Wednesday Midday Links
The Carl Brandon Society is a literary organization that supports writers of color in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres. They are holding a fundraiser for the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship Fund. People can enter a drawing by donating a dollar and win an eReader — we’ve got Nooks, Kobo Readers, and an Alex eReader up for grabs. Each one will come pre-loaded with a lot of amazing fiction and poetry as well.
The Carl Brandon Society, an organization dedicated to racial and ethnic diversity in speculative fiction, is holding a prize drawing of five eReaders to benefit the Butler Scholarship, a fund that sends two emerging writers of color to the Clarion writers workshops annually.
In keeping with the Society's support of literature from and about people of color, the prizes include five eReaders: two Barnes & Noble Nooks, two Kobo Readers, and one Alex eReader from Spring Design. Each eReader will come pre-loaded with books, short stories and essays by writers of color from the speculative fiction field. Writers include: N. K. Jemisin, Nisi Shawl, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Terence Taylor, Ted Chiang, Shweta Narayan, Chesya Burke, Moondancer Drake, Saladin Ahmed, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz and more.
The drawing's tickets will cost one dollar US ($1) and can be purchased at http://carlbrandon.org/drawing.html. Entrants may purchase an unlimited number of tickets, which will be available from November 5, 2010 through November 22nd, 2010. Sales will close at 11:59PM EDT on November 22nd. Winners will be drawn randomly from a digital "hat" and announced online.
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Copia has launched but with a whimper. The Copia readers are dead according to PW. This doesn’t surprise me as the Copia line of readers kept changing. It was clear that internally the company wasn’t developing its own reader but trying to use an existing device and rebrand it with its own software. The thing that sets Copia apart from other platforms is that you can share your notes, in real time, with other readers. The limiting factor is that you all have to buy books from Copia and only Copia. Currently Copia works on Mac and PC and iPad. It does not work on the iTouch/iPhone. Copia uses Adobe ePub DRM so it is possible that you could buy from Copia and transfer to the book to your Sony, nook or Kobo reader. Copia would be great if a) the prices are good (and they aren’t ) and b) everyone used Copia (and they don’t).
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Kobo will be launching a gift an ebook feature which is one of my favorite features of Fictionwise. Instead of giving gift certificates, we can now give away specific books. I’ll be using this for Dear Author in the future, particularly as Kobo sells worldwide.
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Barnes and Noble is selling Spanish language ebooks. I think this is a big win. It’s too bad that BN only sells to US customers.
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A Fordham medieval professor studied a number of medieval romances.
Aspects of modern medieval romances uncovered by her inquiry include:
• self-conscious historicizing with a flagrant disregard for historical facts;
• descriptions of time that serve to wrench the reader back into the present; and
• depictions of violent sexual encounters, which are seldom found in non-medieval Harlequin romances.
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A number of reviews of the NookColor have come out and it is all basically the same. If you are looking for a color ebook reader, this is a great device, but don’t think it’s a tablet because if you do, you’ll be disappointed.
I played with the device yesterday and it’s very slick with a great screen. My worries would be the battery life and the sometimes laggy response to my finger flicks.
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The Explainer column in Slate takes on iconographic “slapping the hysteria out of people.” Apparently slapping does not bring hysterical people to their senses. Instead, it leaves hysterical people with a sore face and some bruising.
I can’t even begin to say how happy I am to be able to find some of my favorite authors in Spanish. I already found a couple of Laura Esquivel’s titles in ebook format! I am almost in tears, as stupid as it may sound. I do own her books in print, but I use my ebook reader a lot more so I am thrilled to be able to re-read them, at a whim, no matter where I am, as long as I have them stored in my gizmo. :)
Kobo sells worldwide within limits. If I go there and log into my account they check that I have a German IP and certain books will not be offered to me. But interestingly enough some books that I’m also not allowed to buy at US ebook sellers WILL be available to me in the US version…
It seems to be a matter of luck or of close supervision by the publishers ^^.
I pre-ordered a Nook Color after having an eBoowise and becoming addicted to the back light feature. (I read in bed, often late at night) It’s scheduled to arrive on the 20th and I’m looking forward to trying it out. Thanks for your thoughts–PC Magazine liked it, so Hubster might get one too. Or, if I really don’t like it, he’ll get mine and I’ll be back on the search trail.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
@Terry Odell: I adore my eBookWise. Wish it read EPUB.
er… isn’t the 18th of November a Thursday?
@Moriah Jovan: Yeah, the only reason I’m upgrading is for a broader range of content. I don’t really want to do anything but read on a reader … but I can’t break away from that back light! Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
I clicked through to the article by the Fordham medieval professor. Just a touch snarky, though she did say the modern romances gave her pleasure.
I’ve no doubt that some romance novels set in the medieval period have the features mentioned by the Fordham professor. But, is it fair to judge an entire subgenre (if it is a subgenre) on just 6 x 2 volume Harlequin anthologies from 2007? I’m not a scholar but that seems like a pretty small research sample.
Romance genres do tend to assign a certain set of conventions to a time period. A Regency Romance comes with a set of expectations for tone (generally light) and characters. Maybe Medieval romances are shaping up to do the same.
When my son was small (4-6) he would sometimes get so hyped up he couldn’t receive messages like, calm down, no throwing sand in a crowded sand box, no shrieking in church. I don’t mean one or two acts of deliberate misbehavior, I mean a cycle of overexcitement feeding on itself so he’d lost all control over his behavior.
We’d give him a sudden firm pat on the cheek. I’d call it a slap, but it was designed not to hurt. The pat would break his hyped up cycle and allow him a chance to regain self-control. It really worked.
A sudden, unexpected hand coming at your face from someone you don’t expect to slap you causes an automatic body response that shocks someone, disrupting a negative feedback loop.
But, note, the effect has nothing to do with pain. Any assault that caused any real pain would be a source, not a disruption of upset. And it also requires a loss of control that can be restored with a brief break.
This is the problem with all analysis of physical issues. What is a slap? I always assumed a slap to stop hysteria was of a different quality than a slap in anger.
I also noticed today, Amazon has a new Give as a Gift tab for Kindle books.
@Anika: I just saw that ‘Give as a Gift’ option this morning too, and I’ve been waiting for it forever (it seems like).
@Terry Odell: At this moment I have three readers (eBookWise, Kindle, and BlackBerry — heee, I consider my phone an ereader) (four if you count my Asus, which was what I bought it for, but never use it for), and I’m about to get a hand-me-down Sony 505 after I whined on Twitter, so I should be set!
For me, yes. It’s the backlight I just can’t live without. Either the eBookWise or the BlackBerry go to bed with me, but the eBookWise is so ergonomically PERFECT I wish IT did everything.
Thanks for the signal boost on the Carl Brandon drawing. It ends today, and thus far we’ve seen a really positive response. In the home stretch now! :)