Monthly Archives: December 2014

I’m Starting to Understand Why Barnes and Noble Is Hemorrhaging Money

So my wife and I and have been going back and forth on whether she should get me a tablet for Christmas.  She got a Samsung a few months ago, and lately I’ve been playing Mah Jong on it.  The reason for this is simple.  I’m either too tired or there’s too much noise/distraction/interruption to try to read.  (The concentration with simple games and reading is different; that’s all I can say.)  I don’t want a tablet because I don’t want to read on a backlit screen.  I do enough of that either at work or on my phone if I’m reading to kill a few minutes while I’m waiting in line or something.  The game playing thing is usually a sign I need to get more rest and/or have less stress in my life.

GlowLight_imgI have a first generation Nook.  What decided me on that rather than a Kindle is that B&N is only a few minutes from my house, so if there’s a problem (which has happened), I can get help from a person fairly quickly.

For quite a while I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Nook Glowlight.  They’re light.  The screen refreshes faster.  They have a  touchscreen.  I can read in a dark room.  And most importantly, the battery has a much, much longer life.

I’ve gotten to where I don’t read on my Nook much because it takes too long to scroll through things or change between the nookbook folder and the Documents folder which has all the things I’ve sideloaded.  Yes, they are in separate folders on the original.  But mainly, I don’t use it as much as I used to because the battery life is so short.  I don’t like having to put it back on the charger so often.  Like before I’ve finished reading.  But, hey, waddaya expect?  It’s first generation technology. Continue reading

Rogues, Scoundrels, Grifters, and Unreliable Narrators

Academic_Exercises_by_K_J_Parker_200_287Academic Exercises
K. J. Parker
Subterranean Press
signed limited hardcover (sold out)
ebook $6.99 Kindle Nook Kobo

Academic Exercises is K. J. Parker’s first collection of short fiction, and I absolutely loved it.  Many of the stories involve a school of magic, although its practitioners call it philosophy, called the Studium.  This where the title of the book comes from.  Parker understands academic infighting and all that goes with, although I found that aspect of the book a little tame it.

One institution I was at for a couple of years (many years ago, not where I am now) had an instructor who was running for Congress get arrested in the parking lot of IHOP while waving a machete and screaming about the right to bear arms; one department head murdered in his home by his same sex lover; and one adjunct prof pick up a woman hitchhiker, take her back to his place to do a few lines of coke and instead lock her in his closet for a couple of weeks as his love slave.  (She managed to escape; he jumped bail and was caught about a year later after a shoot-out in Oklahoma.)  And that was just in a two year period.  Like I said, Parker’s academia is tame compared to that. Continue reading