Leafing Lessons #2: Embracing Your New E-reader

After the success of last week's "class" on more purposeless reading, I've decided I might just as well keep preaching my various and arcane bookish lessons at you.  It's far more easy and entertaining than doing the practical work of, you know, reviewing books I've read.  This week we'll delve into how to love your new e-reader, the gadget that maybe you thought you'd never have much less actually enjoy having.

Disclaimer:  It is possible, nay, highly likely that you will find little to no useful advice in this post, but with any luck, you will be mildly entertained.

Further disclaiming:  Once again we're enjoying frenetic changes of point of view in which the words "I" and "you" both pretty much refer to me as I give sage advice make excuses for my odd bookish behavior.  But maybe also actually you, too!  Carry on being perplexed. It's all part of the fun.

• Buy Cheap Ebooks.  Download free ones.  It's fun, it's easy, and very often, I've found, you can come by unexpectedly excellent reads on the cheap.  Deals abound - I heart Daily Cheap Reads and also when April at Good Books and Good Wine writes up her Fill Your Kindle posts.  Also, you can get lots of classics for free and then read them in a font size that won't cripple your eyesight forever. 

• Um, then read some of those books.  Sure the little cover pictures are fun to look at, but once in awhile it might befit you to read some of those excellent and exciting books taking up residence on that book buying device of yours.  Ask me how I know.

• Let not your conscience trouble you about your fresh ebook obsession.  Do you feel like a poop for holding out so long on getting an ereader only to quickly dismiss all your objections to abandoning the paper books of your youth for their e-cousins?  Fret not, just open your wallet a little wider and buy all the books, paper and plastic (?) alike!  Extra points for buying the e-book version of the paper book you already have, and vice versa, of course.  Is your obsessive tracking of the Kindle Daily Deal and the monthly $3.99 and under specials making you feel like a nutcase because you actually wake up early on the first of the month to see what new treasures await?  Additionally, do you feel occasional guilt for feeding the Amazon machine? Fear not, any money spent on books and any excitement felt about books is never wasted.  Also, everybody knows you're a nutcase already.  Just go with it.

• Slurp up a few "Read It Now" selections on NetGalley.  All the fun of reading and reviewing e-galleys before they're available to the public without that unpleasant fear of rejection or that vaguely disgusting feeling of selling yourself to publishers by talking about how you are universally loved (or, uh, not) across sixteen types of social media where you post insightful content (or, ummm, not) with stunning, nearing on robotic regularity (or...well...not). Maybe you can work up to requesting books later,  when your self-esteem has increased, and after you're caught up with all the paper ones.  Quit laughing.  I can catch up any time I want.  If I quit my job...and sleeping...and eating...  Wait, I can read and eat at the same time.  Put eating back on the menu.

• Revel in being able to turn pages with no more than your pinkie knuckle.  Do you have a serious need to peel and eat an orange but can't bear to put your book down long enough to do it?  Now you can! Just make sure you don't get any juice on your pinkie knuckle or you might find yourself trying to "turn pages" with your markedly less dexterous elbow which is mildly more challenging.

• Get in the Cloud.  And welcome to the 21st century where you can sync your reading across six different devices (or whatever) that are about 74.5555% smarter than even you can contemplate.  I mean, I've got no great love of reading books on my iPhone, but it feels good knowing that if I'm stuck waiting somewhere without a book with me (horrors!), my trusty Kindle App can save my foolish @$$ from certain boredom unless I've fallen into a scary 3G dead zone. 

• Find excuses to travel.  Then when you say things like, "I only got this thing so when I travel I don't have to lug around my weight in books just so I'll have an appropriate amount of reading options while away from home," it will no longer be total crap.  And you get to travel.  Without any lasting damage to your spinal cord.

• E-books?  Ebooks?   Are you bewildered by whether you need to use that pesky dash between your "e" and books or reader?  Me too.  You should probably use a mixture of the two and hope no one notices.  Extra points for then drawing attention to the already obvious fact that you are a dolt. 

This post brought to you by my Christmas Kindle Paperwhite, an obsession I never thought I'd have.

Now, if you wanted to recommend a few more sites where I might find decent ebooks on the cheap, that would totally not be enabling me.  That would just be a really nice thing for you to do.  Just saying.

Leafing Lessons #1: Reading Without Purpose

This morning I sat down to write a book review.  Instead out popped a tongue-in-cheekish "advice" column of my recently learned bookish lessons.  I so enjoyed writing it that I might make a feature of it.  It's likely you won't find any great new ground-breaking wisdom to enrich your blog, your life, and your reading, but with any luck both you and I will be amused, and I will remember my own good advice to myself.  Herein you will also get to enjoy the astonishing wonder of my very favorite point of view, the second person, wherein the "you" obviously refers to me but could refer to you also.  Behold the perplexing wonder of the second person! (This should also serve as an apt warning not to pen your debut novel in the second person.  Kids, only try this at home.)

Just because you bought that book for 99 cents for your Kindle doesn't mean you have to be suspicious of it.  Okay, usually it does.  We live in an age where everything "worth having"  seems to always be getting more expensive, and quickly.  Usually when you spend 99 cents on something you get what you paid for: crap.  But not always.  Sometimes you luck into something good.

A trusted book blogger is worth their weight in books (and more!).  Sometimes when you're browsing the Kindle Daily Deal and you see a book that sounds like it might be right up your alley, but you're kind of afraid because it's only 99 cents, and it might be total garbage, all you need is the trusty Book Blogger Search Engine to tap into all those who would lead you down the correct path.  With extra kudos to those who you know write a negative review of a book they didn't love once in a while, so you can be extra-confident that when they sing the praises of a book, they're totally giving it to you straight.


It's okay just to read what you want to read when you want to read it.  It's wildly liberating, actually.  At least three quarters of the book bloggers reading this who have posting schedules as long as both their arms put together, a to-review pile that takes up a few shelves, an immense list of challenges to conquer, not to mention those 16 readalongs they've signed up for are now struggling to wipe the bewildered looks off their faces.  I'm talking to you!  I see you!  I know you, fellow book blogger.  I am you.  Sometimes if you happen to start a book that you're not "supposed" to be reading and it really grabs you, just keep reading.  It will remind you of the jolly good old days when you just read books for the hell of it before you started trying to make reading into an unpaid career with all sorts of rules and schedules and deadlines to meet.  It will reboot your love of reading and maybe poke your enthusiastic inner blogger who inexplicably went missing after a year or two of gleeful blogging, leaving behind the "routine and obligation" blogger you became. 

 

It's also okay to delay going into the grocery store and sit in the parking lot with your car running like a creeper if you have only 5% of that really good book left, and you want to read it without any interruptions from anybody.  Even if it makes you late, and people start to wonder if you got lost coming home from work. It's also acceptable to only mention that you're late because you had to stop at the grocery store when your friends and family call wondering where you are.  Divulging the "creeper with a Kindle" part of the story is totally optional.  If you can't keep quiet, perhaps you'll only want to tell the true bibliophiles in your life or maybe you'll keep quiet and save the dirty details for your book blog, you big Kindle creeper, you. 

You forget this, but paranormal YA almost-romances are good for the soul and should be read on a semi-regular basis.  A few summers ago I devoured paranormal YA like it was candy, and I really like candy a lot.  I can't figure out why I stopped. Reading paranormal YA, that is, I'm still eating plenty of candy.  (Small voice mutters in the background, "See Exhibit A: Reading as Unpaid Career").  And I'll admit that maybe YA paranormal almost (and actual) romances perhaps aren't as great for everybody's soul as they are mine, but I bet there are some slightly more plot-heavy lovelies that don't require you to wade through pages of flowery, if excellent, prose and employ your many powers of deductive reasoning and just let you enjoy a story without having to do too much work.    Don't forget to read these once in a while.  Your reading doesn't always have to be so gosh durned purposeful all the time, for crying out loud.

These lessons brought to you by Angelfall by Susan Ee, which I (you?) may have purchased from Amazon for a measly 99 cents at the recommendation of several trusted book bloggers, who I was very right to trust, of course.  Sorry, it's not 99 cents anymore, but the price is still extremely reasonable, just in case you want to try it out for yourself.  Careful, though, it might just make you into a Kindle creeper like me.

Have you learned any reading lessons this week?