So, in my last post, I lamented about not posting movie, book or even my reviews of my e-reader, the nook.  So here is an all in one post.

This summer Barnes and Noble offered free classic e-book collections every week. While I had downloaded a lot of these from Project Gutenberg the books downloaded from Barnes and Noble seemed to have a little better e-book setup. My little nook now has over 300 books loaded and ready for reading at any time. I think that this has been one of my better electronic investments. I’ve been able to re-visit many of the books I read in my younger days, and I don’t even have to remember to put in a bookmark. Also Barnes and Noble has a wonderful ongoing program of free book Fridays. Every Friday is a new book. These can be old classics, new books in a series, or just other books that are offered for free. As you can tell, I’m all about free. Many books to read, and I wonder if I can get to them all.

But on the book itself. I just finished reading “King Solomon’s Mines” by H. Rider Haggard. The story was definitely dated. The treatment and understanding of non-white people was from the period the book was written, and it would not be tolerated in today’s publishing climate. Getting that out of the way, the story held my interest (even if I knew how it turns out) and I enjoyed the escape from the every day it gave me. And that got me to think of some movies with one of the heroes of this story.

King Solomon’s Mines has been made into a movie many times. Some were serious treatments of the book/story, while others were light-hearted romps. The narrator/hero of the story was Allen Quartermain. He also showed up in a movie based on a graphic novel/comic book. It was “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”. I’ve already commented on that movie, so here is the one I remember.

Back in 1985 a movie came out called “King Solomon’s Mine” and playing Mr Quartermain was Richard Chamberlain. This was the fun romp of a movie. Most people at the time did not see this as a spoof of the very successful “Raiders of the Lost Arc” but it was. Indiana Jones could have been seen as loosely based on the Allan Quartermain character, and the movie “King Solomon’s Mine” definitely played on that connection. This movie even one-upped Indy, by having its hero dragged behind a moving vehicle, however it was a train. The movie also had daring escapes and of course dreaded Germans. WWI instead of WWII Germans, but they were still there (no mention of any German troops in the book).

I really enjoyed the fun time at this movie, and I’m again reminded of the wonderful company I had when watching it. I think it is time to watch that movie again.

I remember back when “The Last Crusade” came out that we thought it would have been fun to have another Allan Quartermain spoof. That didn’t happen. Oh well.

Yes, I realize you may be getting tired of my Nook posts. But I am discovering new things about it all of the time.

The kind folks that do the programming for the Nook gave it a few updates recently. I don’t really play the games, but I did find the web browser useful in scanning my email. Don’t think I will use it to reply to email, but reading it was fine. That is not what I wanted to write about.

This summer Barnes and Noble is running a free e-book promotion. Go to a B-N store with your Nook or some other electronic gear with the free Nook reader installed, and you can get a free e-book. Since I was picking up my daughter in Fort Wayne, I stopped to get the free e-book. And then I noticed there was a coupon on my Nook. I could go up to the coffee bar and get a free 7-layer bar. Not knowing exactly what it was, I went over to find out. It was a chocolate/coconut desert bar. Very tasty. So in addition to more reading than I will ever be able to finish, I get desert with my nook. Who know what it will be next time I am in.

As far as the free book. I haven’t read it yet, I was still reading the Friday Free Ebook. Someday maybe I will buy an ebook, but not yet. 😉

And of course while visiting a B-N store, you can read ebooks for free. They even tell me that your place is saved for the next time you go in.

And I also heard that more libraries are getting into e-book lending. I think I will have a full summer of reading ahead of me.

A few years ago a movie came out and was release to critical defeat. As for myself I enjoyed the movie except for a few minor problems. I found it to be an enjoyable waste of time (just what I like in most movies).

The movie was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. One of the biggest things that bothered me was the introduction of Tom Sawyer into the movie. On top of that he was a Pinkerton agent. I kept saying to myself, why bring in that character as a detective. Didn’t make much sense to me. Of course Dorian Grey wasn’t in the original comic either, but that didn’t bother me as much.

Then I got my Nook! (Yep, another Nook post. Think I could get money to write reviews for my Nook?) I just finished a short story, from Mark Twain, that I never read or heard of before. The story was called Tom Sawyer, Detective. While he was not a Pinkerton agent, he did use observation to solve a crime. So now after the years I’ve complained about Tom Sawyer being a detective in that movie, I guess that following the path that Twain left, it isn’t that far out into left field.

There is another story that I have yet to read about Mr Sawyer and Mr. Finn called Tom Sawyer Abroad. Tom and Huck are on a balloon expedition in Africa. I guess that allows the trip to England for Tom anyway.

Just one question about the movie, if the film people actually knew about these stories: Where was Huck? 😉

I currently have around 200 books/stories on my Nook. I have read or started to read about 20 of those books/stories. I also have a number of MP3’s. So I do have a wide selection to read or listen to. I can add research books that are available. I have new authors who started by publishing free books. I have old authors whose works are now being digitally archived an made available on the internet. A wonderful array of things to keep this old mind busy.

There is no physical way that I would have been able to read the past few selections in paper. Living in rural America, our local libraries can not be expected to have complete libraries of old classic books, they can’t be expected to have all of the latest authors. And if a book is out of print? How will the get it? That doesn’t even include books that are found only on the web. Stories only found in back issues of old magazines. Nope, I would not have been able to find all of the things I’ve read.

In my lifetime, I’ve had to move a ‘library’ of books from place to place. I’ve moved, my children have moved and we all have had books. A box of 20 hardbound books is heavy. 200+ books would be almost a truckload. I can carry them in the palm of my hand. And I can and will put more books on the Nook. I’m not sure I will ever read all of them, but it will give me something to do.

And I am assuming that in the years to come, more books will be available in electronic format. I will probably still buy books, go to the library or borrow a book or two from friends. Hard copy books and the feel in my hand are things I don’t want to give up just yet. But I’m thinking if the improvements to the reader itself and the books available, I may be able to carry a complete reference, entertainment library wherever I go. I think that is a wonderful thing.

and probably never could, but I haven’t seen the TV series.

What am I talking about?

I just finished reading Alexandre Dumas’ book ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’. This is a very long book. It loops here, there and everywhere. Characters have many interactions with others. There are friends, sons, daughters, parents and of course enemies involved. Plot twists abound.

I remember back many years ago, I read this book for High School. It was just after we moved out into the boonies. The house had no heat, it was the middle of the winter and my parents and younger sister were living in a camper. With very little room to move around, reading was the activity of the day. It took me a weekend, plus a day or two to finish the 1000+ page book. I enjoyed it, but all recollection was pushed aside. I saw at least one movie and a TV adaptation of the book and enjoyed those too. I even liked the ‘Mr. Magoo’ version.

I will tell you that as an adult (maybe in name only), I enjoyed this book more than any of the previous encounters with the work. Maybe I got a better translation this time, but the writing was crisp and clear even when the plot was not (and the plot was meant to be foggy).

I knew the story, but was compelled to turn to the next page and read the next chapter. I will recommend this book to anyone with some lonnng reading time they want to fill.

Oh, and the best thing about this. I was reading it on my Nook and I wasn’t trying to hold up pounds of paper. 🙂

Not really an e-book review, since I’ve read or heard the various stories since my childhood, but I’ve been reading selections from Edgar Allan Poe on my Nook for the past week or so.

What I really enjoy about Poe, is the variety of writing I can read from him. He wrote short stories, poetry, black comedies. He wrote mysteries, horror and love poems. He wrote about real life mysteries. But he is mainly remembered for his stories and poems of the macabre and a lone visitor to his grave years after his death.

This past week I’ve been reading stories I’ve remembered from my youth. For those who don’t know the story, my older brother would read me Poe for bed time stories. He was 12 years older than me and had been reading Poe for school. For some reason he thought that these stories were fine his 4/5 year old kid brother. While there were a couple that kept me hiding under blankets for many nights (Tell Tale Heart, Pit and the Pendulum), I remember most of the stories and poems with great affection. I have to thank my brother for enlightening me at such a young and impressionable age. I’m sure this help/hindered? in my becoming who I am today. 😉

This past week, I’ve revisited the above mentioned stories and many others. 45 years and many readings later, these stories still hold my attention.

This is another look into the writing styles of the past. Think back to these stories being printed in various magazines. Then they are read in a time without electric lights. Candles, oil lamps and some gas lamps, plus the fire in the hearth, were the lighting of the time. All of these lamps were darker than our current electric lights. They make moving and shifting shadows on the walls. Poe’s stories of Horror and the Macabre read in those settings still can give a chill to the bones. With story telling/reading, the imagination of the listener/reader are key to the sense of the story. Poe’s stories readily help feed a fertile imagination.

Looking for a bit of that evening thrill, read ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ by the light of a hurricane lamp. Or read “The Cask of Amontillado” in a damp cool cellar under candle light. Or how about “The Raven” in dim light during a wind/rain storm. Let your imaginations go, pick up some Poe and enjoy a shiver or two. Of course, you may need to read them alone…

There are times I will recommend an author to someone just to make sure they read the whole series. Of course, I would recommend the complete “Lord of the Rings” books by Tolkien and The 7 Harry Potter books by Rowling. There are other authors I have talked about too.

My recommendation this week is not for a series of books, even though this author did have a few books that had a continuing story line. No, I started to read some of his other works, and I found them to be just as gripping as any other stories I read by him.

Look up the works of Sax Rohmer. He is chiefly remembered for his Fu Manchu stories, but he wrote other mystery novels that were as compelling. Stories are generally set in the early 1900’s through the 1930’s. This week I finished the stories “Bat Wing” and “Brood of the Witch Queen”. They are mystery/suspense stories with a little bit of the Occult or Voodoo thrown in. Both can be found at www.feedbooks.com.

I found that while I expected certain endings to both stories (I tend to do that reading mysteries), I was kept in the story by the plot and characters. I will be reading more of his books/stories in the future. I’m glad I took the time to examine his stories that did not involve Fu Manchu.

Title — Tarzan of the Apes
Author — Edgar Rice Burroughs
Year 1914
Digitized by Google Books from a 1914 copy Epub format

I have read this book before, but I decided to load it on my book reader and read it again.

This is not your Movie or TV Tarzan. The information about wild life (apes in particular) is a bit dated, but you should not let that keep you from reading any of Burroughs’ Tarzan stories. Tarzan of the Apes is the first in a long series of Tarzan novels written by Burroughs.

In this story, the apes that raised Tarzan are not Gorillas. Burroughs created a new smarter species to have a smarter animal to raise a human infant. This allowed Tarzan to ‘speak’ with the apes in the book. A good plot enhancement to allow the readers to have an early view of Tarzan’s young life in the wild. The apes themselves are seen as caring individuals (at least the female that took Tarzan to raise) and bloodthirsty savage beasts (almost all of the male apes). Tarzan was one of the bloodthirsty savages until he chanced upon meeting ‘white’ humans.

While reading this book, I had a feeling that it was written as a serialized novel. I seem to recall that a number of stories of this type were published in sections by numerous magazines of the time. I did a search on this and found out that this story was publish in full by the magazine it was submitted too. It may have been written as a serial novel, but it didn’t turn out that way. Just an interesting tidbit of information with this story.

I sat down to read this story knowing all of the above, I just pushed that aside and read this as I would any action/adventure tale. Except for Tarzan, the characters all seemed a bit flat. They were all secondary to story line. They were there to give Tarzan something to do. During the reading, I found that I didn’t really care what happened to them.

However, the background and setting of 1914 Africa came alive in the story. This was Tarzan’s supporting character. The descriptions of the ‘Jungle’ and its animal inhabitants kept the story flowing. This background gave the character of Tarzan some depth and meaning. While I didn’t care about the other characters, I did find myself interested in the way Tarzan felt about them. They were secondary, but his reactions were primary. I don’t recall too many stories that have me thinking in that fashion. I’m going to have to read more authors from the same time period to see if this is common in the era.

As far as the Ebook version, I did notice a few problems with the OCR conversion. It seemed to have problems with accented and capital letters. I’m not sure why that is, but there were a couple places it was an annoyance. I don’t remember this from the project Gutenburg book I read last year, but that was just a scan to PDF and not a digital reading/recognition of the words themselves.

I think that I would give this 3 out of 5 stars. Good book to read, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to hunt it down.

Well not quite yet, but maybe a new category if I keep reading at the rate I have been. Since this is an Ebook review, there will be some things about the books that you will only get from the ebooks I’ve been reading. Almost all of the books have been copied from original text and had OCR software run on them. I’ve notice in a few places the character recognition software just wasn’t up to the task. I will have to note where I got the copy, how it was translated to digital text and the edition year it was copied from.

I’m thinking this will be a lot of fun for me, but my readers may be a bit bored by my reading selection. Oh well, you get what you pay for. I’m reading free books, and you are reading a free blog.

This week I finished 3 ebooks, so I have a choice as to which title to review. Decisions, decisions. Life sometimes complicates these things. 😉

Third post on this, are you tired of it yet?

Well, I now have hundreds of books at my disposal on my new Nook E-Book reader. From Neverland to Wonderland and on the way to OZ. I have books set in the orient, on the moon and in oceans. Books from Baum, Barrie, Doyle, Carroll and Kipling. Lesser known authors for most like Rhomer, Simak and others. So at my fingertips I have reading for weeks or maybe months. Yes I read a lot.

Here are the things I like best about my new e-reader.

It is very easy to download books onto the machine. It would be easier to get them directly from Barnes & Noble, but I can load all of the books I have from Project Gutenburg and feedbooks through the USB port. I like having a wide selection to look at.

It is easy to read the screen in all types of light. I can adjust the font larger if I forget my reading glasses. It does need light to read, just like a book, so it doesn’t get as tiring as a computer screen.

It is easy to mark my place or get back to the exact location I finished reading. The automatic bookmark will keep my current spot in the book I’m reading. You can leave the book, open another and come back to the exact spot you were reading.

I have an unlimited storage capacity. OK, it is limited by my bank account. I can only buy so many memory cards. I haven’t put books on all the ones I have yet!!!

I can have a new book anytime of day, from almost any place. More good news for me.

It is easy to carry the reader around. It is about the size of a paperback book, and about the same weight. I don’t have to lug my laptop around for the books stored in it.

I got to try it out before buying it. The biggest selling e-book reader is a bit harder to try out, unless you know somebody with one.

I can share my books with other Nook owners or people with a (free) Nook reader on their computer. You can loan books for 14 days.

The service from B&N has been great. I really can’t say enough about that. That service made the purchase for me. I will go there again (yeah, I know I was going there before the service.) Guess what guys, I will actually talk about that experience. They are getting free advertising from me.

Now for the down side..

Hey, it is expensive. I could have purchased a lot of books for the price of this machine. Not that I have the shelf space for them, but it is a lot of books

I am not a big fan of the entry screen for note taking or any typing. My fingers are almost too fat to get the keys correctly. It doesn’t look like it will work with a stylus either. Some of the other screens to move around the books are almost too small. If you have larger than average fingers, I would suggest book reader with real keys.

It is a little slow to turn pages. And when it comes to speed, if you have a lot of books on your reader, it takes a bit to load them in.

I’m not 100% certain, but it doesn’t look like you have a good way to organize your books. I would like to break them up by classification. Science Fiction, Mystery, Children’s Classics, History, ect. If I find a way to do that easily, I will let you know.

That about does it. Two thumbs way up for this book reader.