eBook News

Tis the season, and perhaps you have been thinking about either getting that teacher a present, or perhaps you are considering that the end of the year is rapidly approaching and you wanted to make a classroom contribution (taxes you know). Have you considered donating books to a classroom though ebook donations. If a school or classroom is already using an ebook device, like the Kindle, Nook, or Sony (and others), it is possible to either purchase specific books for others or purchase an ebook gift card that can be used to purchase additional books for the classroom device. So, if you are thinking about getting something for that teacher, classroom, or school library, and you are not sure just what book that they may need or want, and there is an e-reading device that they are using - consider giving that teacher, classroom or school an electronic book or ebook gift cards. Amazon Kindle Cards Nook Gift Cards Sony eBook Store Gift Card

Konstantin Somov -  Lady in Blue (1900) with a Kobo Touch Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin - The Young Schoolmistress (1740) with a Kindle Fire

Well, I'm excited, the Digital Bookmobile is coming to town. While traveling libraries, or bookmobiles have become pretty rare, I'm glad to say that Overdrive has created their own Digital Bookmobile and it is traveling across the country and next week it is coming to my town. The Digital Bookmobile started in Texas on Nov 1 and is currently traveling though the south east US.  While I do wish that it had the printing capabilities for public domain ebooks that the Internet Archive and Million Book project did, I'm glad to see my local library working to promote more digital readers. So if it coming to your town, get your digital reader or MP3 player and stop by the Overdrive Digital Bookmobile when it comes to your area. See where the Digital Bookmobile is at  http://www.digitalbookmobile.com/Calendar.aspx

Happy Halloween, and if today didn’t provide enough horror about some more in an ebook format?  While everyone may have to read works by Poe and Lovecraft (and indeed nothing wrong with them), lets also consider adding some other authors who students may have heard of but not considered part of the horror genre. From my own youth I’m suggesting Robert E. Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Howard is famous for his Conan character (who did have a movie this year) and of course Burroughs most famous character is Tarzan, although John Carter of Mars will soon be out as a movie too. For these two authors I’m suggesting that we might let students read works such as Howard’s short story Pigeons from Hell, a kind of southern (post Civil War) horror story, and Burroughs’ the Monster Men, a more fun and adventurous kind of book about re-animation of the dead. Pigeons from Hell MP3 Audio: http://kboo.fm/node/17284 PDF/Kindle: http://www.classicly.com/robert-e-howard/pigeons-from-hell ePu...

Whenever I do a talk about ebooks I pretty much always hear people saying that they don't feel that ebooks are the same, that you get something different from the look and feel of a paper printed book (and other things like the smell of a book). I agree with a lot of those things too, and I'm also sure that the feel and smell of the horse was different from the car, but both got people from place to place, but for the most part only one is really in use as standard transportation today. The difference between reading from a text is printed on paper and reading from etext on the ereader has now been solved, there is no difference. Researchers in Germany have found that there was no difference when scanning peoples brains as they read from paper than has a red from the and the reader. The the study analyzed differences in reading from different kinds of books digital ink tablet PC and printed paper. The reading behavior of the readers was analyzed through eye movement (eye tracki...

I was just reading an announcement that came out that if you buy tickets to see the new Three Musketeers movie though Fandango, you will receive a free eBook of the original novel from WOWIO.  While I'm glad to see ebook support going with WOWIO, support for classics reading, and I'm sure that the book (with it's movie tie-in cover) will do well, I kind of wish that the movie's web site ( www.threemusketeers-movie.com ) had just given away the public domain book them selves. It would have been a nice bonus from their site to have links to the kindle/nook/ePub/etc versions of the book and perhaps even the audiobook version. So while I am sure that I will be going to the movie, I don't usually buy my tickets through online, and I thought that there may be quite a few others like me, I've put together quickly a few sites that provide the famous Dumas novel for free reading and listening to online or for download: Audiobook Version: Books Should ...

The British Library has recently released Lewis Carroll's book title Alice's Adventures Under Ground (later re-titled Alice in Wonderland). While you can purchase the iPad version, the Library has a free online application that displays the book and provides an number of great tools as you read the book using the museum's "Turning the Pages" system. The book itself is composed of detailed scans of the original text hand written by Lewis Carroll with his own drawings. Using the library's tools, not only can you read the text you can also explore the images with the Magnifier tool, read the text as print, and even listen as someone with a great voice reads it aloud to you. I found that just reading Carroll's handwriting to be it's own experience, as here is the whole book in a booklet form with page numbers on each page and areas where he had added his own drawings. While I'm sure that there are drafts of each section, just looking at what he did ...