No, I don't have one. But I am sold on one, where I wasn't in January, and will almost certainly buy one this year sometime. (The lowest-capacity 3G model looks most attractive to me.)

As xach recently noted, and many others have agreed, the iBooks app is beautiful. This alone would sell me on it. Even given the itty-bitty screen and sparse interface ( Read more... )

Needing a break, I opened my phone's Kindle app to see what it recommended for me. Unsurprisingly, there was more Stross: The Android's Dream. OK, it's been a couple of months since my last thing by Charlie, so noting a "Try a Sample" button, I tapped it, and settled down to enjoy the novel's first chapter ( Read more... )

What do you call the opposite of a Mary Sue character? That is, an intentional self-insertion who, rather than being the smartest girl in Starfleet Academy who will marry Draco Malfoy at the end, is instead a pathetic and unloved loser - who still manages to be the star of the show, mind you ( Read more... )

classicaljunkie and I celebrated our two-year anniversary last night by watching the first two Godfather films at the Brattle. (We watched The Departed at the Somerville on our official first date ( Read more... )

I borrowed Charlie Stross's Halting State from radiotelescope a few weeks ago, but am still only halfway through it. A police procedural about the game industry, even a lightly SFnal one (set in a newly independent Scotland circa 201X), is not really what I wanna read right now. Deciding that I was more in the mood for a totally whack fantasy, and recalling that ( Read more... )

Some young punks have apparently been freely harassing Davis Square residents for some time now. That thread begins with someone describing how he was assaulted and slapped around by them, apparently in broad daylight and with people all around. The many comments that follow form a story about how this same group has been making trouble in the ( Read more... )

JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL was my train-riding book today because I had no other, and I found that the very next chapter addressed the continuing fates of the characters I had taken for forgotten. I stand by my earlier criticism, because there is a very real difference between a reader anticipating missing characters' return, and wondering if ( Read more... )

I'm about a quarter of the way through Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but I don't think I can finish it, because I've rather lost faith in the author. When we still have over 500 pages to go through together, that's a serious issue ( Read more... )

Portishead has a new album, 12 years after their last. toddalcott has the goods. I suddenly realize there's buncha albums I gots to get. There's this, and there's new R.E.M., new Underworld, and a new Ladytron disc comin out shortly. All my entertainment dollas been going to video games lately... enough a that, sez I. (Have been saying since I got the 360, ( Read more... )

I think this is everything but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that I'm leaving something out.

I am a Strange Loop: Borrowed from Zarf. Quite thought-provoking. I find myself reflecting often on the metaphors of mind that Hofstadter presents (and then tells nigh-innumerable parables about). That said, I stopped reading it after I bought...

Spook ( Read more... )