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Your Turn Friday
November 16, 2007
First off, thanks for all the great suggestions yesterday. Keep them coming. I'm online checking them all out and then I'll make a special calendar from PhotoShop. The talents I'm discovering in myself are mindboggling.
So, here it is, another Friday and you'll be able to tell me what you've been reading this week. But first, my pick of the week is a little different from my norm.
I've always wanted to try an e-book, but without a reader, I was out of luck. Then I heard about a new book by Victoria Alexander. HarperCollins was kind enough to send it to me and I could read it on my computer. Now, I never was fond of just reading on my computer, but I was assured this would be different. So, I fired up the laptop and crawled into bed (where it's nice and comfy to read).
Never having read a book online, I was delighted to see that it looked like an actual book and when you click on the pages, they turn. It's looks so cool (ok, I'm easily impressed). It was actually very easy to read, but the most delightful part was opening the book to chapter one and seeing a video screen. When you click on it, Victoria starts explaining the background of the story and then tells you to "go read" which I found myself anxious to do. About 20 pages later, Victoria is back with an update. What fun! It was like having a friend who already read the book read it along with you.
The glitches I found were more to do with technical stuff than the book itself. To me, the highlighter wasn't very easy to use. I had trouble navigating it and the very light pink color was difficult for me to see on the page. Maybe a bright yellow might work better. You could put notes on the page, but you could only find them again by going page by page. It would have been nice to have somewhere you could view all the notes and what pages they were on. Some print was off, but that could have been fixed by the time the book was made available for purchase. Basically, nothing I couldn't live with.
The extras were neat. You could pick how you wanted the pages to turn (regular book, slide across), adjust the speed of the turn (I picked slow because I enjoyed watching it...once again, easily amused) and make the background behind the book solid so it was easier to read (thank goodness because I have tulips as my wallpaper and it was very distracting).
Now, about the book, Lady Amelia's Secret Lover. Lady Amelia Hathway has been married to Robert for six years and feels there is something missing from her marriage. She tries to talk to her husband, but it appears he isn't taking her seriously enough. Lady Amelia announces she will take a lover and her husband agrees. This enchanting story will charm you with Victoria's signature way of making her heroine's schemes make sense in a strange way that has you cheering for them.
At first I though $3.99 was a lot for basically a novella that you couldn't hold in your hand, but after being in Starbucks and watching people fork over big bucks for something that was going to be gone in 15 minutes made me realize that this book can be read again and again, so it is more of an entertainment investment. The downside is that I wanted to share this with others, but unlike a real book, I don't plan on borrowing anyone my laptop so they can read it.
Now share your reads for the week by leaving a comment. (Problems posting? Send your comments to me and I'll get them in for you)
Bottom Line: Don't try using a real highlighter on this e-book...it's hard to get off the computer screen.
Posted by Barbara Vey on November 16, 2007 | Comments (26)
