My new e-reader
Earlier this spring I bought a Letto aka Bookeen Cybook Odyssey. Because of issues with the battery I had to return it to the seller. When I contacted support someone there was very polite and suggested I return the Letto, so I did. After quite a long wait (because of Easter holiday) I received the Letto back, without any changes. There was just a condescending message about watching a video to learn how to use the device. Furious, I emailed them back and asked for my money back, then returned the Letto once again. In a curious twist that I still can’t explain, the Letto ended up with a different company than the one I’d bought it from. They, very decently, returned it to me with a friendly note and finally I sent it back to the seller. I think they must have received it, because I haven’t heard from them.
To cut to the chase, I have now bought a new ereader, the Cybook Odyssey HD Frontlight. Short and sweet. Not! LOL.
Anyway, the only thing I miss from the Letto is the brushed aluminium back. That was really pretty and pleasant to the touch. Not that the polished plastic back is any less pretty, not just quite as pleasant to the touch. There’s still a rubber frame that is nice to the touch and in most other ways this new Odyssey is identical to the Letto.
Just a little gripe about the name HD: I wouldn’t call this device HD. It’s alright, but there’s no real difference between this display and the other, except for the Frontlight. Despite a slightly higher price, I bought this one instead of the Cybook Odyssey 2013 (without a frontlight) because I tend to read at night. Bad habit, I know. So far I’ve only tried to use the light twice. I’m trying to cut back on these all night sessions. The light works great though.
So far the battery seems fine. I have only had this new Odyssey for just over a week, but already I’m loving it. *Keeping my fingers crossed* that the battery will hold a bit longer. It’s supposed to last ‘almost a month’ or ‘several weeks’. I’ll take that as ‘at least three weeks’. An otherwise rather negative French reviewer admitted that her device’s battery actually lasted longer than a month, so I’m hopeful.
Another thing wrong with the Letto that had nothing to do with a bad battery was the fact that AdLibris, the web bookstore that I bought the Letto from, had intentionally made it harder to transfer books from any other source than their store.They had actually changed a few things around so that people would get fed up with trying and only buy books from Adlibris. Not very nice, but understandable, I suppose.
As far as userfriendliness is concerned, I wouldn’t say that the Cybook is quite as fantastic as the site claims, but it’s quite alright. I have no complaints so far. It’s not as easy to use as my Kindle Touch or my iPod Touch, but that’s probably too much to ask anyway.
In conclusion I’ll just mention how beautiful this ereader is. The Kindle Touch is as pretty, but there are many other ereaders out there that are not. Some look very plastic and primitive and probably creak.
Amazon buying Goodreads…
i just found out that Amazon has bought Goodreads and now I’m a little concerned. Don’t get me wrong – I like Amazon. We rent dvd:s from a film rental club they own (Lovefilm) and we buy books and dvd:s from them all the time (sometimes other stuff as well). All the same, I find myself a little doubtful about this acquisition.
So I started looking around for alternatives. I don’t use Librarything much anymore. You can only add 200 books and it seems I’ve hit the limit there. Shelfari already belongs to Amazon and that hasn’t done the site much good. What I dislike the most is that they keep trying to make me log on using my Amazon ID (I don’t have one of my own, my family and I share one).
After a couple of tries, I found several, but a few of them don’t seem to be working properly and I’ll withhold my judgment on them. Another seems really good, a lot like Librarything, only better, but I still don’t fully understand how to use it, so I’ll leave that out as well. That leaves The Reading Room. So far that seems to work great (especially importing my bookshelves from Goodreads). Actually, it seems to be very much like Goodreads, so I feel right at home.
Before I go any further, I have a confession to make – I’m not quite as diligent at posting reviews on Goodreads or Librarything as I used to. I rate the books I’ve finished and I always check online first before I buy a book, but I suppose I like to save my reviews for my own homepage/blog. Which leads me to the second really great alternative to Goodreads: Booklikes.
At first I was a bit surprised and overwhelmed when I realized that not only was it a book review site, you get your own book blog when you sign up. Now, though, I’ve decided to just see how it goes. There were only three blog themes to choose between, but I’m not sure how much I’ll post anyway, so I’m fine just getting to know the site, for now. I think I’ve imported my Goodreads books, but so far nothing shows up, so I don’t know what’s happening. Maybe it just takes time.
Anyway, I think I know enough by now to recommend both sites to book lovers looking for alternatives to Goodreads.
Finally, I’ll just mention the few Swedish book communities I’ve found. They’re not anything like the international ones, just very basic sites. That’s rather disappointing, because I try to balance my book collecting so that I buy/borrow/read almost as many titles in Swedish as in English. When it comes to French, I’m just grateful there are some titles I can get.
Letto (Bookeen Cybook Odyssey) review
Since it was on sale – at a very good price – I decided the time had come to get the ‘Letto’ or Bookeen Cybook Odyssey as the original device is called. For a while now, I’d been wanting an ereader that could display library ebooks.
The other day, the ereader arrived, in the mailbox outside. I’d been told I’d have to go and pick it up at a store in town, but apparently, it fitted into our mailbox and that was of course very convenient.
Expectantly, I unpacked it. It was actually in a nice looking box resembling a ‘physical’ book. An adapter for a wall outlet was included, which was – again – convenient. I wasn’t sure what I’d have to order extra. As it turns out, not a lot. Just some kind of cover and some vinyl screen protectors, just in case. I’ll get to that later.
It’s great to finally be able to read on something decent-sized. IOS devices are great – for talking, chatting and listening to music – but not so good for reading longer texts.
Unfortunately, here’s where I’m forced to get to the negative.
First of all, I have to say that I bought this ereader to read library books, and nothing else. I can’t stress that point enough. As it turns out, it’s extremely complicated to transfer the books to the right file on the device. In the end, I couldn’t manage it and I had to ask my tech savvy sister for help. Eventually, she managed to find out hot to do it, by trial and error.
I have read reviews that warned about this problem, but the thing is, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was basically either get the Letto or keep reading library books on the iPod Touch. So when the price dropped down about 50 US dollars, I felt I had to get it. The alternative would be to try and order a Kobo Touch imported from Germany, which would probably mean an older model, and not in the color I wanted, or get an iPad MIni, which I can’t afford at the moment, and probably never will. The fact is that a Kindle AND a Letto PLUS covers and screen protectors are still a bit less expensive than one iPad Mini WITHOUT a cover and screen protector! So I was still getting a bargain.
I just feel sorry for the people who can’t get help transferring their books to their devices. On the other hand, maybe those people aren’t getting theirs exclusively to read library books? Apparently, if you want to buy books from the bookstore that sells the Letto, it’s really easy to transfer the files. They pretty much transfer themselves, or so I’ve been told.
Another con is that while the original Cybook Odyssey comes with several free books, in more than one language, including dictionaries, if I’m not mistaken, the ‘Letto’ comes with one or two Swedish classics and a few modern ‘freebies’ (not any that I will want to read) and no dictionary, but a manual, that unfortunately didn’t help much. The stuff it dealt with was easy to figure out on my own.
To be fair, part of the trouble I had was getting my Adobe ID to work, but it’s still very complicated to download Adobe Digital Editions, then authorize both the device and the computer (just to remember the password is hard – we’d had this problem before with Adobe and apparently our way of solving that was to get a new ID…) Maybe it will get easier once I’m used to the Letto.
Anyway, now that I have the Letto and I’ve been able to transfer the book, I’m not too unhappy with it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who wants to read library books on it (unless they’re as tech savvy as my sister).
Bottom line:
Pros:
Low price (at the moment anyway – but still quite a good price at any time)
Cute box
Cute ereader with a back that is nice to the touch
Easy to read fonts
Power adapter included
Device entirely adapted for Swedish conditions
Cons:
Difficult to transfer files (other than the books from the bookstore that sells it).
I had trouble with the touch screen and had to resort to using the physical buttons on the side to turn the pages.
Hard to get nice covers: you only have one type to choose between, in a range of not so dazzling colors. Of course, if you check out the measurements, you can always take a chance and buy a cover meant for another, slightly bigger, device.
Oops, it turns out I’m quite partial to the Letto, after all. 🙂 Oh, well, draw your own conclusions. If you live in Sweden, this is still a rather good choice. If you live in France (Belgium, Switzerland etc), the Cybook Odyssey might still be a good option, but you’ll have to decide that for yourself. As for others, maybe you should consider some other device.
Update:
I just thought I’d post a quick (and brief) update about the Letto’s screen in comparison with that of the Kindle Touch.
Kindle Touch:
The touch screen is quicker to respond. It looks a little different from the Letto’s too. I can’t say exactly how.
Letto:
This touch screen is slower and it’s a bit harder to turn the pages. On the side there are two pysical buttons that I’m not used to yet, and I keep pressing them and the pages turn quickly forwards or backwards. The text looks even more, if that is possible, like a regular printed page.
I write like…
I tried this Analyze your writing thing and it turns out I write like Cory Doctorow when I blog and when I write SF.
Not that I’ve read anything by him yet – but as far as I can tell, that’s quite a compliment. I also tried it with some of my other writing and when it comes to my fantasy, apparently I write like Ursula LeGuin, a really big honor (if you can put any stock in this test, that is…).
Unfortunately, when I tried to analyze my fan fiction the test seemed to have a breakdown and suggested I write like so many different authors, I began to realize that either that test isn’t all that great or I write really crazy fan fiction…
Female role models in tv, movies and books
I recently read an article about positive female role models in movies. In general, there is a lack of good female role models so I think the short list in the article is a good starting point in changing that. I began to wonder which female characters I would deem positive and came up with this list (some of which were in the original article):
Ellen Ripley/Sigourney Weaver, the Alien movies (especially the first and second)
I read that Ripley was originally meant to be a male character, which figures. What man would write a female character like Ripley? Or anyone? Which is too bad, because I think that any woman who was physically capable would have done exactly the same things Ripley did. All she did was save her own life and those her adopted kid/s and try to pay a corrupt corporation back for killing her crewmates and setting them all up to bring back a lethal weapon in the form of an ‘exo lifeform’.
Erin Brockovich/Julia Roberts in the movie by the same name
Erin Brockovich is an unedcuated rather simple woman who stumbles across corruption and finds that she wants to do something about and then does exactly that. Simple enough, but at least when I watched the movie, I was impressed with her development from someone who just wanted to make a living to someone with a conscience. Normally, I don’t like Julia Roberts, so I was surprised to find that I liked this movie and the main character.
Olive Hoover/Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine
Olive is anything but a cliche. You might say that her grandfather is not really the kind of person who should have been helping her create her act for the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, and you’d think someone would have thought of that before the actual pageant, but I guess then there wouldn’t have been much of a movie. In any case, Olive is an amazing kid and several other characters in the movie are quite unusual and interesting too.
Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
Catherine is adventurous, imaginative and though I understand she’s supposed to be a parody of the typical heroine of a ‘gothic’ novel, I really like her. She’s fun and human and flawed, but in general, just nice and you find yourself rooting for her throughout the novel.
Anne Elliot, Persuasion
Anne is also quite different from the other Jane Austen heroines, which is probably why she and Catherine are my two favorite characters from Jane Austen’s books. Poor Anne has been rather too obedient to her family and that has left her in the unenviable situation of being unmarried at the old age of 26. She spends her life trying to help her family and keeping them from bankruptcy. Then when she gets a second chance at life, she’s strong enough to go against her snobbish family and do what she wants for a change.
Beatrice Eliott/Stella Gonet, The House of Eliott
In the first episode of the House of Elliot, Beatrice and her sister Evangeline are basically slaves to their selfish father, but when he dies – which he does during the first five minutes or so of the first episode – Beatrice is the one who quickly finds a way for the sisters to support themselves, doing something they’re both good at and enjoy doing. Beatrice is fun, tough and the sort of person you really root for, except when she’s mean to Jack.
Trudy Joplin/Olivia Brown, Miami Vice
Trudy is the most fun member of the Miami Vice team. Crockett and Tubbs may be sizzling hot, but Trudy is fun, tough and cool. I love her outfits (when she’s not playing prostitute in sting operations).
The rest of my list:
Constance Peterson, Spellbound
Alicia Huberman, Notorious
Tracy Turnblad, Hairspray
Jane Eyre, in the movie by the same name.
Alice, Alice in Wonderland
Miss Froy, Alice Henderson, The Lady Vanishes
Eowyn, LOTR
Stephanie Plum, Lula, Grandma Mazur/mormor Mazur, One for the Money
Veronica Mars, Cindy “Mac” McKenzie, Veronica Mars
From Downton Abbey:
Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham
Lady Sybil Crawley
Lucy Pevensie, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe + Prince Caspian + Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Morgan, Cutthroat Island
Janet, Charmed Lives, Diana Wynne Jones
Tea with Mussolini: Most of the female characters.
As you can see this is a mix of characters from movies, tv series and books. They’re in no particular order, chronological or otherwise. I just put them in as I thought of them. Some are from the early 19th century, others from this year or last year and the rest from anything in between. Considering how long a period of time this is (nearly two hundred years) you could say that it’s a pitifully short list, but of course I’ve probably overlooked several great characters that I might have come up with if I’d taken more time to consider. Also, it’s just characters from the English-speaking world. Anyway, for what it’s worth, this is my list. Do you have one too?
Some answers
2. A mystery by Barbara Nadel (set in Turkey, really interesting)
4. Probably that I like to keep reading all night if necessary to see how the book ends.
6. Not yet, but I want a Kindle Touch. Have tried the Kindle (3), iPad (didn’t like it very much), iPod Touch and iPhone (the latter are alright, but I’d like something bigger).
7. One at a time now, since for various reasons I can’t enough books anymore. As a kid, I used to read at least two, usually three or more.
8. No. Except for posting reviews.
11. As seldom as possible.
13. No, and not in a car either. On a train though.
14. My bed.
15. I don’t do it, after getting a paperback back from a relative in a dreadful state (‘because it’s a paperback, and that’s what you do with paperbacks’ – clearly other people’s paperbacks too).
16. I did as a child, I’m sorry to say, but never anymore.
17. Not in fiction.
18. Yes, if I have to.
19. Swedish (though I enjoy English and French too)
20. Many different things. I have certain favorite elements and if they’re present, slightly less brilliant writing will do, otherwise I do like a well written book with great characters and a really exciting and absorbing plot.
22. It’s a tie between fantasy and mysteries, then non-fiction (history, language history…)
23. Non-fiction.
31. I usually don’t write really negative reviews – if I hate a book, I just ignore it.
32. I can read in at least two foreign languages – English and French – but would be able to manage a few more. I’d love to be better at French.
36. Two. Now we’re talking e-books, because I prefer that when it comes to library books. More convenient. If I read a physical library book, I like to do it at the library, not at home.
41. Probably during my college studies – when I say reading I mean reading for fun, not studying, obviously. I could only read for fun during the vacations, more or less.
42. Too many. If something horrible happens to an animal, child or simply something horrible happens to someone, I give up. I don’t want to continue reading something like that. Also, if the book turns out to be a disappointment in other ways.
43. Someone talking within earshot.
48. See above, question 42.
49. Yes, but for reasons I’m not going to go into here, I can’t do that anymore, but I’m looking forward to being able to again, when I move.
50. I keep all the books I love or like, but get rid of the ones I hate.
51. Several very popular books from the last five years or so (won’t name them, in case I offend someone).
55. Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum ‘mysteries’.
55 Reading Questions
1. Favorite childhood book?
2. What are you reading right now?
3. What books do you have on request at the library?
4. Bad book habit?
5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?
6. Do you have an e-reader?
7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?
8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?
9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far)?
10. Favorite book you’ve read this year?
11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
12. What is your reading comfort zone?
13. Can you read on the bus?
14. Favorite place to read?
15. What is your policy on book lending?
16. Do you ever dog-ear books?
17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?
18. Not even with text books?
19. What is your favourite language to read in?
20. What makes you love a book?
21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?
22. Favorite genre?
23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?
24. Favourite biography?
25. Have you ever read a self-help book?
26. Favourite cookbook?
27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?
28. Favorite reading snack?
29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.
30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?
31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?
32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose?
33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin?
35. Favorite Poet?
36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?
37. How often have you returned books to the library unread?
38. Favorite fictional character?
39. Favourite fictional villain?
40. Books I’m most likely to bring on vacation?
41. The longest I’ve gone without reading.
42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.
43. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
44. Favorite film adaptation of a novel?
45. Most disappointing film adaptation?
46. The most money I’ve ever spent in the bookstore at one time?
47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?
48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?
49. Do you like to keep your books organized?
50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them?
51. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
52. Name a book that made you angry.
53. A book you didn’t expect to like but did?
54. A book that you expected to like but didn’t?
55. Favorite guilt-free, pleasure reading?
Some vegan books
I found these links to books about vegans and/or veganism, that includes fiction about vegans. It’s something I’ve been looking for for quite a while and though I haven’t had time to check them out in detail, I think it’s a really great start. Hopefully I’ll find something I’ll like here.
Fiction with Vegan and AR sensibilities
