Thursday, June 4, 2009

Do you like The Tudors?

Not necessarily the Tudors themselves, since they are not really a loveable family, but rather the Showtime series? If so, you will really love Philippa Gregory's books: The Constant Princess (Catherine of Aragon), The Other Boleyn Girl (Mary and Ann Boleyn), and The Boleyn Inheritance (Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard). In this last one, Jane Boleyn, the evil sister-in-law of Mary and Ann, takes turns narrating, along with Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Google and e-books

Google plans to sell e-book titles, allowing publishers to set their own prices. It reserves the right to discount these prices. You would have access to the title in perpetuity. Sounds good so far. But the kicker is: the books we buy would only be available to us on our computers, iPhones, Blackberries, not on a device untethered to the internet such as a Kindle or other e-reader.

You could temporarily cache the titles bought from Google in your browser. Wonderful. Like I want to sit in front of my computer all day reading a book. How is this progress? Why would I want to do this?

Will the publishers cut loose from Amazon to do this? If so, they are shooting themselves in the foot. With e-readers evolving, this is going backwards.