Look what I got...

I had a bit of a splurge on Oxfam's online second hand shop (which is brilliant by the way) and I got Under Milk Wood, read by Richard Burton. On tape. Tape - what was I thinking? I don't think I've bought one since that East 17 single when I was 10. I can't even remember the last time I bought a CD for god's sake. Hope we've still got a tape player in the house somewhere...

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Posted via email from Lauren's posterous

Poll finds 20% interested in getting a Kindle some

via guardian.co.uk

Some of the comments in this article are spot on if you ask me:

"Too expensive - and far more likely to become obsolete than a book."

"I look at a computer screen all day long...why would I read a book on it."

"It's too big and ugly looking and on top of that it seems pricey. Maybe a couple generations down the line it'll be worth it, especially once I'm done reading the thousands of books I have got already."

"Call me old-fashioned. Love the feel of a book, the excitement of putting a new hardback on the shelves. Lending to a friend. Taking a Kindle to bed just seems wrong."

Posted via web from lauren's posterous

Amazon mulls in-book advertising on Kindle

via revolutionmagazine.com

'Amazon is hoping to further monetise content on its Kindle ebook reader, revealing plans to place ads within the electronic books it publishes....The ads, which will be related to content in the book, such as ads for a restaurant when a character in a novel is dining out, may be in the form of one or a few descriptive advertising words, pictures, or symbols, which direct the reader to a website when an internet connection is available.'

I don't think anyone would be happy about being hit with ads while they're reading...

Posted via web from lauren's posterous

Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian

via guardian.co.uk

The Open library attempts to bring together the printed word and the electronic word with a web page for every book

Posted via web from lauren's posterous

E-readers - friend or foe of the bookworm?

Some interesting chat about e-readers on the Beeb this week - an article by Michael Fitzpatrick here and a video of Jeff Bezos (Amazon founder) talking about the Kindle 2 here if you're interested...

Twittering a whole book? Really?

The author RN Morris is serialising his crime novel A Gentle Axe through social networking site Twitter.
Apparently the 'Twitterisation' is only a slightly abridged version of the full novel but I can't help but wonder who on earth would want to read a novel in 144 character chunks?

Alex Holroyd, press officer at Faber, Morris' publishers told The Bookseller: “His intention is to do the whole thing online, although it will depend on feedback and interest. It’s a bit of an experiment – he is already a keen blogger and has quite a presence on the net, so we are hoping it will transfer over.”

Sounds like a bit of a PR stunt to me, featuring the much talked-about buzzword of the day 'Twitter'...which I too was briefly conned into thinking was the future, before realising it was mildly diverting and kind of useful, but not the earth-shattering technological revelation it's made out to be...

I had a look at Mr Morris' Twitters - as a PR stunt it doesn't seem to be working that well, so far he's got just over 200 followers, a low number in Twitter terms, but then perhaps this is a literary experiment rather than attempt to court the press with a gimmick...

The benefit of reading a novel 144 characters at a time I suppose is that you really get to focus on the words, what they mean, the subtext behind them. The process also displaces you as a reader, making what would otherwise be a normal text strange - each individual line is rendered in a completely different light by being Twittered - "But what did they know of the cost to her soul, or of the tears she had shed over the years?". But then again, you have to wait another hour to get the next few words and how can you remember what came before and get engrossed in the plot in the same way you would if you could read the text normally?

I don't think the novel and Twitter are going to best friends - to be honest, I can't see much replacing the book. In the printed paperback, literature has found an amazing format that has stayed almost unchanged for decades, and for good reason too - its perfect. I can't imagine reading any other way - although I would secretly love to test out e readers although part of me would feel like I was betraying my books...