I'd been marveling over the fact that I've made it four weeks into the year without having set foot in a bookstore--not "marveling" in a good way, mind you; it's actually a little distressing to think about!--when I realized that didn't mean I hadn't bought any books this year. They just haven't been printed-on-paper books.
One of my Christmas gifts was a Kindle Touch, and I've been excited to discover that there have been some nice improvements since the 2nd-generation Kindle I got in 2009. The touchscreen is kind of erratic sometimes and not as responsive as I'd like, but the device itself is much more compact and lighter. I don't miss the keyboard, and I really like the fact that it also holds my Audible audiobook files. All of the Kindle content I already had was ready to move onto the Touch, but you won't be surprised that I've downloaded a few more titles since I got it:
- You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
- Ghosts in the Garden: Reflections on Endings, Beginnings, and the Unearthing of Self by Beth Kephart
- What I Saw And How I Lied by Judy Blundell
I haven't read any books on the new Kindle yet, but I've listened to one Audible book on it so far (Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline), and preferred that experience to the Audible iPhone app.
I also got some Christmas cash--partly earmarked for BEA and Book Blogger Con, but partly just for me--and I used some of it to buy myself an iPad. I am liking it very much...but I really wasn't intending to use it as a an e-reader. However, I re-thought it and decided to use some of my iTunes gift card balance (also boosted by Christmas) to buy a few iBooks. I haven't read these yet either:
I'm interested to see how the e-reading experience compares between the two devices. (I'm afraid I might like the iPad better, to be honest, but we shall see...)
I think that my reading this month may be setting a pattern for 2012:
- a book for Shelf Awareness
- a book for BlogHer Book Club (The Underside of Joy, by Sere Prince Halverson)
- a book for a blog tour (The Western Lit Survival Kit, by Sandra Newman)
- an audiobook for myself (Ready Player One)
- a print book for myself (A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Faith, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown, by Julia Scheeres, which was one of my 2011 also-rans)
I don't think the book club/tour slots will be occupied every month, and that should make more room for "for myself" reading. Having said that...February's priority reading is the Biography/Memoir short list for the Indie Lit Awards! I've read one of the five--Bossypants, by Tina Fey--already, but I still have four more:
And a couple of months down the road, closer to their publication dates, I'm looking forward to cracking open a couple of galleys that popped up in my mail this month:- Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (bought in audio)
- I Pray Hardest When I'm Being Shot At by Kyle Garret (provided by publisher)
- Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal by Conor Grennan (provided by publisher)
- Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading by Nina Sankovitch (bought as Kindle e-book)--I started reading this one last night
So have you read--or bought--any good books lately? How has your reading year started off?
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