The haul

Published on 23 August 2010 in book sale and books. 4 Comments

The Save the Children booksale is on at the moment. It goes until Wednesday, if you want to pick up some bargains.

Like last year, we went three times.

Crowds

The picture above shows part of the huge crowd that waited patiently to get into the hall where the books were. We turned up a little after 5pm (when the sale opened), and already the hall was full. The line snaked across the yard. We waited in line for about an hour before we could enter!

I got 92 books. This includes the six books that M bought.

Loot

I dunno, but it doesn’t look like a very large pile of books, to me. Still, there’s a lot of reading here.

Funny, before the booksale I was musing publicly (on Twitter) about whether or not I would enjoy it, given my newfound love of ebooks. Well, I am happy to say that once I was in that heady atmosphere of hundreds of bookworms all rummaging through piles of books, I forgot about ebooks. I must say however that I did find myself selecting books more on their feel and on the unlikelihood of a particular title being available in ebook format. This did mean that I avoided most contemporary fiction, at least in paperback. I bought a few hardbacks, and was pleased when I got home and looked at them closer, to note that they are first editions. I also bought books I have read and loved - and either didn’t own until now because I read a library copy, or only had in paperback.

The red volumes on the floor are Chinese language titles. The large stack is part of a series of biographies of various famous people, like the Tang poet Li Bai, Confucius, Rembrandt, Kafka, and so on. The other five books are part of a series of classic Chinese works.

Finds:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Seven issues of Meanjin
Ballada orang bercinta by Rendra (Indonesian. Poetry.)
Crossing map by Liliane Lijn. I note this book because a) it looks unusual, and b) it is the first book in my collection to be tagged “prose poetry”.

Total spent: $246. (M spent $20)

Loot

The chis, trying to attract my attention.

The iPad as an ereader

Published on 28 July 2010 in ereaders, reading and technology. 2 Comments

iPad ereader

After my Kobo had to go back to the shop to be replaced (I’m still waiting for a new one!), I turned to my iPad as a replacement ereader.
So far, the iPad has been a pretty good ereader.

Positives

  1. Content from various ebook providers can be accessed and read, thanks to the various iPad apps – I’m using Borders, Kobo, Stanza, and Amazon. In effect I have a Kobo and Kindle in one. I don’t need a Kindle to get access to Amazon ebooks – all content (at least content that is accessible to Australian readers) is available. (NB: I also have iBooks which is the iPad-specific app but content via iBooks currently provides public domain material only. The pictures show iBook.)
  2. Wireless connectivity means that in many cases I can download and start reading a book almost immediately.
  3. Ability to carry many books on one device. This was brilliant when I went to Melbourne recently – no more dilemmas over what book to bring with me.
  4. Ability to read PDFs. The Kobo, with its small (6”) screen, did not display PDFs particularly well. This is not a problem on the iPad, which does a great job. In fact, I no longer have any need to print off PDFs – I just open such documents on the iPad. Others are also finding the iPad very good for reading PDFs.
  5. Backlit screen means I can read without having to switch any lights on. This means I don’t disturb M if I wake early and feel like reading in bed.
  6. Navigation is simple and quick. On the Kobo the need to click, click and then click again to get to relevant menus can be annoying at times.
  7. Page turns on the iPad are very easy and intuitive – a light touch on the right of the screen for the next page, or the left for the previous page. This is contrasted with the Kobo button, which requires a bit of pressure to activate. The clicking noise the Kobo button makes can also be mildly irritating for others in the room.
  8. Ability to set bookmarks in the iPad ebook apps. While the Kobo remembers which page you got up to, that’s the extent of its bookmarking capacity. If you let someone have a look at your Kobo and they flick through the particular book, you lose your page. Because I was showing the Kobo to friends, family and colleagues, this got a bit wearing after a while. (also related to points 6 and 7 above.)
  9. Battery life - ~10 hours – is quite adequate for a day’s reading. It’s easy enough to charge the iPad up overnight.
  10. I am finding that I just want to read, and read, and keep reading… Mind you this is not iPad specific, I had the same impulse with the Kobo. I am assuming this is due to the novelty factor, and will fade eventually.

Negatives
iPad ereader

  1. Distractions. Being able to connect to the Internet means that I can veer off to look things up (definitions, more information about a place, person, event, concept). Playing games with others and receiving an alert that the other person has made their move and it’s now my turn – right when I am in the middle of a juicy bit. (I suppose I could turn the alerts off.)
  2. Backlit screen means that I find it very unpleasant to read in sunlight. Even bright lighting indoors can be a problem – if you hold the screen just so, the light can reflect off it, and can be distracting.
  3. Battery life is definitely not as good as the Kobo, which can go up to 2 weeks without needing a charge.
  4. Content, lack of. I seem to be reading a lot more “classic” titles, as the availability of titles continues to be an issue for us in Australia. Project Gutenberg titles, which were not attractive to me on a desktop-bound computer screen, are suddenly very good and valid reading choices. The most frustrating thing is when something is available on Amazon but not available to Australians.
  5. Weight. It’s not a big deal, but the iPad can be quite heavy. I don’t find it comfortable to hold in one hand while reading. The Kobo on the other hand is very light and pleasant to hold – and won’t cause injury if you fall asleep while reading in bed and drop it on your face. The iPad could give you a black eye!

Having said all that, I am still looking forward to receiving my replacement Kobo. Its lightness, the lack of distractions (all you can do with it is read), and the fact that eInk is very comfortable on the eyes are all huge positives for me. I expect I will still be using the iPad, for Amazon material and PDFs. Talk about spoilt for choice!

Roundup

Published on 23 July 2010 in Friday. 0 Comments

Taking a leaf out of LiberryDwarf’s blog (figuratively speaking anyway).

One Good Thing: Going to Melbourne and meeting up with some of my favourite tweeps. Lovely to catch up with you all!

The reason for the trip was a library leadership conference, and so I also got to meet a number of library managers from around Australia and New Zealand, including a number of Big WigsUniversity Librarians. (For those who may not know, those of us who work in university libraries aren’t necessarily university librarians. In fact the term is a title and usually refers to the Uber Boss of the university library. The rest of us are usually just plain academic librarians.) It was good to hear that many of the issues I am working on in my role are common to other university libraries, and definitely good to swap stories, tips and compare our practices. A few of us amused ourselves by bumping iPhones (and Androids) to share our contacts.

View from hotel windowOne Bad Thing: The Melbourne trip was very short, and I spent most of my time in and around the hotel where the conference was held. This meant no book shopping at all!

On the other hand, I had my iPad and managed to do quite a bit of reading in the evenings between and after meals and social events. Because there was no wi-fi (pfft) in the hotel I didn’t have any other distractions.

One Thing I Learned: If there was a theme to the conference, it was this: the (university) library is in a state of transition. This was expressed in a number of different ways by the speakers: 1) we need to break the boundaries of the library, 2) the comfortable times are over, and 3) we need to keep our eyes open, and be ready for opportunities to stay relevant. This wasn’t news to me, but I’ve come away from the conference with lots to think about.

Picture shows the scene from my hotel room. Inner-city Melbourne. It was cold and wet while I was there.