I live books; I own hundreds and have a library room in the house. I also tend to re-read booms from time to time even though, as you say, that takes away from time spent in new books. I only say all this to say that I adore my Kindle. I’ve re-bought certain books just to have them with me wherever I am. My library also lends digital books, which is great. I specifically like the Kindle, though, not the Kindle app.
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The Kindle app is so bloated. I cannot fathom why it even how it manages to take up 300mb of space.
It’s more the way it looks. My Kindle does an admirable job of mimicking a book; the Kindle app just makes me feel like I’m staring at a screen - something I already do enough of. That said, the Kindle app is amazing for graphic novels.
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Interestng…I read it on my Kindle and don’t remember having any issues.
Maybe it is just the sample, then. I’ll probably just give it a go soon.
I got it on Kindle, and am seeing the gaps between paragraphs. I don’t find it jarring at all, though.
Yeah, I’m not saying they weren’t there (I don’t remember, honestly) but they didn’t bother if they were.
Kill 'Em All, Niven. Following on from Kill Your Friends, we have a work that can only be described as ‘deliberately incendiary’. Stelfox has moved on from being a simple A&R pleb to being a rich, sometime consultant for anything he finds interesting. Cue a paedophile pop star crisis. A spot-on satire of the vilest attitudes and excesses that are currently on display.
Now that I’m done reading law books, guidelines, and managerial texts (for now), I went on a hunt for something new to read. Stumbled across Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky on a bunch of “best sci-fi of 2019” or something akin to that. Came highly reviewed by a bunch of sites, etc. Apparently it’s the author’s follow up to another novel.
I haven’t read it yet.
However, interest piqued, I grabbed the first novel - Children of Time. It combines all of my favorite genres - dystopia, post-apocalyptic, space, sci-fi, and all combined with world building. It’s simply fantastic and I finished it in about two or three days, not because it’s short or simple but because I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended for fans of any of those genres.
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This is me, as well. It was an adjustment to move from the beauty of a physical book, but the benefits have won me over. 
I prefer to read on a Kindle device, too, but will use the Kindle app on my iPad Mini to sync to the page where there is an illustration, such as a map, to open it and actually be able to discern what is going on.
I’m currently enthralled by Craig Symonds’ The Battle of Midway, the research and tremendous historical detail that wasn’t available to earlier works, has educated my understanding of the battle itself, and Symonds writing is excellent. He does a great job, as well, setting the stage by giving the historical background of both sides that led to the battle.
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So Declare was great, but I think I preferred the first 4/5. Same problem lots of Lovecraftian adventure or horror has for me: if there aren’t consistent rules to the universe, I feel like it’s random, Lost-style crap that makes no sense, but once the author makes the rules clear, the mystery goes away.
Read the last two books of Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy. The impressiveness of the world building didn’t really escalate, but I felt like it all pretty much fell into place to tell the story she wanted to tell, which was nice. I was kind of hoping the ending would involve a stern, motherly talking-to directed at the earth, which kind of seemed like it was what the earth needed and would resolve the major conflict. She went another way, which was also good.
For Christmas, I got How To, by Randall Munroe, Smullyan’s Puzzle Guide to Gödel, and Platt’s Make: Electronics, so those are all in my future. with regard to the last, I’m looking to get some ideas for stuff we could hack together to hook up to my daughter’s new Sphero RVR. I have relatively little experience with messing about with electronics, so it has potential as a father-daughter journey. But, right now, she’s shifted her focus to DMing, after finding reading the encounters in Above and Below (another Christmas acquisition) to be enormously satisfying. And, while I’m excited to do stuff with her and her new robot and it sort of seems like a waste for the most expensive gift we’ve ever gotten her to be sitting in a corner, it’s friggin’ D&D. No complaint shall escape my lips.
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Don’t mean to sidetrack this from the boom discussion, but that RVR looks great! Let us know what you think. I love Sphero products. The SPRK is my favorite thus far, but anything that starches STEM concepts is on my wishlist.
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The Hazards of Time Travel, Oates. Right up there with Atwood, Oates knocks out a novel of an exiled thought criminal, sent back in time from a future US dictatorship to receive an education in the 1950s. Effortlessly accomplished, even if it’s all a bit Handmaid’s Tale with knobs on.
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This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. I …don’t know. Simultaneously impressed and disappointed, somehow. There are moments of elegant world building, nice playful bits and turns of phrase, and yet it all feels a bit insubstantial. Hm.
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From the last four months of 2019, strictly. Much comfort re-reading due to the whole moving-country-new-job stress. It’s an interesting feature in iBooks, if only to show I need to broaden my horizons again.
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Somehow I like the bottom two lines more than the top ones 
Nice feature, but pointless for me as I am reading on kindle app, iBooks, Googles PlayBooks(?) app (and a couple manga apps) pretty much evenly split…
I missed the backstory. Did you just pass an entrance exam and become a police officer? Congratulations to you!
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Haha, thanks! This was the Deputy Chief exam - one rank below the Chief of Police. I’m in my 15th year…
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