Saving CeeCee HoneyCutt , the Nook, Amazon, Apple & ebooks

There's something about this gadget that has made it so much more fun to read--even if it did cause me to fall off of my treadmill, again!

I just finished reading "Saving CeeCee Honeycutt", by Beth Hoffman, on the Nook, and this is another book that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's about a 12 year old girl's life in Savannah, Georgia, after her early years alone with a mentally ill mother.



From the very first pages, this book made me want to cry. CeeCee is living with something that is just bigger than her, bigger than a child should have to go through. Early in the book, though, there's that glimmer of hope of resilience, possible when someone throws a child a lifeline through acts of kindness, and CeeCee is embraced by a circle of loving, quirky, women.

In many ways, this book is very much like "The Secret Life of Bees", a fairly common theme in women's literature, but well-worth re-visiting. And like "Bees", there's a transformative process that occurs for CeeCee, as she makes peace with her past, and is able to come to appreciate the positives of her mother as well as to bear the pain of thinking about and remembering her childhood.

A few people have asked my opinion about the nook itself. It still has some glitches, given that it's a newly released gadget (Nov, 2009). Barnes & Noble is not good at all at communicating with its customers on its message boards in dealing with the problems, and I wonder if it's some kind of corporate stategy; scramble like crazy to fix the problem but don't actually TALK about the problems so that you can maintain some kind of plausible deniability.

The nook has had several software updates, and its latest (early February) greatly improved issues with registering the nook through WiFi, maintaining bookmarks on the nook, speed at which pages turned. The only problem I've run into has been in trying to open one book which just would not load ("Animal Dreams", by Barbara Kingsolver) When this happens on an infrequent basis, the issue seems to be more of a problem with the formatting of the ebook itself, rather than the nook, but still, the book was purchased through B&N!. My fix was to load the book in the file "My Documents" rather than the file "My B&N downloads", but having to figure out a fix for the little glitches can be annoying!

Falling off my treadmill wasn't exactly a nook glitch, though. (Although wait! Maybe it was! Because I was trying to get the "Animal Dreams" book to load when it happened!)

I'm finding that the nook is absolutely excellent for reading on my treadmill or exercise bike. You can hold the nook one-handed, and with this little, smug, practically twitch-of-a-movement of your thumb, turn the page. (One time I was sitting on a plane with an unfriendly fellow passenger, reading my nook, while he read his Kindle, and swear I won the Page-Turn-Contest through my thumb motions. I'm not sure he noticed, though I was indeed feeling smug about it.)

Today, I read in the Atlantic Monthly an article asking whether Apple can beat Amazon in the e-book competition. The nook was not mentioned at all. The author was fairly critical of the Ipad, claiming that it "does a bunch of things, but none of them especially well. You can't read it in daylight, and its battery life is much shorter than the Kindle's" It said the ipad doesn't have a real keyboard, ability to multitask, no phone, no camera. And it's just one more thing to carry.

To me, that would be huge; I wouldn't want another BIG thing to carry in my purse; the nook is the perfect size for portability (and my dangerous treadmill!) I'm also a big fan of the ability to go beyond Amazon's books; only Amazon books can be opened on the Kindle. I can get books (epub format) from dozens of other sites for the nook, and my library just said that they are looking into an Overdrive subscription for ebooks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with the nook. Not Barnes and Noble, but with the nook. Oh, and there's that thumb thing. . . .

The Barnes & Noble Nook: The Art of Racing in the Rain

It's just too much! Maybe one of you can talk some sense into Angela! First, she and Doug go on a cruise. And then, while they're on this cruise, Angela reads this book on her nook and asks me to review it!

It's just too much to ask of a dog!

The books is " The Art of Racing in the Rain," by Garth Stein. It's narrated by a sweet, noble, lab mix, on the last day of his life. This fine creature understands that it's time to be. . . . Get This!. . . . "put down" and reminisces about his life.

It's a totally maudlin book. . . a real tear jerker (How could it not be?!), as Enzo philosophically takes you into the devastating details of his owners/family. He tells of his beloved Denny, and the death of sweet, young Eve just a few short years into their marriage.

And, as if that's not sad enough, then Denny has to battle his in-laws to retain custody of the cute little Zoe, their 3 year old daughter.

If you are in the mood for a sad, sweet book, this is perfect. If every once in awhile, lifetime Someone's-going-to-die movies appeal to you, ---like maybe on a rainy, or cold, winter day, you'll like this.

It's not funny, like "Marley and Me," but it's about a dog, and that can never be all bad. But is this really the right book, I ask you, for a Disney Cruise?????

I mean, isn't Disney suppose to be "the happiest place on earth?" You're not suppose to curl up someplace with your nook, and cry! Sheeeeeeesh!

OK. . . . Now I'll turn this over to Angela.

"Errr, Thanks Bonnie. That was. . . . uh. . . . great.

I just want to tell a few more things about the Barnes & Noble Nook. I debated for several years about getting the Kindle. . . and there was just something about only being able to read books that I bought through Kindle that just made me hesitant.

I heard about the Nook in November, and for no apparent reason, with little research, I ordered it! It wasn't even out yet! I knew that it was suppose to have a system in which you could add books from other sources, like ereader.com or fictionwise.com or google books, and this was definitely a selling factor for me.

It's also suppose to work with overdrive, a library system, if your local library subscribes to this, which would allow you to add your library's ebooks onto the reader. I'm hoping our itty bitty little library will eventually have this.

It has a "lend" feature, which allows for the lending of some books, once, to someone else for 14 days. Message boards are springing up that help provide a forum for this "brokering" of exchanges.

I've been able to add pdfs to it, and have acquired a number of free books--at this point, mostly directly through barnes & noble.

One major problem I experienced with the nook was with registering it. It was suppose to work over the AT&T 3G network, including in Edge areas or partner areas. Ha! Not in the hinterlands of North Dakota! Nor apparently, in places like Montana, Wyoming, SD, Kansas. . . only in definite AT&T solid blue 3G areas. Once registered, it works over home wifi, but the initial registration involved my driving to Minneapolis, some 300 miles away, to do this. It wasn't actually necessary. . . just made it easier to order books "over the air" directly onto the nook, without having to sideload them with a USB cable connecting it to my computer.

This past week, the firmware V1.2 came out, and once I installed it, even mine would now register in ND. Others in the "wilderness" areas are now being to register their nooks as well.

This thing is awesome! I'm really enjoying reading on it. You turn pages by just gently swiping a finger very lightly a small distance across the bottom. I can listen to music on it while I read, and even add my own photos to display as the screensavers if I want to. The e-ink display is very easy on the eyes for reading, much nicer than a computer screen, and if I want to, I can change font style and size. (I usually want to if I'm walking on a treadmill or using an exercise bike.) At this point, most recent NYT bestsellers directly from B&N cost between $5 and $10, although depending on what publishers do, this may, unfortunately, change.

A strange aside of the nook are the message boards of B&N regarding the nook. It reminds me of Stephen King's "Under the Dome." If you remember Bonnie's review of this book, people end up in opposing camps, with all sorts of characterological quirks emerging; basically your usual human melodrama whenever you get more than a handful of people together.

That's what the B&N nook boards are like! I kid you not; people have even threatened to take out someone's grandmother on it! And then there are the usual grown-up sorts who basically provide technical assistance as the quirks of a brand new technical gadget are worked out. I find the boards to be fairly addictive reading themselves! (Bonnie thinks I need to get out more!)

And she's right; I need to give her a less challenging assignment for her next review!