HarperCollins, Libraries and a 26 check-out limit. Problems ahead?

As some of you may know, HarperCollins recently announced something that could spell trouble for the already struggling libraries around the country. Basically, the licenses for their e-books purchased for library collections will expire after 26 check-outs.

Yep, you read that right. After 26 people read a particular e-book, that's it for that one. Kaput. Finito. The library will have to repurchase the digital rights for each book that expires, every time it expires.

What does this mean for the libraries who are just starting to really embrace this new technology? For one thing, it's certainly going to be hard to keep up a good, well-stocked selection of e-books, which is already a difficult thing to do; there is no discounted rate for e-books yet, and so libraries are paying full price for them. Budgets are already strained. When funding gets tight, library budgets are among the first to get cut. It's going to be hard to keep libraries relevant in an era when technology is starting to take over if it's too expensive to take part in the latest reading technology developments.

HarperCollins' reasoning is that physical books eventually have to get replaced. But really? Only 26 check-outs? That amounts to about one year, according to the Library Journal article I linked to up at the top. I don't know about the books in your library, but most of our books are well over one year old. We have books that are decades old and have probably been checked out hundreds of times.

The only good news about this is other publishers who do not currently sell digital rights to libraries might consider this alternative. Two of the "big six" of the publishing houses, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster, are two of those that don't let libraries buy their e-books (again, I'm paraphrasing Library Journal here).

So what do you think? Is this a terrible, terrible problem, or do you disagree with me and think it's a good thing? Will this be a bad or good thing for libraries in the long run, and do you think HarperCollins will continue in this line or ease up?

Stephany Reads Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner

Title/Author: Best Friends Forever by Jennifer Weiner
Where I Got It: Someone very awesome sent it to me!
Why I Read It: I heard A LOT about her books, and this was one of the ones to catch my eyes first, so I wanted to check it out for myself!
Rating: 4.5 stars

Summary (from the cover):

Addie Downs and Valerie Adler will be best friends forever. That's what Addie believes after Valerie moves across the street when they're both nine years old. But in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years, Val is swept into the popular crowd, while mousy, sullen Addie becomes her school's scapegoat.

Flash-forward fifteen years. Valerie Adler has found a measure of fame and fortune working as the weather girl at the local TV station. Addie Downs lives alone in her parents' house in their small hometown of Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, caring for a troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet. She's just returned from Bad Date #6 when she opens her door to find her long-gone best friend standing there, a terrified look on her face and blood on the sleeve of her coat. "Something horrible has happened." Val tells Addie, "and you're the only one who can help."

Best Friends Forever is a grand, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure; a story about betrayal and loyalty, family history and small-town secrets. It's about living through tragedy, finding love where you least expect it, and the ties that keep best friends together.

This book was actually very well written, and as the blurb says, it was hilarious! It had it's parts that were kind of boring, of course, what book doesn't? But for the most part, it was very entertaining!

I felt like I could relate to Addie quite a bit when it came to having friends in High School, being picked on, etc. I wasn't UNPOPULAR, but I wasn't popular either. High School was a lot less hard for me than Elementary was, but in that aspect, I could definitely relate to Addie.

Addie and Val had a falling out in high school when Val told Addie a secret, and Addie felt as if she needed to tell someone to help Val out. Addie did no wrong, but Val couldn't see it at the time. In the way Val handled it (I don't want to say too much), she wasn't a very good friend. I feel as if I could relate to Addie in the way of losing a good friend over something incredibly preventable, and being so hurt over it.

The book starts off when Addie was a little girl, living with her parents and brother in a neighborhood in Pleasant Ridge, Illinois. Pleasant Ridge is ( in real life ) a suburb of Chicago. One day Addie was looking out her window before lunch or dinner time (I can't remember which) and saw a moving truck pull up into the house across the street. She saw a little girl get out of the car following the moving truck, and realized they were the same age. Addie got excited, hoping to have a new friend.

Later, Val introduced herself to Addie, and Addie invited her to eat lunch with them. The rest is pretty much history. They were across-the-street neighbors, who hung out every single day. They grew up together, never leaving each others side until the event happened in high school.

My only complaint about the book is that I felt like the event that happened to cause them to drift apart, wasn't well detailed. I felt like there was lots of missing pieces. Also, the event that happened before Val showed up at Addie's door 15 years later, involved another character in the book, and I felt like he kept getting lost in the story. Pages and pages would go by before Jennifer would mention him again.

Overall, this was a fantastic book, and I would recommend it to anyone! I am also going to be checking into her other books very soon!!

Kimberly's Review of Finding Reason by Bryce Anderson

Book: Finding Reason (Originally Published as Body of Knowledge)

Author: Bryce Anderson

How I got it: I bought it from the author

Well, first I guess I ought to give a bit of history on the book. The way it came to be is a great story in itself. It started out as a couple of hand bound books that he handed off to friends, then he self-published the book as Body of Knowledge and began to spread the word about it through friends and family. And, as in my case, through Goodreads. And THEN a publishing company picked the book up, gave it a different cover and title, cleaned it up a bit and published it! 

The book made its way into my hands somewhere in between. It was still Body of Knowledge when I read it, it wasn’t until a year later that it was republished. To be completely honest, I wasn’t sure about this book at first. (Sorry, Bryce) I’d had many authors spam my profile on Goodreads or the couple of groups I belong to, trying to promote their book. Bryce had taken a look at my ‘read’ list on Goodreads before he ever sent me a message. After taking a look at the book and thinking about it for awhile, I decided to go for it.

Before I started reading the book, I had the vague impression that it was something scientific. Or perhaps a murder mystery. I had glanced at the description on the book but that was about it. If I remember correctly I was in the middle of finals or midterms and hadn’t read a book for my own pleasure for weeks. It was that point in the semester when I once again question my decision to get such a complicated degree. It probably took me a month to actually pick the book up. 

The description on the book reads something like this…. “An ant has two stomachs. I know this because my neighbor told me; and to my knowledge he never lied to me... And I liked the answers. They fit. They were logical. They placed everything in perspective and made me see the picture as a whole. I thought you might find it interesting why I thought the only logical thing I could do was kill him.

You can imagine why I didn’t really have much of an idea what the book was about. The moment I picked the book up and started reading it however… I realized why the description was like that. I can’t really say much about the story without spoiling much of it. And the surprises and little gems found throughout the book is one of the things that make it so great. I can, however, give you a brief description of the book without revealing too much. 

The story is narrated by the lead character, Bryce and tells of his family. They live a fairly normal life and then one day they get a new neighbor. His name is JP and is odd in about a dozen ways. He doesn't have any furniture, he likes to watch ants crawl along the sidewalk, and there is something rather odd about his birth certificate. Although this is the type of person one might normally avoid, Bryce can't help but feel drawn to him and he learns that JP is a genius. Ask him any question and he knows the answer. He and Bryce become fast friends, and as the story progresses we see how Bryce and his family are changed by JP.

This book really surprised me. Like I mentioned before, I was a bit leery of self published books. (Again, I apologize, Bryce.) The story is well written. The writing style, the characters, the story, and all of twists that are thrown in make the book a delight to read.

But really, it’s more than a ‘delight’ to read. It’s inspirational. The book does have religious overtones in it, but… It’s hard to describe. You don’t have to be religious to enjoy it. A quote from the author helps to sum up what I’m trying to say.

(This was taken from a Q&A from the authors blog)

4. What is the primary message you’d like your readers to take away from this book? (If a novel, is there an underlying theme?)

“There is SO much knowledge that is out there that is fun to know. In addition, pondering the unknown (i.e. Death / God / Science) can make life more meaningful.”

I highly recommend this book. It can inspire you in many different ways, spiritually, and it can help to inspire you to learn more. Like the author, and the characters in the book say, there is so much to learn out there! So many fun things to learn about. (And yes, I realize I’m showing my geekyness by saying something like that, but I’m a knowledge junky, I love learning new and random things.)

So, take a chance on this book!

4.5 Stars!

Here is a link to the author’s profile on Goodreads.

Jessi Reviews "The Plague of Doves"

Title/Author: The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich
Publisher/Year: Harper Perennial, 2009
How I Got This: As a Christmas present
Why I Read It: I think Louise Erdrich is an amazing, yet underappreciated author
Rating: 4 Stars

Synopsis:

A beautiful, compelling, utterly original new novel from one of the most important American writers of our time. Pluto, North Dakota, is a town on the verge of extinction. Its unsavory origins -- which lie in white greed -- contain the seeds of its demise. Here, everybody is connected -- by love or friendship, by blood, and, most importantly, by the burden of a shared history. Evelina Harp, a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, is growing up on the reservation. She is prone to falling hopelessly in love, most notably with her cousin, Corwin Peace, a misfit with a late-discovered talent for music, and then with her teacher, Sister Maria Anita Buckendorf, a godzilla-like nun whose frank acceptance of herself is irresistible. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history; listening enraptured to his tales Evelina learns of a horrific crime that has marked both Ojibwe and whites, whose fates have been inextricably bound ever since.Nobody understands the weight of that crime better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a half breed from Pluto, who also suffers from pains in the love department; as a judge on the reservation, he keeps watch over its inhabitants and recounts their lives with compassion and rare insight. In distinct and winning voices, Evelina and Judge Coutts unravel the intertwining stories of their families, their friends, and their lovers, the descendents of both the perpetrators and victims of the historic crime. Louise Erdrich's characteristically graceful prose and sense of the comic and the tragic sweep readers along to the surprising conclusion of this stunning novel, a portrait of the complex allegiances, passions, and drama of a haunting land and its all-too-human people.



Louise Erdrich has just become one of my new favorite authors. This was an excellent book. Have you ever finished a book and felt like your own words were not enough to convey how great a book was? Because that's how I'm feeling right now. Simply put, Erdrich has a beautiful voice. I found myself pulled into this story just because of her writing style alone. She writes her tale in a non-linear fashion but never lets the reader falter or become confused. Her language was just exquisite. It was honestly hard for me to put this book down--not so much because it was riveting plot-wise (because it really wasn't) but because I felt like I was bathing in her words. She has a way of wording things that makes so much sense but that you would never think of yourself. In one scene, the narrator at the time, Evelina, is describing her parents helping her move into college and what it was like just before they left her: 

My father, so thin and athletic, looked almost frail with shock, while my mother, whose beauty was still remarkable and who was known on the reservation for her silence and reserve, had left off her characteristic gravity. Her face, and my father's face, were naked with love. It wasn't something that we talked about--love--and I was terrified of its expression from the lips of my parents. But they allowed me this one clear look at it. Their love blazed from them. And then they left. I think now that everything that was concentrated in that one look--their care in raising me, their patient lessons in every subject they knew to teach, their wincing efforts to give me freedoms, their example of fortitude in work--allowed me to survive myself.

My favorite part of reading books is often the characters. Nothing makes me happier than when I read a book with characters I know I won't soon forget or even just characters who are incredibly well-developed. I definitely found those here. My favorite characters were Evelina and then probably Mooshum. The thing that made this book so great for me was that Erdrich weaved the tales of the people living in Pluto and the nearby reservation with such care that I felt like I was glimpsing parts of a spiderweb as the intricate connections between characters slowly came to light. As I said before, this is not a book with much going on as far as the plot is concerned, but I never felt as though that took away from it. I rather enjoyed hearing these stories, learning the history of the town and its characters, and discovering all of the connections until the final surprise at the end. 

If I were asked to say what this book was about, I think that honestly the publisher's blurb is perfect and I couldn't word it any other way. I'd recommend this for those looking for a new author to try or for those who like immersing themselves in the language and the telling of a story.

Student of the Month: Jen From Makeshift Bookmark!

Student of the Month is an original feature where we spotlight bookish college students by means of either an interview or a guest post regarding the college life and books/blogging/writing. We also will sometimes spotlight fictional characters who are college students.


I'd like to personally introduce you to one of my blogging bff's--Jen from Makeshift Bookmark. Jen is incredible and you should probably check out her blog if you like YA fiction, keysmashing and HILARITY..and not mention great music and enthusiasm! She's a riot to talk to on Twitter as well. She's the type of blogger that makes you feel like you are talking to your best friend about a book...and she somehow manages to read and blog with her crazy busy life as a student, wife and full time employee.

 Major/Expected Graduation Date: Nursing. I'm HOPING to graduate in December of 2011... supposing I don't flop hardcore.

When did you start blogging and why did you decide to start a blog?

I started Makeshift Bookmark in September of 2010. I had been blog-lurking for the longest time and figured I didn't have anything new to contribute to the community. I actually meant to start in June 2010, but that didn't happen. I wrote lots of reviews on GoodReads and people seemed to like them, so I figured why not? Thanks, GoodReads folk, for giving me the kick in the arse I needed.

Describe your blog in 6 words or less. Keysmash. Fangirl. OMGWTF. Verbose. Kitten-y. Bitchin'.

What does a typical day look like for you?

On school days, my alarm goes off at 6:00am. 6:20am rolls around and I finally wake up. I get ready, make my lunch and soy chai for the day and am out the door by 7:00am. I fight the stupidstupidstupid morning traffic and roll up into class around 8:00am. Class goes from 8:00am - 3:00pm. My sanity is in question the whole time, especially when we watch birthing and epidural videos. After class, I usually will try to sneak in a Borders or Half Price Books trip. It rejuvenates me. 4:30pm rolls around and off to work I go. People scream in my ear until 11:00pm. I get home around 11:30pm. If I don't have school the next day, I'll usually stay up til about 2:00am to get my reading in. Then sleep comes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Please explain how the heck you manage to balance working full time, college, being a wife, reading and blogging?

I usually feel like a zombie 99% of the time, so zombie superpowers seem like a good answer. Honestly, I just make it work. If I don't have time to blog, I'm not gonna blog. If I don't have time to read, I'm not gonna read. School comes first. Then work. Then Mr. Jen (poor Mr. Jen. He is totally awesome and supportive, however, and knows that it'll all be worth it once I'm making more money than him) and the rest falls into place wherever I can fit it. Oh! I have an awesome blogger support system that allows me to complain and cry and bitch and scream about my world coming to an end because there aren't enough hours in the day. I'm a little dramatic. Thank you, to my blogger friends, for keeping me sane. And a special thanks to my blogger "shrink." ;)

Tehe. Oh yes..I have one of those. She's pretty bitchin. One piece of advice or some encouragement for those trying to balance working FT and college (in addition to blogging/reading):

Do what you can, when you can. I was so nervous about starting school back up because I would have absolutely no time for blogging or reading for two or three straight weeks. But you know what? The readers that love you are always going to be there when you get back. Blogging isn't a job, nor should we make it out to be that. Also, know that it's okay to have a cocktail or six to reward yourself for a hard day's work. ALSO, throw caution to the wind and buy you some books at any time and in any quantity you see fit. Because hey, you deserve it, champ.

Most interesting required reading you've had for college:

In the nursing field, it's all about interventions and therapeutic communication with patients. In my third semester, I'm tackling the beautiful world of obstetrics. Of course, they make us watch the scary birthing videos. I endured that and got over it. During my most recent study session, I stumbled upon a paragraph explaining what to teach pregnant patients and their partners. This just so happens to include suggesting the most comfortable and pleasurable sexytimes positions to patients. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. I am SHAMELESS and am pretty open about most things, but there is no freaking way I'm gonna tell complete strangers how to get their freak on. I'll hand them a kama sutra book and call it a day.

You are known for having bizarre dreams about books, authors and bloggers. Please share one of the strangest dreams you've had recently.

Well, of course there was a Laurie Halse Anderson/Humanoid dream. More recently, I dreamt that I went to London for whatever reason and Carla from The Crooked Shelf was there waiting for me with a cup of tea. I'd like to make this happen, please. Also, Melanie from Reclusive Bibliophile was in a dream I had, too! (I actually don't think I told her about this yet.) We were at an amusement park and there was this shoddy old roller coaster that I absolutely refused to ride. There weren't even lap restraints! Melanie proceeded to make fun of me incessantly until I finally gave in. I ended up flying out of my seat, thanks to the lack of restraint, and falling to my untimely doom. THANKS, MELANIE.

If you could do a mashup of any two books, movies, tv shows what would it be called and describe the premise of it.

MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch between the Twilight vamps and the Vampire Diaries vamps. My powers of deduction have led me to believe that Edward and Stefan would both probably brood themselves to a boring and uneventful death. The Cullen parents are too compassionate, so I think Damon would catch both of them off-guard. Katherine, being a ruthless wench, would likely knock off the rest of the Cullen clan. Well, except for Alice who can see Katherine's future moves. It would be a long, drawn out battle between the two but Katherine would perish from a fatal headbutt from Alice. Those spikes should be outlawed. Damon automatically wins because the battle would end with close-up scene of the Smolderstare with some singer crooning heartbreakingly in the background and the obligatory tear would fall. Alice would drop dead as a result of the hotness of it all. Caroline wouldn't even be in the fight, because the Cullens don't deserve to fight her. She is THAT awesome.

You've been put in book blogger jail for a crime. What would your crime be, which blogger would in there with you and how would you escape?

I'd be incarcerated for attempting to "borrow" The Story Siren's bookshelves. I would totally be meaning to give them back and all, I promise. I'd need help from pretty much every blogger in existence, because well.. it's an entire wall we'd be moving, ya know? And books are heavy. But Xander wouldn't hear of it, so me and hundreds of other bloggers would all be locked up. It's a pretty serious crime, so I don't think they'd be letting me out on bail... nor could I escape. It'd be a max security prison. Yep, I'd be a lifer.

There you have it, folks. Do you understand why I love her so much? Go check out her blog. You'll see that it's full of awesomeness. I don't know HOW she manages to find time to do it all. I swear she's got more hours in the day. :P

Natanya's Ramblings On the Dystopian Genre

As I said when I reviewed The Maze Runner, the YA genre, and, to a lesser extent, fiction in general, is being flooded with novels falling under the dystopian genre. Thus, I've decided to talk about the genre, what it is and maybe clear up some confusion (though I'll probably just make things even more confusing). While the YA flood is recent, the genre is nowhere near new. Within the dystopian genre fall such classics as H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, George Orwell’s 1984, and, one of my favorites, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Recently in the College Students group on Goodreads we had a discussion about the meaning of the term “dystopian fiction,” spurred by a question about lumping dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels together as one genre.

So, first of all, what is a dystopian novel? I suppose, like with many genres, the definition is subjective. According to Wikipedia, in literature, a dystopia is “an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence.” Dystopian novels, though generally revolving around government repression, can involve a wide variety of situations, from the kind of micro-dystopia of The Maze Runner, to a more science fiction-like one in M.T. Anderson’s Feed, to combinations of basically everything, like Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, which includes government repression, corporate control, and a generally screwed up society. I think that dystopian fiction has probably become so popular as of late because of this multitude of possible conditions, as well as the eerie possibility that some of these worlds, like Atwood’s, could truly manifest if we continue our current lifestyles.

As to the question that prompted this post, I believe that, while there are a number of post-apocalyptic books that fall under the category of dystopian (such as Oryx and Crake), an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic novel is only dystopian if the initial or final society is truly dystopian, as I defined the term above. For example, I Am Legend (though I’ve only seen the movie), portraying the life of one of the few remaining people on Earth after a disease turns everyone into monsters, is definitely post-apocalyptic, but it does not depict any sort of dystopian society. Maybe the society was dystopian beforehand, but we have no way of knowing that. Really, though, I’m getting a bit too technical about this. Like with all art forms (or really, like with everything), the line between dystopia and other genres can be pretty blurry, but, of course, that doesn’t make one genre any less meaningful/significant than another.

So, before I totally ramble myself into oblivion, that’s what I have to say on the dystopian genre. I love it because of its endless possibilities: everything from the fully technological society of Feed, where the control and corruption is nearly invisible at the surface level, to the barren (in multiple ways) and blatantly repressed world of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to the closed society of The Giver, where the inhabitants know nothing of their society’s reality. I’m excited to see what the future holds for the genre!

What dystopian novels have you enjoyed? Anything to add to the difference between dystopian/post-apocalyptic or about the genre in general? 

Jen's Top Ten Books I Just HAD To Buy...But Are Still Sitting On My Bookshelf

 

(Thanks to Lindsi from Books, Sweets And Other Treats for the new button!)

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers’ answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND post a comment on our post with a link to your Top Ten Tuesday post to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. 

If you can't come up with ten, don't worry about it---post as many as you can!

This week's topic: 

Top Ten Books I Just HAD To Buy...But Are Still Sitting On My Bookshelf

We all have them.  That book that you needed to buy so badly and had every intention of reading it as soon as possible...but they're still on your bookshelf collecting dust or sitting in a pile on the floor.

1. The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly: A historical fiction book that I NEEDED to buy.  The title caught my attention (I love tea) and the book sounds really good.
2. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky: I want to read this book so badly!  It's been my "purse book" for the past few months and I honestly have not read one page of it.  I haven't had to wait in any long lines or sit in waiting rooms for hours on end or wait for someone who was running late for a coffee/lunch/dinner.  I was even early for my hair appointment last week and they took me in right away.  People, I have a book I need to read!
3. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood: This was one of the first books recommended to me on Goodreads.  I bought it immediately and just haven't read it yet.
4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: Yes, it still goes unread and I don't really have an excuse as to why!
5. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier: I have no idea why but when I think of this book I think of it as a cross between The Fall of the House of Usher and Beauty and the Beast. 
6. Across The Universe by Beth Revis: I swear I had every intention of reading this book as soon as it arrived on my doorstep.  Lately, my only time to read has been at night in bed and I hate dragging hardcover books to bed with me. 
7. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: I searched high and low for an edition of this book that did not have lips on the cover (I think it's the Penguin edition that all you see is someone's lips...creepy) and last year I finally found a copy but the book still goes unread.
8. Moloka'i by Alan Brennert: I've heard nothing but good things about this book!  Plus, the story of a young girl being taken from her family to live in a leper colony is sad yet intriguing.
9. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: One of the first books I purchased for my nook!  It was such a good price that I couldn't pass it up!
10. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: This is a big, scary, intimidating book.  I remember specially going into Borders to buy it with one of their coupons.  It might be a while before I read this one though...it scares me.

This is just a glance of the unread books on my bookshelf.  Honestly, at this point there may be more unread books than read books.  Oops.  I hope to read at least a few of these books in the near future!  They've been neglected long enough, they need some love.  Are there any books on my list that I absolutely must read right away?


Next week Kelly shares her Top Ten Dynamic Duos (those bff's, partners in crimes, or powerful couples that you just can't forget about).