The Printed Page

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

If you’re new to Mailbox Monday welcome! Thank you to everyone who stops by Mailbox Monday. Whether you comment or visit I appreciate your taking the time to drop in.

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Mystery ~ Killer Summer by Ridley Pearson (new-to-me author/Authors on the Web) (Claimed by Kaye)

Sun Valley, Idaho—playground of the wealthy and politically connected—is home to an annual wine auction that attracts high rollers from across the country, and Blaine County Sheriff Walt Fleming is the one who must ensure it goes off without a hitch. The world’s most elite wine connoisseurs have descended on Sun Valley to taste and bid on the world’s best wines, including three bottles claimed to have been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams. With sky-high prices all but guaranteed for these historic items, it’s no wonder a group of thieves is out to steal them. Walt is responsible for all aspects of the glitzy event, from security of the dignitaries to the physical safety of the auction site to the transportation and safeguard of the wines themselves.

Walt is enjoying a rare afternoon of freedom, fly-fishing with his nephew, Kevin, when a passing truck catches his eye— his suspicions throwing him headlong into the discovery of a complicated plan to steal the rare wine. When a bomb detonates just as the auction revs up, the investigation explodes as well, pulling Walt in a dozen different directions. It seems Walt is caught in the middle of a heist of epic proportions—and not the heist he had prepared for—all orchestrated by the ingenious mind of Christopher Cantell, a man who appears to have covered everything, including the way Walt’s own sheriff’s office will react.

Mystery/Horror(?) ~ Abandon By Blake Crouch (new-to-me author/publicist) (Claimed by Crystal)

On Christmas Day in 1893, every man, woman and child in a remote gold mining town disappeared, belongings forsaken, meals left to freeze in vacant cabins; and not a single bone was ever found. One hundred thirteen years later, two backcountry guides are hired by a history professor and his journalist daughter to lead them into the abandoned mining town so that they can learn what happened. With them is a psychic, and a paranormal photographer—as the town is rumored to be haunted. A party that tried to explore the town years ago was never heard from again. What this crew is about to discover is that twenty miles from civilization, with a blizzard bearing down, they are not alone, and the past is very much alive.

Suspense ~ Relentless by Dean Koontz (Kindle eBook; not available for Read It Forward)

Bestselling author Cullen Cubby Greenwich is mortified when Shearman Waxx, the nation’s premier literary critic, savages his work. Cubby manages to find the syphilitic swine at Roxie’s Bistro in Newport Beach, Calif., where the author’s six-year-old prodigy son nearly pees by accident on Waxx in the restaurant’s men’s room. In retaliation, Waxx threatens Cubby with doom and gets things started nicely by blowing up his house. With almost superhuman ease, the book critic keeps track of Cubby and his family as they flee for their lives.

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What books came into your house last week? Don’t forget to leave a link to your Mailbox post or a list of books if you don’t have a blog.

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GIVEAWAY!! I’m giving away one copy each of Beneath A Marble Sky and Beside A Burning Sea. Enter here. Open till Tuesday, 6/30/09, midnight MST.

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Read It Forward details

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If you enjoy Mailbox Monday Vote It Up @ BookBlips

Title: Easy on the Eyes Author/website: Jane Porter 352 pages Publisher: 5 Spot Publication date: July ’09 Genre: Contemporary/women’s fiction While I enjoyed this book it was definitely predicable and cliched which is a bit unusual for Ms. Porter’s book. It read like a ‘contract obligation/deadline’ book. From the start I knew exactly how this story would play out and what the ending would be. I really never warmed up to Tiana like I have some of her other leading ladies. This one goes to the bottom of my favorite Jane Porter books list. Throw it in the beach bag and enjoy a poolside drink along with some light summer reading

At 38, Tiana Tomlinson has made it. America adores her as one of the anchors of America Tonight, a top-rated nightly entertainment and news program. But even with the trappings that come with her elite lifestyle, she feels empty. Tina desperately misses her late husband Keith, who died several years before. And in a business that thrives on youth, Tina is getting the message that her age is starting to show and certain measures must be taken if she wants to remain in the spotlight. It doesn’t help that at every turn she has to deal with her adversary–the devilishly handsome, plastic surgeon to the stars, Michael Sullivan. But a trip away from the Hollywood madness has consequences that could affect the rest of her life.

Warning: this post has photos so it may be slow to load and I’m a bit long winded here.

Reading and books are all about personal preference. Some readers prefer hard backs, others mass market paperbacks, yet still others prefer trade sized soft covers. And some of us prefer eBooks. I know a lot of readers have reservations about eBook readers but I’m super excited that my new Amazon Kindle DX arrived Tuesday. I’m not going to try a sell you on an Amazon Kindle or any other eBook reader but I will tell why I love mine and why it makes sense for me.

First some background: A little over a year ago I ordered my first generation Kindle (from here on referred to as K1; pictured next to the DX in this post). I waited months to order after Amazon first released the Kindle because I was very hesitant wondering if I’d like reading on one. And of course there was no way to test drive one before buying unless someone in your city would let you take a peek as Amazon doesn’t have brick and mortar stores (you can now do this as part of their ‘See a Kindle in Your City’) . Eventually I bit the bullet and ordered deciding if I didn’t like it I’d return it. When it arrived last May I couldn’t wait to open the box and see what the fuss was about. Well it was love from the git go and I’ve never looked back. Within minutes of having the K1 out of it’s box I had bought, downloaded and was reading my first eBook. Let me say reading on an eBook reader is vastly differently from reading on a computer. Like most everyone I dislike spending any great amount of time reading on my computer for a variety of reasons. Not so with my K1. Just like I can spend hours immersed in a paper book I can spend the same hours immersed in reading on my Kindle. It’s such a different experience from reading on a computer that I have trouble describing it.

Many readers are attached to their paper books. They love the smell, the texture, the feel of a book. They love to turn the pages. They love to see them sitting on the shelves, surrounding them, scattered over table tops and piled on chairs. This is where I differ from a majority of readers. What’s important to me isn’t the delivery method but the story. As many of you know I don’t keep my books preferring to pass them along, again for a variety of reasons. I’m not sentimental about my books but I’m sentimental about the lives of the characters and the worlds I travel to. Rarely do I find myself re-reading a book I’ve previously read but if I feel the tug to do so I simply reload it on the Kindle and I’m off and reading. No longer do I need to find another copy as my Kindle library is stored at Amazon and I have access 24/7/365.

First some pictures and then I’ll tell you more about my eBook experience.

K1 (left) and KDX (right) side by side. There is a noticable size difference.

My K1 fits inside the reading screen on my KDX.

My KDX and a regular size hard back book.

A width comparison of my KDX and a hard back book. Notice how thin the KDX is and it holds 3,500 books!

A partial page from a Kindle book. The fuzziness is on my part, not the KDX. Reading on a Kindle (eInk) is like watching a HD TV.

A book cover on my KDX. The graphics are so clear on the KDX that you can see the fine details such as the silhouette of the woman standing on the rocks. Actually if you get really, really close to your computer screen you can see her.

A Kindle screen saver. There are several preloaded on the Kindle.

Why I love my Kindle and why it makes sense for me:

1) First off you notice a size different between my K1 and KDX. I was just about the hit the ‘buy’ key at Amazon for a K2 (second generation Kindle) when they announced a new Kindle would be coming soon. Not knowing what the ‘new’ was I waited. I choose to go ‘bigger’ for several reasons. One – the graphics are so much better on the KDX. We’re traveling in late fall to Australia and New Zealand and the KDX is perfect for all sorts of really graphic heavy books such as travel, cook, computer, text, etc. I actually took a piece of paper measured out what the size of the KDX would be before buying so that I’d know what I was getting into. Two – it’s actually easier to hold, for me, then my K1 was. With my wrist problems I do better with larger than smaller books. So I figured it’d be the same with the Kindle. Though the KDX is a bit heavier than the K1 that is to be expected but the difference is negligible. Three – all Kindles have adjustable font sizes which is nice for us baby boomers. So bigger screen, bigger fonts – score for me. I’m a person who wears glasses with progressive lenses and last winter I had to go to wearing glasses specifically for computer work and reading. Why make things any harder than they are already.

2) Price point/availability of bestsellers: Most best sellers are $9.99 and all bestsellers come in a Kindle edition. Costco can’t beat that price. Even if a best seller comes out a higher price point they usually drop in price after the first week. When Kindles first came out you couldn’t pre-order a bestseller and now you can. Better yet with pre-ordering it’s delivered directly to your Kindle the next time you fire up the Whispernet service. At first you had to wait until the actual publication date and now you don’t for several top authors. If you absolutely can’t wait for the price to drop with Amazon’s 30-day price guarantee you can still get the difference back and put it toward more books. Instant gratification can be hard to beat.

3) Taking a unlimited supply of books on vacation/travel and no more heavy luggage. When we took our annual two week vacation to Mexico last December I loaded up the my K1 with about 25-30 books. I plow through books when setting pool or beach side. I was set for hours of reading enjoyment without the worry about running out of books to read. Hunting down English language paperbacks in a foreign country and paying a king’s ransom for them isn’t my idea of a good time and I should know as I’ve been there, done that. And having a variety of reading material at my fingertips was nice. If something didn’t strike my fancy I could simply move on to reading something else. My KDX has the capacity to hold 3,500 books and that’s on the Kindle itself. Just think what my Amazon library will be some day.

4) Easier to hold/read than a mass market paperback. I have tendinitis and carpel tunnel in my wrists. Holding a mass market paperback can become painful. I dislike breaking spines or otherwise causing injury to a book. No problem with my KDX. I can prop it up on something (my legs) or hold it in my hands without any problems. Plus I prop it against my computer at work and no one has any idea that I’m reading between answering the email inbox. Also having a selection of font sizes is a god send as I get older. Mass market paperbacks can become hard on the eyes after a while. On the Kindle I simply change to a font size to accommodate my reading and I’m good to go. I know others that change to a larger font at night as their eyes tire and change in back during the day.

5) Readers with disabilities. I touched on this briefly with my tendinitis and carpel tunnel but think about others who have physical challenges much more severe than mine. Due to features incorporated in the K2 and the KDX such a font size and text-to-speech it opens up a world of reading to those who had limited options.

6) Saves me money. Right about now you’re all asking how so? How many times have you purchased a book and it turned out you didn’t like it, didn’t finish it, thought it was a waste of money. Come on raise your hands. We’ve all been there a time or two or three. So with the Kindle sample chapters feature, at no cost, you can download and read usually the first 3-4 chapters of a book. If you like the book, great you can purchase right where you left off. Didn’t it like then you didn’t waste any money did you? Pretty good math if you ask me. I’ve saved myself more than once from buying a book I wouldn’t have finished. Another great thing about sample chapters is they free me up to try new authors or genres. My reading horizons have expanded with my Kindle.

7) Libraries. I love libraries. As a child I remember fondly visiting our log cabin, two room, library. But libraries have begun to frustrate me. I lived many, many years in a large metropolitan area that had a wonderful library system. But several years ago due to employment circumstances we moved to a much smaller area with a then adequate library system. In the last 13 years the area I live in has experienced unprecedented growth but sadly our library system is underfunded and not able to meet the demands of it’s users. Hold lists are long and sometimes the book is out in paperback before your number comes up. Our system doesn’t have the funds to buy all the popular books so they must make choices. I’ve gone to get a book from the library and they don’t own copies – sad. The book loan system is a bit funky. Some of the books I want are at libraries across the state and not part of the loan system so consequently I can’t get them.

7) Finally a laundry list of reasons why (some of these I’ve touched on already): I don’t keep my books, preferring to pass along the ones I have to fellow readers. So no more cluttered shelves. I never buy hardbacks but now I get bestsellers within 30 seconds. I can’t stand the beat up copies from the used bookstore or the abused, broken books from the library. No more sticky, icky books. I’m not attached to reading a paper book. I don’t need to hold a book to enjoy the story within. I never lose my place, like a CD, you pick up right where you left off, without using a bookmark. I can shop for books right from my Kindle. I did so that the airport one time. A book came out right before leaving the US for Mexico so sitting in the Phoenix airport I logged on, shopped and had a great book all within a minute. Can’t beat that. Amazon backups my library so once I’ve purchase a book it’s mine. Saves trees. Light weight, convenient.

I could go on and on but I’ll stop now as I’ve gone on long enough. Suffice it to say I’m a fan.

There are several great discussions about eBook readers all over the Internet. I came across this one at Historical Boys a blog by C.W. Gortner. He posted his thoughts about eBooks personal and in general. My advice to authors after reading his post – whether or not you personally embrace eBooks please allow your publishing house to include an eBook version along with all the other book releases. Your sales and exposure to a reading audience will increase.

I’m a very visual person and love beautiful, or interesting, cover art. It entices, and invites, me to stop and take a peek instead of walking right on by. This week’s Cover Attraction is: Title: BlackHills Author: Nora Roberts Release date: July ’09

A summer at his grandparents’ South Dakota ranch is not eleven-year-old Cooper Sullivan’s idea of a good time. But things are a bit more bearable now that he’s discovered the neighbor girl, Lil Chance, and her homemade batting cage. Even horseback riding isn’t as awful as Coop thought it would be. Each year, with Coop’s annual summer visit, their friendship deepens from innocent games to stolen kisses, but there is one shared experience that will forever haunt them: the terrifying discovery of a hiker’s body.

As the seasons change and the years roll, Lil stays steadfast to her dreams of becoming a wildlife biologist and protecting her family land, while Coop struggles with his father’s demand that he attend law school and join the family firm. Twelve years after they last walked together hand in hand, fate has brought them back to the Black Hills when the people and things they hold most dear need them most.

An investigator in New York, Coop recently left his fastpaced life to care for his aging grandparents and the ranch he has come to call home. Though the memory of his touch still haunts her, Lil has let nothing stop her dream of opening the Chance Wildlife Refuge, but something . . . or someone . . . has been keeping a close watch. When small pranks and acts of destruction escalate into the heartless killing of Lil’s beloved cougar, recollections of an unsolved murder in these very hills have Coop springing to action to keep Lil safe. Lil and Coop both know the natural dangers that lurk in the wild landscape of the Black Hills. But now they must work together to unearth a killer of twisted and unnatural instincts who has singled them out as prey.

I gravitated away from the historical fiction I’ve been posting the past several weeks. This cover caught my eye months ago when the release date was announced. I’ve been a Nora Roberts fan for years and always look forward to her newest mainstream novel (or J.D. Robb In Death installment). I love the shades of blue, the pale moon and trees with the stunning cougar face. ♦♦♦

What’s your favorite cover attraction this week? Don’t forget to leave a link to your Cover Attraction post.

From Debbie at Wrighty Reads and Trin at Bloody Bad, a Book Blog

From Ladybug at Escape In A Book and Jacqueline at The Eclectic Book Hoarder

from Molly at My Cozy Book Nook

from Wendy at We Read…

Thank you ladies. I truly appreciate your thinking of The Printed Page. Please visit their fabulous blogs.

The pretty links in the picture don’t work so I’ve set them up for you.

Enter the sweepstakes

For more information on Sworn to Silence or Linda Castillo visit Sworn to Silence

Burn This Book PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the World Edited by Toni Morrison Published by HarperStudio May 2009; $16.99 US; 978-0-06-177400-3 BURN THIS BOOK was born out of a speech last April that Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison gave at the PEN International Festival dinner. Morrison observed that night, “A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind; they are its necessity.” As she paid tribute to the difficulties and challenges writers face in many parts of the world, she also reflected on the steep price we all pay when voices are silenced. This powerful, incantatory talk sparked a notion for a book of essays that would explore the issue and impact of censorship in the world.

Published in conjunction with the PEN American Center, Toni Morrison’s speech now opens this collection of extraordinary voices from around the world: John Updike (in one of his final pieces), David Grossman, Francine Prose, Pico Iyer, Russell Banks, Paul Auster, Orhan Pamuk, Salman Rushdie, Ed Park, and Nadine Gordimer. The writers represent Nobel and other prize winners and they include writers who have had first-hand experience of censorship and its consequences.

Why protect free speech? What is the power of the word? The approaches they all take to these questions are as varied as their works of literature. Here, the personal and the political mingle and collide; philosophical reflection is partnered with the conundrums of experience. Across the pages there is a rush of ideas, emotions and perspectives that disallow assumptions to stand or acquiesce to any force, whether external or internal.

About the Editor: Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of many novels, including, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, and most recently, A Mercy. She has also received the national Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction.

About PEN: PEN is the leading voice for literature and a major force for free expression and the unhampered exchange of ideas and opinions worldwide. Founded in 1921, it is the world’s oldest ongoing human rights organization, and it currently has 144 PEN centers in 102 countries dedicated to protecting the right of all humanity to create and communicate freely. By mobilizing the world’s most influential literary voiced and an international network of writers, readers, and human rights supporters, PEN makes a difference every day in the lives of writers who are facing persecution around the world. For more information visit PEN

For more information please visit Burn This Book

For those of you who stop by on a regular basis you know that I’ve been around less over the past several weeks because of carpel tunnel and tendinitis in my right wrist. Well I’m happy to say that taking the time off has been good the wrist but not for the book blogging soul. As I’ve seen major improvement in my wrist there are some blogging things I’ve neglected and want to take care of so the posts will start picking up again. Yay! Not to say I’m totally back in action but I’m going to try and be around a bit more than I have been. But I must say all the time has been spent reading (which I’ve loved) so it did get put to good use.

If you’re new to Mailbox Monday welcome! Thank you to everyone who stops by Mailbox Monday. Whether you comment or visit I appreciate your taking the time to drop in.

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week (checked out library books don’t count, eBooks & audio books do). Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

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Fiction ~ No One You Know by Michelle Richmond (new-to-me author/Librarything)

Ellie Enderlin has never recovered from the unsolved murder of her sister, Lila, a Stanford math prodigy, some 20 years earlier. The day her sister went missing has become “the touchstone from which all other events unfurled.” Compounding the tragedy is the fact that her English professor, the person to whom she confided some of her most intimate feelings about her shy, private sister, has turned the tragedy into a best-selling true-crime book. To have those moments turned into fodder for the public’s voyeuristic appetite has felt like another violation. When Ellie, a world traveler and coffee buyer, meets up unexpectedly with the brilliant mathematician implicated in her sister’s murder, she sees it as a way to wrest back control of her own narrative and solve the crime.

Fiction ~ The Embers by Hyatt Bass (new-to-me author/author contact)

As Emily Ascher plans her wedding, years after her older brother Thomas died in his teens, she still talks to him and wants to be married where his ashes were scattered. The grief felt by Thomas’ now-divorced parents, Joe and Laura, is compounded by Joe’s guilt for his part in his son’s death. Flashbacks work forward from 1992, revealing family relationships: the ongoing mother-daughter conflict between Laura and Emily, Joe’s ups and downs as a playwright and actor and his affair that ends the marriage, and eventually the circumstances of Thomas’ death.

Fiction ~ While My Sister Sleeps by Barbara Delinksy (Kindle eBook; not available for Read It Forward)

An Olympic marathon contender, self-centered Robin Snow often rubs her younger sister, Molly, the wrong way. After many years in her sister’s shadow, Molly takes out her resentment with petty actions, such as refusing to accompany Robin on a run. Fatefully, Robin has a heart attack while training and falls into a coma. As Robin’s condition fails to improve, Delinsky digs tediously into the family’s woes: Molly’s touchy relationship with Robin’s ambitious reporter ex-boyfriend; middle son Chris’s dealings with a would-be blackmailer; mother Kathryn’s trouble coming to terms with Robin’s dire prognosis.

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What books came into your house last week? Don’t forget to leave a link to your Mailbox post or a list of books if you don’t have a blog.

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GIVEAWAY!! I’m giving away one copy each of Beneath A Marble Sky and Beside A Burning Sea. Enter here. Open till Tuesday, 6/30/09, midnight MST.

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Read It Forward details

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If you enjoy Mailbox Monday Vote It Up @ BookBlips

Mr. Shors newest novel, Dragon House (which I loved!), will be released in September. To celebrate it’s upcoming release I’m giving away one copy each of Beneath A Marble Sky and Beside A Burning Sea. Enter here. Open till Tuesday, 6/30/09, midnight MST.

Shors’s spirited debut novel tells the story of the eldest daughter of the 17th-century emperor who built the Taj Mahal. From her self-imposed exile, Jahanara recalls growing up in the Red Fort; the devotion her parents, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, had for each other; and the events that took place during the construction of the fabulous monument to their love. Although Jahan is the emperor and has many wives, Mumtaz (he calls her Taj) is his soul mate, a constant companion and wise political consultant. She even travels with him into battle, where she eventually dies giving birth to their 14th child. Fortunately, she has the foresight to begin preparing her favorite daughter, Jahanara, by instructing the girl in the arts of influence and political strategy. Thus the young woman is able to pick up where her savvy mother left off. From then on it is Jahanara who advises the emperor, often instead of her dreamy brother, Dara, who is the rightful heir to the throne. It is she who helps with construction of the magnificent mausoleum for Mumtaz’s remains and who falls in love with its architect, Isa, a man whom she can never marry. And it is she who leads a failed effort to defend the throne against a coup by her evil brother, Aurangzeb. With infectious enthusiasm and just enough careful attention to detail, Shors give a real sense of the times, bringing the world of imperial Hindustan and its royal inhabitants to vivid life.

It’s the fall of 1942, and the U.S. hospital ship Benevolence is cruising the waters of the South Pacific when it is torpedoed by the Japanese. Only nine people survive, and they eventually wash up on an island: the captain Joshua, and his wife, Isabelle, a nurse; Isabelle’s sister Annie and a woman named Scarlet, both nurses; Ratu, a teenage Fijian stowaway; Jake, a black engineer; Nathan and Roger, two officers; and Akira, a wounded Japanese soldier. The group knows it’s only a matter of time before the Japanese war machine reaches their shores, so they valiantly prepare for battle. As they do so, each man and woman struggles with his or her own personal demons. Add to that Annie’s fascination with Akira, and the fact that one survivor is secretly radioing the Japanese from deep in the jungle. Following his well-received debut, Beneath a Marble Sky (2004), Shors’ second novel is an astounding work. Poetic and cinematic as it illuminates the dark corners of human behavior, it is destined to be this decade’s The English Patient (1992).