Miscellany News

Manga 2009 Gift Guides for New­bies and Fans

Are you a manga fan like me? Then you must check out the 2009 Great Manga Gift Guide. Sev­eral blogs par­tic­i­pated in cre­at­ing lists and you can view them all here.

Kin­dle Avail­able & The Nook Is Not (Who Cares About Sony?)

B&N’s new ereader, the Nook is allegedly out of stock. Accord­ing to B&N’s com­peti­tor, demos won’t even be in stores until the sec­ond week of Decem­ber and even with that news, only high vol­ume stores will get them. I vis­ited my neigh­bor­hood B&N yes­ter­day. What sur­prised me was that they have now set up a com­mand cen­ter to adver­tise the device, right in front of the entrance where cus­tomers can’t miss them.

There’s a cus­tomer rep­re­sen­ta­tive there to answer any ques­tions you may have along with fliers and leaflets for cus­tomers to peruse over. I also noticed she had the plas­tic dis­play of the Nook there but no real demo to fon­dle. She said they would have it next Fri­day. Like every­one else, I’m curi­ous about the device but I have zero plans to pur­chase one. I already own a ded­i­cated reader and it will have to suf­fice for now.

Myth­i­cal Apple Tablet

Every­body is talk­ing about the myth­i­cal Apple Tablet. Even The Busi­ness Insider arti­cle, “Cool! Here’s What Sports Illus­trated Will Look Like On The Apple Tablet, fur­ther whets people’s appetite. I am excited and yes, if it reads ebooks then I will cer­tainly plunk down the funds for it. But I remain reserved and skep­ti­cal. It’s like wait­ing for the next Lisa Valdez novel. You’ve heard that it exists but no one has actu­ally seen it yet.

New Pur­chases

I am read­ing but it’s a slow exer­cise of late. Stuff like work and fam­ily and Twit­ter con­tin­ues to monop­o­lize my spare time. No wor­ries. I have plans in place that I plan to stick with that includes spend­ing less time online and more time read­ing. It’s all about time man­age­ment. All my life I’ve had issues with man­ag­ing my time effi­ciently. Must work on that.

Any­way, I recently pur­chased some new books and if you have any feed­back to relay to me on them please share. I recently bought Stephanie Tyler’s debut novel, Hard to Hold. It’s roman­tic sus­pense, I think. Title reminds me of that Rick Spring­field movie.

God, how I loved that movie (no laugh­ing). Looks like Tyler and her pub­lisher are releas­ing the sequels back to back. So, she must be good, right? Also bought a set of his­tor­i­cal mys­ter­ies by Alex Pep­per, fea­tur­ing a Bow Street Run­ner. Read­ing the reviews on Ama­zon you would think that Pyke, the lead char­ac­ter, ate lit­tle chil­dren for lunch. That’s it. If you’ve read this far, what books did you buy recently?

For Fur­ther Reading

• Barnes and Noble’s Issues Apol­ogy for Dis­play Tampering
• Barnes and Nobles Report Quar­terly Losses

Tagged as: Barnes and Noble, dedicated ebook readers, ereaders, the Nook