Winner will be announced Tuesday, October 12

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Picador – Pan Macmillan)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books – Grove Atlantic)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review -
Headline Publishing Group)

Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape – Random House)

For full information go to http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1451

Have you read any of these? Any opinions about which to read and/or which should win?

The Kindle 3

My decision was based on:

1. Smaller, lighter size than the iPad – better for travel AND for reading in bed
2. Cheaper – and, for me, the other wonders of the iPad are not of particular interest
3. Easier to read in sunlight, which is very important to me
4. No backlight, less eye strain
5. My husband’s Kindle 1 is starting to fade – he can take over my Kindle 2, which I recently replaced after dropping my old one

Now I just have to wait for it to arrive. Don’t have a delivery date yet . . .

Thanks to all of you who provided your input!

I was an “early adopter” when Amazon introduced the first Kindle, and I’ve never looked back. I still purchase and enjoy “dead tree” books and am a HUGE supporter of independent bookstores, but I don’t plan to ever be without an e-reader again, especially for travel. I currently have a Kindle 2 and love it, but I’m ready to upgrade. What I’m wondering is:

Do I upgrade to the new Kindle or to the iPad?

I know that there are pros and cons to each, but I would love to hear from those of you who have used one or more iteration of Kindle and upgraded to either the new Kindle or the iPad. I’m not interested in the other functions of the iPad, which I know are amazing. I just want to know how these new products compare to the earlier Kindles as readers, and which you would recommend.

My specific questions have to do with:

1. Readability: I’ve heard that you can’t read on the iPad in the sunlight. Is that correct?
2. Availability of titles: One of the advantages of the Kindle over e-readers such as the Nook or Sony reader has been the number of titles you can purchase. Is this a factor with the iPad?
3. Battery life: I know the Kindle has an amazing battery life, but don’t know about the iPad’s.
4. Ease of finding specific locations in a book (for example, if you want to return to a specific page to reread a passage)

I’ll appreciate any experience or suggestions you can share with me. I have some gift $$$ burning a hole in my pocket!

My recent reading of Paris Trout has gotten me thinking – who are the baddest bad guys around? The ones who would make the “Literary Villain Hall of Fame”?  Trout is right up there, but who else have you found to have the least redeemable qualities in literature? Not the easy ones, like Satan and Count Dracula – their place is pretty secure.

A few who come to mind for me:

Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy)

Bill Sikes (Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens)

Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris)

Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier)

Popeye (Sanctuary by William Faulkner)

Rhoda Penmark (The Bad Seed by William March)

Quint and Miss Jessel (Turn of the Screw by Henry James)

Alexander Zalachenko (Girl Who Played with Fire/Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larssen)

If you pay any attention to my sidebar widget “Now Reading” (and I’m not convinced that anybody does), you may have noticed that I’ve been reading the Vietnam War novel Matterhorn, by Karl Marlantes, for an inordinate period of time. Okay, it is 592 pages long, but normally that doesn’t slow me down. And it is – really – fascinating reading. Whenever I pick it up I am instantly engaged. The problem is I don’t ever feel like picking it up. I can’t put my finger on the reason why. Marlantes has a story to tell, and he tells it well. It concerns an event that was of great interest to me at the time it was taking place. I was in college at the peak of the war and passionately opposed to it. Now, from the perspective of age and (I hope) maturity, I’m anxious to understand the experience faced by  the boys I knew who went there. Everything about this novel compels me to read it – but I keep finding reasons not to.

First I allowed myself “a break” while I read the monumental time-waster, Caught. Then I read Christopher Buckley’s review of Tom Rachman’s first novel, The Imperfectionists, in the New York Times Book Review and immediately downloaded it onto my Kindle. Not a sample – and I didn’t add it to my “Wish List” – I bought the book sight unseen and started reading it immediately. Matterhorn sits abandoned, at least temporarily. (By the way, The Imperfectionists is great!)

I know I’ll get back to Matterhorn, but I have to wonder – what is that indefinable element that makes a book something that keeps you glued to it till the very end? It’s not just a good story, nor is it just good writing. Those are both important, but I’ve come across many books with both – in fact, I’d put Matterhorn in that category – but it’s missing something that I, as a reader, need. What do you think comprises the “It” factor in a book?