Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris

I fell in love with the Sookie Stackhouse books about a year and a half ago, so when I saw another book by the same author available in ebook format from my library, I jumped right on it.

Grave Sight is a quick read about a young woman who travels around the country with her brother, solving murder mysteries.  She is able to do this because she senses dead people, ever since she was hit by lightning as a child.  Her brother, who is actually her step-brother (I wonder if there will ever be any interesting developments there later in the series), more or less acts as her manager.

Grave Sight picks up when they've been doing this for a little while, as you gather by all the stories that crop up about previous jobs they've done.  (There were enough references to previous jobs that I actually kept checking to make sure I'd started with the first book.)  It's the beginning of the series, and you can see that it's going to be an interesting one.  Grave Sight wasn't very long, though, and I wonder if all of the books are that way.

Definitely a fun, quick read by a favorite author.  It may not be about vampires, but I love Charlaine Harris's style just the same!

Fools Rush In by Kristan Higgins

Fools Rush In was the last book of a run of Kristan Higgins books I checked out from the library.  I think they still have one or two more I have yet to read, but I needed a break first!

Millie, the heroine of this book, has had a crush on Joe since she was just a kid, but he has no idea she exists, so once she completes her doctor's degree, she returns home determined to make him notice her.  She loses weight, buys new clothes, and even gets a dog.

Of course, as you might imagine would happen, it turns out Joe isn't anything like how she'd built him up to be in her mind.  And it turns out that the man who really is everything she's ever dreamed of is closer than she realized.

Like many of Kristan Higgins's books, Fools Rush In challenges generally accepted ideas of romance, especially of romance novels.  The hero in this book is much older than Millie, and was previously married to (gulp) her perfect older sister.  As you can imagine, this makes for some awkward moments when they realize how they feel about one another — and when they finally get together!

But a trend that I'm starting to recognize in Higgins's books, and one I really like, is that the love she writes about isn't (usually) based on lust.  In The Next Best Thing and Just One of the Guys, two other books of hers that I read recently, the love interest was always someone the heroine didn't expect — because he was her best friend.  Higgins's books are romance novels that are about healthy relationships... and they're wonderfully entertaining.  Amazing!  It is possible!

Growing up with books is important!

Just one more off-topic post before I get back to the business of reviewing books.  A couple of weeks ago I saw a story on NPR about Walter Dean Myers, the new ambassador for Young People's Literature.  In the interview, Myers talks a lot about how books are important parts of your life, and stresses that, as part of his goals, he wants young children to be read to every day.

There is this idea that what children need, in order to do well in school and in life, is to be read to every day.  And while I think that's true, this widely held notion is actually a fallacy.  Being read to every day doesn't impact how kids do in reading and in school — how many books they have at home does.

This is not to say that if you put 500 books in the home of every poor kid in the city, they are suddenly going to start doing well in school.  But think about it: Adults who value reading tend to have lots of books in the home.  Their children see them modeling habits that emphasize the value of reading and books, and they in turn grow up to value reading and books.

In other words, reading to your children every day is good, but it's not enough.  If you view it as a chore, chances are your children will too.  But if you surround yourself with books and read a lot, for the pleasure of it, in front of your children, they will absorb that passion for reading, and their own lives will benefit from it.

Yet another article on rising e-reader ownership

What timing!  Not long after I saw the CNN article about tablet and e-reader ownership doubling over the holidays, I saw this one on NPR:

Niche No More: Survey Shows Tablets Are Everywhere

The NPR article quotes another survey that shows an even larger percentage of e-reader and tablet ownership: 29 percent, up 11 percent from December.  In comparison, the CNN survey found ownership to be about 19 percent, after an increase of 9 percent in the same time frame.

There's no doubt about it...  E-readers and tablets are here to stay!

E-reader and tablet ownership takes off

Sorry for the dearth of posts lately!  I've actually been reading quite a bit — I've just been too busy to write about what I've read — so I have lots of catching up to do.  But first, I want to share an article I read just the other day, about how popular tablets and e-readers have become.

Ownership of tablets, e-readers almost doubles in one month

The number of people who have these devices went up from 10 percent in December, to 19 percent in January.  The deceptive "1" at the beginning of both numbers might be a little bit deceptive, but think about it: That means that out of every 10 friends you have, one of them has had an e-reader for a while, and one other just got one for Christmas — and two out of every ten of your friends are now reading on an e-reader (or at least playing games and browsing the Internet).

I look at these trends, and I think that despite the traditionalists' protests, ebooks are not going to go away.  They are a valid way to read books, an improvement over a format that has been around for centuries, just as the book itself was an improvement over scrolls.  (I wonder what the traditionalists' arguments were then?  "With scrolls you don't have to worry about losing a page!" or "It's made of animal skin so in 2,000 years it'll still be around!")  Don't get me wrong, I love physical books too, and will likely always have bookcases full of them in my house.  But thanks to e-readers, I can devote precious shelf space to the books I want to collect — old books, pretty books, and first editions — and get my reading books in digital format.  Plus, I can check out library books without leaving the house or worrying about overdue fines!  What's not to like?

The Science of Battlestar Galactica by Patrick Di Justo

I've been reading a lot lately, but I haven't dedicated very much time to blogging about what I've been reading.  Part of the reason is this book, The Science of Battlestar Galactica — I've been struggling with what to say about it.

I checked the book out from my library on a whim when I saw it among the new arrivals in our ebook catalog.  I am a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, and was interested in learning about the science behind the fiction.

Initially I was very disappointed with the book, as the first few chapters especially were largely conjecture.  However, I do have to say that as the book got into discussions about physics, space, and related subjects, it got much better.  It started talking about the size of the universe, what a planet would likely have to be like in order to support life (and what sort of star it would have to orbit), and I found that kind of thing quite interesting — enough so to redeem the book somewhat in my eyes.

I'd recommend it to other geeky BSG fans, but with the advice: Don't be afraid to skim and skip around.  I didn't find the entire book interesting, so I think I enjoyed it much more once I started skimming, and just slowed down to read more carefully when I came across something that interested me.

Free calendar and organizer app!

It's not a book, but I wanted to take a moment to review a fantastic app I just downloaded to my Nook Tablet earlier today.  I found out about it when it was posted to Barnes & Noble's Facebook page this morning.

A little background: I'd been wanting a way to sync calendars between my iPhone and Nook.  The iPhone calendar can be challenging to use, mainly because I don't always feel like typing on that little keyboard.  My Nook isn't always on me, though, so I don't want my primarily calendar to be on that device, and it seemed tedious to input all of my stuff on not just one but two touchscreen keyboards.

Cozi Family Organizer turned out to be just what I needed, even though I don't have a big family to organize calendars for.  (I did add our pets as family members to help keep their vet and other appointments straight.)  The biggest advantage is that it syncs between devices, so when I'm at home (with an Internet connection) I can use the Nook, and when I'm out I can use my iPhone.

Besides the calendar, the app has to-do lists and grocery lists, so I've added my husband as well so that we can share grocery lists.  So much better than keeping a pad of paper on the fridge!  We frequently forget to get items because they weren't on the list, so hopefully this will solve the issue by allowing us to add to our grocery list — and share what we've added — no matter where we happen to be at the time.

The iPhone app and the website are ad-supported, but so far I see no ads on the Nook (and the ads on the iPhone and website are fairly innocuous).  You can pay to get rid of the ads and get a few more features, but it's more than I need, so I'll put up with the ads for now.  Such an amazing free app!