A long time went by before I put any more books on my “Save for Later” list—after all, I just didn't turn on the antenna all that often, and then only to allow book purchases to be transmitted to the Kindle. But, there were occasions when I would not only fire up the antenna, but also view Amazon Kindle's Blog via the Kindle Daily Post link in the Kindle Storefront on the device. And, sometimes I'd see a book that looked particularly interesting and would add the book to my “Save for Later” list. That can explain why I have The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch on my list.