Having stumbled across Cozy little book journal's subblog (is that a word?) My Shakespeare Year, I spent much of yesterday afternoon and evening reading it. Her aim was to read all Shakespeare's plays in a year (nine months actually). By the way, I love these crazy goals. Reading the whole Encyclopedia Britannica, obeying all Biblical commands for a year, cooking your way through Julia Child, going a year without buying anything new...the Extreme New Year's Resolution genre. The closest I ever came was the year I decided I was only going to read fiction by women. Non-fiction wasn't subject to the same restriction. And I believe I did, although I may have given myself a dispensation if Terry Pratchett published something new.
Sadly, Mary Beatnik ran out of steam midway through the year, but I still salute her. She read 22 of them, including several of the very obscure ones. And I enjoyed her blog, with it's Wordles and Lego and sock monkey Scenes from Shakespeare, and have put a hold on a book she reviewed: Shakespeare saved my life: 10 years in Solitary with the Bard, by Laura Bates.
I'm also reading Bossypants by Tina Fey, which is rather scattershot, but very funny (duh). We've also downloaded the Kindle app, so we can get Dirty Politics as an e-book. It's cheaper than the print, which most people think is the way it should be. Not me - I'm a librarian. I know that the argument that it costs so much less to produce is absolute horsefeathers. An academic (I'll call him Todd) recommended we buy a particular book last week, and when I checked it and compared the print price and the electronic price, I choked and ordered the print. The email exchange then went:
Me: Ordered a print copy. The electronic price was horrifying for a book published in 1998.
Todd: I know! The same price as the paperback!!
Me: Ha! That's for individuals. For a library, for multiple users, it was more than 4 times the print price! [360 USD, if you're interested.]
Todd: WHAT???!!!*(&(_($%^%$^!!!*
*Todd's actual response has been amplified for dramatic effect.
I love books, I love the smell, the feel, the sight of a bookshelf filled with books I have read, or have yet to read. But I am using a Kindle to read in bed, because I can make the writing nice and big. SO far however I've mostly only bought books I already own in print...Shakespeare's plays aren't that hard to read are they? Hmm...
ReplyDeleteI have a kobo which sprung a leak last year unfortunately, but we've just downloaded the kindle app for iPad (so we can read Dirty Politics!). I bought the kobo so I could borrow ebooks from the library, but the system the public libraries use is blitheringly awful - much better for academic libraries. but then you're reading academic books...
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