William Gibson's latest book "Zero History" is being released tomorrow. In anticipation I've been reading through the previous two novels in the trilogy. And once again I'm looking at the Buzz Rickson flight jackets. If San Francisco ever got cold enough to wear these I'd probably buy one today.
"For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition." — NYTimes interview with Jeff Bezos.
I held off buying a Kindle for myself for longer than is normal. The price was the main reason, but I never thought I'd enjoy reading a book on the device.
When my wife finally bought me one for my birthday I started with tech books. The sort of books you burn through and shelve and never read again. Then it was a quick slide into fiction and now I can't imagine lugging a book around that doesn't have a version on the Kindle.
I can hardly believe this story is true. Apparently people who bought books from a certain author on their Kindle found out today that they no longer have those books on their Kindle. Follow this link to learn more and see who the author was.
Even more Kindle ridiculousness from Kevin Fox.
I'm so curious to know what's inside this book: 16 Months Worth of Drawing Exercises in Microsoft Excel. [via monoscope]
This whole vow of booklessness I've taken on this year is getting harder and harder. The 33⅓ Series is killing me.
First John Darnielle writing about Black Sabbath's "Master of Reality".
Next there's Slayer's "Reign in Blood" that was to be released today.
Sigh...In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.
Kevin Kelly's eBook called 200 Documentaries You Must See Before You Die is now free for download. Kevin is using some kind of Yahoo Ad call in the new Adobe Reader. If you have an older version of Adobe Reader or use Apple's preview tool you're not going to see the ads—but you can still read the book for free.
Here's a fascinating Anti-Biography of B. Travan, best known for his book "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre".
While I was visiting my parents we watched my dad's favorite film: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Now that I'm back at home I've gone off on a John Huston/Walter Huston/B. Travan Wikipedia excursion.
I keep wanting to post about Kindle but everyone else has done it better (ob. link to Mark Pilgrim's post).
Instead I will just comment that ebook readers: awesome. Wireless EVDO enabled ebook readers that can download a specially formatted version of the NY Times or other newspaper: awesome. An actual selection of books to buy: way awesome.
I own a Sony eBook Reader. It sits in a drawer underneath my Sony PSP. The reason it's in the drawer is I read every book I wanted to read on manybooks.net and Sony's online book store selection was terrible (I think there were four tech books). After some noodling I was able to set up a workflow for converting pirated found txt formatted books or free books like Cory's library.
The ebook itself, the e-ink never loses its cool. If you have been wanting an ebook I say buy it. I think this has more to do with Amazon's lack of experience with developing and shipping electronic products than people will admit. But I'm biased: I like gadgets and things that are awesome.
Here is a book I've been waiting some time for. It's by an artist named Maya Waldman and you only have to flip through her scanned notebooks to get an idea what kind of art is inside. I already bought three.