Between the Covers

Which e-reader should you buy?

Here's an assessment from The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro:

"Amazon's Kindle dominates this category but continues to suffer from self-imposed compatibility problems - the usage controls Amazon embeds in its e-books prevent you from using them in hardware or software not approved by the Seattle retailer and also forbid such customary practices as lending your copy to a friend. Its e-ink screen, meanwhile, exhibits the slow performance and low resolution of an early effort. A crop of new e-book readers - for example, Barnes & Noble's Nook, Plastic Logic's Que and Sony's Reader Daily Edition - promise better features but won't ship until the end of this year or even later. If you simply cannot live without an e-reader, get Amazon's basic Kindle model, not its bigger Kindle DX - but realize that a few months from now you may regret jumping into this market too soon."

Giving thanks for good books

In case you were wondering where I've been: Was home for a week enjoying the holidays with good weather, good friends, family, some nice wine and, of course, a few books. Fewer than I anticipated, actually.

Read Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Played With Fire and (predictably) loved it; it's especially nice to read a dark Scandinavian mystery by the pool in Florida. Now I am desperate to read the third - and last! - book in the series, although when I think hard about it I'm so sorry that no. 3 is the end that...maybe I can wait. Delayed gratification is good. In any case, anybody who has yet to discover Larsson's moody thrillers needs to do so pronto. I'm still waiting to meet the first person who doesn't like these books.

Also started Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, and though I'm not quite finished yet, I have to say that while I like it I am baffled as to how it ended up on Publisher's Weekly's list of the top 10 books of the year. Maybe its climax is extraordinary (though I have this feeling I know where it's going). Won't say more until I'm done.

Holiday gifts for book junkies

Kindle, schmindle. No, really, we love all the new e-book readers (and wish someone would stuff one in our stocking). But real books are a reader's best friend. Here are some of the best literary gifts of the season.

• 1001 Natural Wonders You Must See Before You Die (Barron's, $35): You may never make it all the way through this list of absolutely gorgeous natural sights, but you'll have fun trying. And it's not all about remote, hard-to-reach places like the Musandam Fjords in Oman; there are plenty of sites in the U.S.A. just begging to be explored.

• Dogjoy: The Happiest Dogs in the Universe, by Editors of Bark (Rodale, $16.99): Only the truly soulless can resist the grinning canines in this charming photo book.

• The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire, by Stieg Larsson (Vintage and Knopf, $14.95 and $25.95, respectively): The Swedish writer died in 2004, but his thrillers -- dark, mesmerizing, insightful -- about a disgraced journalist and his tattooed, computer hacker sidekick have captivated the world and dominated the bestseller lists.

• Grateful Dead Scrapbook, by Ben Fong-Torres (Chronicle, $40): Why not make a Dead Head happy with this handsome scrapbook full of removable reproductions of artwork and memorabilia? There's also an hour-long audio CD of interviews with the band.

• I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar, by Sharon Eliza Nichols (St. Martin's Griffin, $9.99): Know anybody who will not put up with missing commas, sloppy spelling or erratic apostrophes (besides my editor)? He or she will cackle with superior glee at this collection of pictures -- inspired by the Facebook group -- that indicate some writers and sign makers need to go back to fifth grade and pay attention this time.

• Walking Through Walls, by Philip Smith (Washington Square, $15): Now out in paperback, Miami artist Smith's entertaining memoir tells the story of his dad, a designer once known as the Bead King, who gradually left his business behind to become a psychic healer.

• What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown, $27.99): The author of the bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink examines a wide array of topics (disasters, financial scandals, racial profiling) in these terrific essays originally published in The New Yorker.

• Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Knopf, $27): This meaty historical novel, which won this year's prestigious Man Booker Prize, traces the life of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII (never a safe proposition).

• Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, edited by John Skipp (Black Dog & Leventhal, $19.95): This fat anthology features stories about zombies from Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, George Saunders, Poppy Z. Brite, Max Brooks, Ray Bradbury and others. Guaranteed to keep you awake if you're waiting up for Santa.

What are you reading now?

``The two books I keep returning to as guides for thinking through my novel-in-progress are Eudora Welty's The Optimist's Daughter and William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow.''

JENNINE CAPO CRUCET, author of How to Leave Hialeah 

National Book Award winners

The National Book Foundation named winners Wednesday night:

Fiction: Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

Nonfiction: The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, TJ. Stiles

Poetry:  Transcedental Studies: A Trilogy, Keith Waldrop

Young people's literature: Claudette Colvin, Phillip Hoose.

Gore Vidal and Dave Eggers were honored at the ceremony. Andy Borowitz, fresh from his Miami Book Fair appearance, was the master of ceremonies.

Sony can't promise an e-reader in every stocking

Good news for Sony, bad news for those who thought they had some holiday shopping done, courtesy of  the Associated Press:

"Sony Corp. says some customers who pre-order its newest e-reader may not get the gadget in time for the holidays.

The company said Wednesday it's trying to ship the $399 Reader Daily Edition for the holidays. But because interest has exceeded expectations, the company can't be sure that everyone who buys one will get it by Christmas.

Sony unveiled the Reader Daily Edition in August and planned to release it for the holidays. Like rival Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle, the Daily Edition will be able to download books wirelessly - a first for a Sony Reader."

Fox News: AP assigned 11 reporters to factcheck Palin book

Fox News reporter Robert Shaffer reports that in an "unprecedented" move, the Associated Press got an early copy of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue and assigned 11 reporters to factcheck the book. AP refused comment.

Click here to read the story.

"Lost Symbol" boosts Random House's ebook sales

Bookseller.com reports that a leaked memo indicates that Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol helped Random House improve its ebook sales by - whoa! - 400 percent.

From Bookseller:

"According to an internal Random House report, sales of its Kindle e-books through September 2009 came to $22.6m, an increase of almost 700% over the $2.9m in revenue that the Kindle generated during the same period in 2008.

Crain's reports that the The Lost Symbol sold 100,000 e-books its first week out, or about 5% of total sales for the book. In the first half of 2009, Random House e-book revenue grew by 400%, a Random House spokesman added, a figure previously disclosed."

What are you reading now?

``I love rereading, because it inserts you so deeply under a book's skin, and I've just reread two marvelous books. One is Famous Fathers, a story collection by Pia Z. Ehrhardt. She's masterful at stopping time at disturbing moments and then making us sit still with this ticking discomfort. . . . And I reread a debut poetry collection called What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy. It's alarming and beautiful and offers just enough framework for your imagination to race in and construct entire, sometimes devastating, narratives.''

DYLAN LANDIS, author of Normal People Don't Live Like This

Are you ready for "Going Rogue"?

From McClatchy's Erika Bolstad (former Herald reporter!) comes this story on the eve of the release of Sarah Palin's memoir Going Rogue:

"WASHINGTON — By now, nearly everyone with a television has seen the teases for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's appearance Monday on Oprah Winfrey's show. (Will Levi come to Thanksgiving dinner? Stay tuned!)

Thanks to a sloppy stock clerk at an undisclosed bookstore, there've been plenty of leaks from Palin's memoir, Going Rogue, which officially hits bookstores Tuesday.

The Palin publicity blitz has begun, and if it has elements of a political campaign, a Twitter feed and that of a top-tier rock band touring second-tier cites, well, that's by design.

Palin, who taped her appearance on Oprah last week, kicks off her tour Tuesday at a Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich. She'll swing through small cities such as Fort Wayne, Ind., Washington, Pa., Roanoke, Va. — places where she had triumphant appearances last year on the campaign trial as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running mate."

The story continues:

"So what's in the book?

There's some juicy campaign trail gossip, writes the Associated Press reporter who last week tracked down a copy of Going Rogue. In it, Palin reportedly claims that as much as $50,000 of the legal bills she amassed while she was governor of Alaska came from the vetting the McCain campaign did of her as a vice presidential candidate.

The book also "describes heart-wrenching anguish about her teen daughter's pregnancy playing out before a national audience," reports the AP.

There's also plenty of media bashing, according to an excerpt leaked to the Drudge Report Web site."

Click here to read the whole story.