Informationoverlord

I was hoping my first post about the Kindle would be less about war and more about peace, about love and not hate. Sadly …

KINDLING 

My Kindle arrived the day before I went on holiday, so it seemed only logical to download a book and take one with me, in additional to my actual books to give it a go. However, I discovered that it didn’t seem to want to connect to my wifi network, which meant i could not try downloading that way so I have to resort to downloading on my pc and transferring to the device, and leaving sorting out the wifi issue until I got back. I will deal with that before going on.

WIFI

When I got back, I double checked all my settings and that the passcode I was entering was right, but, the Kindle kept telling me it was incorrect. Maybe it is faulty Kindle? I headed out in search of a free hotspot. Worked in seconds. Grr.

So after confirming that it was happy to connect to free wifi, I surmised that it must either not recognise some characters in what was my passcode as opposed to word for my wireless network or it must have some stupid arbitary max number of characters instead that said phrase/code was exceeding. [They don’t tell you this, but I think it is a fact]

I returned home, knowing that - to get the Kindle to work at home, I would be faced with changing the settings on 2 phones, a netbook, a laptop, an imac, a pc, and an internet/dab radio - to say my love for Amazon was going down very quickly would not be far short or the mark.

I changed my ‘password/phrase’ for the network - making it shorter, and possibly less secure.Voila. Success on the Kindle. Connected straight away. Now you need to ‘register’ via wifi - wont let you if you connect via PC etc [Stupid and unhelpful]. So I enter my Amazon details in, it ‘registers’ me… NO YOU CANT READ IT…and then it disables all the things I bought and transfered over via the kindle shop via my pc before going on holiday, saying for each: ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ 

To be honest, at this point I would be lying if I said I was remotely happy. I am wirelessly connected to your site, Amazon, and my account where you can see what I have and have not bought, and yet, your system is not smart enough to verify this wirelessly? Amusingly this includes the ‘Welcome Mr …’ doc that has just appeared too. Genius, pure genius.

So I have to deleted all from device and now wirelessly get them back via the ‘archived items’. An additional pain, but I did it. Only, it decided that for some items it would work as they say and for others, it would them repeat the same message of delete and download from archived items again. Indeed, of 6 items, the 6 I have either previously opened in some way, inc two I am reading, wont now work, but the two I have downloaded but had yet to open in any way are fine.

Try reboot. Nope. no good.

I know, I think. I’ll do the delete bit , log on the my Amazon account on my pc and ’send the books’ to the device.   Yes, it works! … Oh, no wait, it sends them but then displays same ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ Now none of the items open.

So in the space of 90mins I have gone from all books opening, but no wifi and functions such as the experimental browser function and managing collections and others bits not working, to wifi working and everything else fucked.

Next?Let’s try deleting all the items from the documents folder for the Kindle when I have it connected to my PC, and then adding them again via the PC….No, that doesn’t work.

Got it! Why not buy something new - a free book - using the device and Wifi, as that MUST work, right? Well, I could certainly buy Dracula, and it certainly transfered to my device, but if I try and open it?  ‘The Selected item could not be opened. If you purchased this from Amazon, delete the item and download it from archived items’ 

Amazon Helpdesk

Started off speaking to a lovely helpful Irish lady, before being passed to an expert called Shane, would indeed seem to know what was what and sorted out the problems with another reboot and some tweeks and we seem to be all working again. Phew.And now to change the password on all  the household devices …

A post about using the Kindle to actually read things will be coming soon.

Top 10 Books of 2009

1. Anne Tyler – Noah’s Compass. One of the most consistently good writers on the planet, and frankly no one does this type of dysfunctional family /relationship stuff better.
2. Adam Foulds - The Quickening Maze. This was one of the most pleasant surprises on 2009. Whilst reading it did remind me of several other books taking on similar territory – hard not to think of Pat Barker – it was a surprising and lyrical book where not a great deal happened, but what did happened very well.
3. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall The Winner of this year’s Booker was a big book, and one which I in turn loved and felt dragged down by> At its best it is an engaging romp through .
4. Simon Mawer - The Glass Room. I maintain that the first half of this book is the novel of the year, sadly the second half doesn’t quite hold up as well.
5. Nick Cave – The Death of Bunny Monrow. So much more readable and less up his own bottom than ‘And the Ass saw the Angel’ The Audiobook is fab.
6. Dan Simmons – Drood. Not really read much Dan Simmons, but this is an inventive thriller narrated by Wilkie Collins, about events that caused Charles Dickens, to write The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s last, uncompleted novel.
7. Carlos Ruiz Zafon – The Angel’s Game – Whilst not really in the same league at Shadow in the Wind, this was still an enjoyable thriller.
8. Richard Price – Lush Life. Well crafted crime novel, but a writer on the top of his game.
9. David Simon – Homicide. You have to commit to this in pretty much the same way you have to commit to the Wire, but like the Wire it does reward that commitment.
10. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith Surprisingly entertaining reworking of Austen’s classic

I was reading this morning in the Wall St Journal that HarperCollins (News Corp) , Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp) and Hachette Book Group (Lagardere SCA) have all decided that from next year they are going to delay the availability of e-book publications of many of their new Hardback titles in 2010 for between 1-6 months.

The reason? That the popularity of simultaneously available $9.99 e-book bestsellers with the new hardcovers puts the publishing industry’s business in danger and leaves them with less money to invest in new authors.

Hmmm, that argument sounds familiar. Try and save one market whilst crippling a newer one. Hmmm, Oh wait, of course, it’s the same one the Music industry trotted out. Let’s see what happened when they did that – oh yes – mass piracy.

Seriously, do these people in the tradition media not learn lessons? And do they also not see they’re missing the point in that there are people who would buy the eBook who may not have bought the Hardback at all – this is a new additional sale = added revenue; there are also people who might buy both. What this sounds like is an attempt to make the eBook a replacement for the paperback release. It could work; but the price will be more eBook piracy.

I can’t help thinking the industry would be better served trying to convince those people who have become eBook buyers to just buy more eBooks than they would have had they been buying hardback books simply BECAUSE the price is cheaper.

Picked up this meme Via Organising Chaos / WoodsieGirlDo you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack?Does a nice glass of red wine, a cold beer, or a cup of Earl Grey tea (depending on time of year/location) count?Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?Whilst horrify might be too strong a word, I’m not personally a writing in books fan. However, that said, if you own the book in question then it you want to write in it then that’s your choice, just don’t do it to my books or books you borrow from libraries.How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open?Bookmark of some sort – be it an actual bookmark or a scrap of paper, old postcard etc. I’m a bit of a book nazi where it comes to breaking spines, dog-eras and the like, and will tend not to lend books to people that I suspect do such things. Basically books don’t last that long these days – all the acid in the paper etc – and last even less time when treated badly. But, again as above, if it’s your book then do what you like.Fiction, Non-fiction, or both?Both, although I learn more towards fictionHard copy or audiobooks?Still a hardcopy man, but I do enjoy the occasional audiobook too – good for long walks (if alone) and also for in car entertainment too. Alan Alda reading his memoirs was fun.Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you able to put a book down at any point?I prefer to finish off a chapter or at least get to a natural break in the text. Of course, sometimes this is not practicable so I just put it down whenever I have to.If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away?I’d love to lie and say of course I do, but alas in truth I will usually not bother. I often intend to, but have usually moved on so quickly that I forget to go back and do so.What are you currently reading?Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall, E.J Wagner - The Science of Sherlock Holmes, and Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith - Pride and Prejudice and ZombiesWhat is the last book you bought?Hilary Mantel - Wolf HallAre you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can you read more than one at a time?I’m very bad for having several books on the go at once. It’s usually two or three, but I have had as many as 7 on the go at once – not to be recommended!Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read?Not really, although quite like reading whilst relaxing in the Bath. What I will say though, is that one of my least favourite places to read is in Bed. Just never get comfortable enough.Do you prefer series books or stand alone books?EitherIs there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over?I have recommended Anne Tyler to a lot of people over the years. As for specific titles, Katherine Neville - The Eight; Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged; Booth Tarkington - The Magnificent Ambersons; Arturo Perez Reverte - The Flanders Panel; and Jose Saramago - Blindness all regularly find there way in as gifts.How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?)I used to be very very particular about this and it was always by author. These days the mix of hard back and paperback and different sizes within both of these means that for ease of putting on shelves, it is a highly dis-organised – where does this book fit approach.

Mike Semple Piggot  - aka CharonQC – has created at very useful resource on Contract Law at his Insitelaw site. The project includes a text - based on textbook written by which he developed for teaching law students at BPP Law School – which he founded. [The first seven chapters are now available subject to updating work due to completed by 10th August] – linked to cases from Bailli, Wikipedia, a new Contract Law blog and a news feed.  According to Mike ” The textbook will be supplemented by a series of recorded lectures, and I plan to monitor the net for other free legal resources on Contract Law in England & Wales (Although I will include references to Us, Scotland and Common Law jurisdictions where it is helpful to do so) - law reports, news items, article abstracts and the like… this is, inevitably, a work in progress. I will be setting up a blog for analysis, articles, news - very shortly.” So, if you’re a student of law, or someone who works in the law – be it a trainee, lawyer or information professional, you should make sure you have this site bookmarked somewhere.  

Mike’s project also fits in well with the Free Legal Web project

Nick Holmes over at Binary Law has an interesting piece of the impending doom that is print media - or at least traditional ‘hard copy’ print as we know it today.

In particular, he raises the question of the future of the future of legal publications such as Law journals (particularly the more scholarly ones) and asks if the move away from traditional hard copy print runs has them set for an early grave - at least in that format.

Now, I love print - there, I have said it. Yes, in some ways I am a ‘web geek’ and I love new technologies - I think I’d be lost without my iPhone (or similar) - but, in part, the love of the feel of books - their physicality, their smell, their magic is what drove me into the profession I choose for myself.

That said, Nick’s article got my brain thinking in a different way, and less focussed on the death of print and more about its rebirth in a legal context. I believe that the ‘end of print’ is a long way away, if it indeed ever happens; but the opportunities for exploiting a move into electronic delivery are still in their infancy, and if I was a legal publisher, then I would be seeing a big light at the end of the tunnel. Why?

The eBook Reader:

Yes, Amazon’s Kindle, Iliad, Sony PRS-505 and the rest. I think the scope for the success of eBook Readers within the law is vast. It is a technology that - it seems to me - is just made for the legal environment.

On a personal user level, whilst being impressed with Sony’s eBook Reader, for example, and loving how it works, I can never image wanting to carry around several hundred/thousand books around with me. A handful, yes, but not my entire library, and not certainly not in the same way that I’d want to carry a similar amount of music albums or films.

However, if I were a lawyer, who could have all the legal journals I wanted and all the legal texts I wanted - displayed as they would be in a ‘traditional’ print run - all on one device that I could keep in my desk or take with me to client meetings etc, then I would be a very happy bunny. Yes, some of these legal texts are already available electronically on Westlaw and Lexis, but they do not LOOK like books, they don’t let you engage with them as books, and as a result will never replace the book/loose-leaf. Keep them as a ‘book’ and THEN digitise them, keeping what makes books work and useable - good indexes etc - whilst adding the functionality of the modern technological world - search, highlight and note taking (post it note functionality) etc - and I think you would have gold.

Of course, the main legal publishers will probably follow the usual route of making their own devices with incompatible file formats so that you’ll always need more than one reader in the same way that Apple and Co did with digital music and Amazon and Sony etc are already doing with eReaders.

Do you think I am right? Is the eBook the future for legal publishing? Is legal (and most likley educational publishing in general) the one thing that could turn eBooks and eBook readers into serious business? Let me know.

Despite iOverlord’s protestations that there would be more library content on this blog, this is instead another foray into the seemingly endless task of blogging the Booker nominees.  Sea of Poppies as it happens, and not my favourite read…

Interminable, unbearable, trying far too hard and not succeeding - all completely reasonable and pertinent descriptors of Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies.

I finished this book months ago now, but haven’t been able to work up the energy to write a review. Truly, spending any more of my time on such a deeply irritating book was a deeply depressing concept. Sure there were some parts of the book that were alright - the descriptions of various elements of the Indian countryside were lyrical and lovely, and there was a certain fascination in getting to read about a culture and period that I know very little about. But that doesn’t make up for the deep irritation I felt towards most of this book. The gratingly horrid use of language, with most of the native Indian characters speaking in a tedious dialect made comprehension of many sections nigh on impossible. As the Guardian review rightly pointed out,  many readers will have trouble understanding sentences like:”Jodu had been set to . . . stowing pipas of drinking water, tirkaoing hamars, hauling zanjirs through the hansil-holes.” Far too much of the book is written in slang, and differing slang at that, for not all the characters share the same language. This kind of a conceit can be lift a book when used sparingly, but weighs Poppies down horribly.

And then, when you can manage to extract some meaning out of the convoluted and obscured text, you have to deal with the characters. I’ve never met a cast of characters that I disliked so profoundly. Barely a redeeming feature amongst the lot of them. Deeti, whose desire to escape from her opium-addict husband is laudable, but her methods (and choice of companion) preposterous. Zachary, the beyond-irritating young sailor who gets himself into increasingly ludicrous situations. Baboo Nob Kissim (yes, really), the religiously obsessed accountant who believes that he’s inhabited by the spirit of his mother (yes, really). That the pompous and then disgraced Raja, Neel, became my favourite (and most plausible) character by the end of the book is testament to quite how ridiculous the characterisation was.

I’m not going to run through the plot - that’s what Wikipedia is for after all. And there are any number of far kinder reviews around on the web. I don’t know how this made the Booker list, and I’m just desperately glad that it didn’t win, and that I never have to read it again.

Joseph Chitty releases his latest update of his legal book all about contracts. This is the 30th edition of the book, which he first published in 1826. I believe Mr Chitty is a vampire, which explains why he is still writing updates to his book 182 years after he published the first edition. Still, in between being a bloodsucker, it is nice to know that he still has time for keeping up-to-date with the English legal system.

So, what’s new you ask since the 29th Edition? Well, it still comes in two volumes: Volume 1: General Principles (otherwise known as the one that is always missing from your library shelf) and Volume 2: Specific Contracts (otherwise known as the one that is always still on your library shelf).

As you might expect Mr Chitty has managed to pack much more into the latest edition, so volume 1 runs for 2261 pages (as opposed to a mere 1967 in the 29th edition) , whilst volume 2 runs to 1928 (1785 in the 29th Edition). I should say here, that even back in the day, Mr C was not short of a word or two as this 3rd Edition (often cited at the classic edition) attests to. Only one volume needed back then, but still a respectable 976 pages

The Book cover is still grey with a “knobbly, elephant-skin-like” feel (copyright Jaffne), but the nice racing green of Edition 29 has been ditched in favour of a kind of Red/Orange colour for the faux name plate in Edition 30.

The actual content is - of course - the most important thing. Is the high standard, that this indispensable publication has been renowned for, still ever present? Let us not forget this has been called by more than one, the legal practitioners’ bible. Well, let me give you a flavour of the delights inside, and let you decide.

“abuse of confidence is outside the cope of this chapter” (Vol 1, page 629)

“Where the constituent elements of a claimant’s case are capable of being put either in terms of a claim in tort or for breach of contracts, the general rule is that the claimant may choose” (Vol 1, page 84) - Personally, I would always choose to claim some Tort, and if pushed would go for Chocolate Truffle Tort, although, in principle, any Tort would suffice.

Just like the real bible, it is a book that is best used for random quotes to make a point, and not read cover to cover when it does tend to get a little repetitive and could be described as a little dry. Personally a few more parable style entries would have probably improved things and widened the readership a bit, but guess Mr Chitty doesn’t want to mess with a winning formula. Still, for those, who would rather wait until the film, I do believe Oliver Stone has bought the film rights, and will begin filming the first Volume in the new year. No word yet on casting. I can however confirm that the film will not be featuring a scene where a cool gang - think Ocean’s 11 (Clooney version) - try to blow the doors off a vehicle that contains the original proofs of the latest volumes. Yes, it will not be called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Also expect the abridged (film tie-in) paperback edition to be out next year.

For those who can not wait, take this chance to spend £428 and give the one you love Chitty for Xmas this year.

Look - another Booker review, if much belated..

Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs, is a portrait of a post-war migrant family to London, struggling to find an emotional foothold in this new country. It is also a coming-of-age tale, recounting Vivian’s (the main character and narrator) young adulthood, as she comes to know and understand both herself and her family.

Vivian’s parents moved to London to escape the threat of communism in Hungary. They lived their lives carefully and fearfully, never really at ease in England, and rarely leaving their charity-allocated West end flat. Vivian grew up not knowing that her estranged uncle was the criminal Sandor Kovacs, an infamous slum lord and pimp. The adult Vivian, reeling from the tragic death of her young husband, covertly befriends the now aging Sandor, acting as scribe as he recalls a life of hardship and struggle, in the book he would like to write to ’set his story straight’.

The book is simply written, with a careful, concise tone that lends a beautiful clarity to the text. Though written in the first person, there is an emotional remove from the action, as the older Vivan recounts these events from her youth dispassionately and somewhat coldly. Throughout the book clothes are used to lend a warmth to the otherwise removed tale. Grant goes into great depth describing Vivian’s clothes throughout her life, as well as the iconic pieces from other characters wardrobes - her punk boyfriends leather jacket, her mother’s woolen vests. I enjoyed this book very much, which was an interesting contrast to the comparatively overwrought emotions of The Secret Scripture. It is a compelling story of communication, revelation, history and family.

And so the votes are in, and this years Booker prize winner was The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Now you’ll have to hold on a bit longer until the combined wisdom of Scott & Jen pass their judgment on the Information Overlord winner, but congratulations to Aravind Adiga.

Now those who read my last post and review of The White Tiger will probably have guessed that it probably isn’t going to get my vote in our assessment of the books. I would, however, like to repeat that I enjoyed reading it, and there are a lot of good things in the book. Chair of the Judges Michael Portillo liked it a lot and said: “The novel is in many ways perfect. It is quite difficult to find any structural flaws with it …My criteria were ‘Does it knock my socks off?’ and this one did … the others impressed me … this one knocked my socks off.” Portillo continued saying what set the book apart was its originality in showing “the dark side of India”.

Do the judges of these things not actually read or do research? I think the book shows “the dark side of India” very well in part, but originality? Try reading Vikram Chandra, or Sujit Saraf. There are Indian writers out there who have been doing this before. Yes, Adiga does it very well in sections of this book, but he isn’t the trail-blazer some reviewers/judges would have you believe. Also Michael, leaving aside structure - and we could discuss whether or not knowing he is a murderer at the start is a good or bad plot device - what about characterisation flaws? Pick a few characters at random: The Mongoose, Ashok, The Stork, and tell me who they are. If I gave you extracts of text about them would you be able to recognise them? I seriously doubt it.

Of course, Jen might tell me I’m talking bollocks, that the characterisation is good and agree that this is indeed the worthy winner of the prize.