Month: October 2010

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold

If you haven’t read Lois Bujold’s masterful Miles Vorkosigan series, do yourself a favor and get the first in the series, Cordelia’s Honor (this is a compendium of two novels: Shards of Honor and Barrayar) and then move on to Young Miles which is a combination of the book The Warrior’s Apprentice, the novelette The Mountains of Mourning and the novel The Vor Game. Once there, you’ll doubtless go through the whole series which will lead you to the latest, Cryoburn.

Lois has won more Hugos and Nebulas than anyone — and deservedly so! Mum loves her so much that she’s quoted on the covers with the very accurate, “Boy, can she write!”

As for Cryoburn, I was very glad to read more of Miles and very saddened by the ending but Lois Bujold handled it all masterfully.

Broke down, got a Kindle

Broke down, got a Kindle

So, I broke down and got a Kindle the other day. I got the WiFi only version, with a graphite case.

It’s quite pretty and a bit useful. I can see a day when our libraries are mostly on some form of eBook with only very special books on the shelves.

I’ve been surprised at what’s not available on Kindle, notably the Harry Potter series.

For my part, I’m picking up a lot of the free books — I actually finally read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I’m also picking up all the reference works I’d like to have handy such as Don Maass’ Fire in Fiction, Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat!, Self-editing for Writers, and The 3 a.m. Ephiphany. Sadly, I note that The Writer’s Journey is not available on Kindle, nor is John Truby’s Anatomy of a Story.

There’s a lot of books that I like but not so much that I wouldn’t be just as happy to have them in eBook format and there’s some that I’d prefer have in both.

I imagine the Kindle is only the first of many steadily improving eBooks which, hopefully, will lead to the eBook that I’ve been dreaming about since the mid-80’s.

In the meantime, I’m happy enough with the Kindle.