BOOKS ON BOARD - A SPLENDID SOURCE OF eBOOKS

When I started out in the wonderful world of eReaders, I very quickly discovered this on-line bookshop which I feel strongly we should all know about.

Apparently they have something in the region of 400 000 titles available!  An astonishing number of books if you stop to think for a minute - how on earth have they managed to accumulate so many in such a relatively short time?   At the very least this means that no matter what sort of book you enjoy reading, you have a very good chance of finding it here.  It also makes them serious competitors with Amazon, and a very good alternative if your eReader isn't a Kindle!

In spite of this enormous number of titles, they have managed to create a site that is remarkably easy to find one's way around in, so it is really a very pleasant experience wandering around this particular book shop, very reminiscent of mooching around a real book shop I find.

I have bought a wide range of books from them, and always been happy with these books.  They provide a good synopsis and are very clear in which particular format the books come in, and warn you very clearly to make sure you are downloading the correct format for your eReader (providing a good description of how all the various formats apply to various eReaders).  Basically they offer eBooks in all formats with the exception of Amazon's, obviously.

On the few occasions when I have had problems with downloading books, and have written to them about these problems, they have replied extremely rapidly and to good effect, they obviously place high importance on good customer relations - not something one can say of many such sites in my experience!

Having wandered happily around their site, I have been very impressed by the prices they charge, not only are the discounts good, but they also have a sort of bonus system, so every time you buy a book from them, you are awarded a credit for your next purchase, which mounts up very rapidly in some cases - in fact on one memorable occasion I somehow ended up with two books that owing to the bonuses offered on those particular books, I not only got for free, but was left over with about 10 Dollars worth of credit, just from that one transaction.... Couldn't understand how that came about, but accepted it gratefully.

Payment with them couldn't be simpler, one can use a credit card, as with most on-line shops, but they have been sensible enough to set up a Pay Pall account too, which I use when buying from them.

The only problem I find, sadly all  too often, is that a number of the books they offer can't be bought where I live, or at least in my case, where my Pay Pal account is registered (which is France).  But this is not their policy, it is the Publishers who place these restrictions..  This is something that the world is going to have to work out ere long, the thorny problem of copyright around the world.

If you use them, you have to register first, but this doesn't release a swarm of spam into your inbox, simply a weekly newsletter announcing the latest books and deals, which on occasion is interesting.  For some reason I don't quite understand they seem to emphasize heavily the considerable range of Romances they have on offer in their range, but if this is not your sort of reading, once you get past titles such as "He Told Her he Loved Her" and similar, you can wallow happily around in any other sort of book you like.

Without any reservations I can recommend this shop to you all for your book purchases.

LINK TO BOOKS ON BOARD:

BOOK REVIEW - ROPER'S ROW

Roper's Row by Warwick Deeping, published in 1929 (Link below)

This book stands up to the test of time.  It is a well written observation of human life.  In a nutshell, this story is a "partnership of friends".

The story unfolds about a young man who has had a challenging start to life, and as a young man had a vision for his future.  He faced his vision with tenacity, but continued to have to meet the same challenges from his childhood.  The author crafts the narration with detailed observations of the characters and how they impact on each other.  Interestingly, there is another important character in the story, and through her growth we are treated to an illustration of an emancipated woman from a different perspective from that which we have normally come to expect.  Through the observations of people there are almost invisible threads connecting feelings, behaviours, passions, anxieties and visions of the actions of daily life and life evolving.

The story contains discourses relating to the tale's events, but the author leaves some of the conclusions undefined - there is space to come to your own conclusions, to reflect on your own experiences.  If you enjoy pondering about who people are and why they do what they do, it is a book that will catch your attention - try it!

This review was written by Lotty.

Link to this book: Click on it to be taken to the site, then scroll down to the author.

Walker's Row

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If  you decide to read this book, I would love to hear what you thought of it, please let me know.

WHY eREADERS ARE SUCH A GOOD IDEA

I have often been asked by friends and people who see me with my nose deep in my trusty Sony eReader, "Why do you have that gadget, what is wrong with normal paper books?"

Right there you have one of the benefits of owning one, people talk to you, they are curious about it and want to know all about the thing.  

There is nothing wrong with paper books - I recently moved, and was astounded, and rather embarrassed to find that I filled 83 boxes with books!  I like paper books enormously, the feel and  heft of them, the smell and the warmth of them, and the way that favourite books have become old friends over the years we have been together.  I get a pleasant feeling of being among friends as I gaze at their familiar battered old covers on the shelf.

So I don't think I can be accused of not liking traditional paper books, but I also love my eReader.

Second point, an eReader isn't a gadget (or at least not in the sense of a gadget such as a pocket DVD player).  An eBook is a perfectly sensible and useful addition to anyone's library for a whole host of good and sufficient reasons, some of which I shall now enumerate:

• Lightweight
• Convenience for travelers
• Ease of buying books for it without leaving home
  
• Capable of containing more than a few books
• Access to free books
• Encouraging experimentation in what one reads (especially with free books)
• Good for starting conversations with strangers
• Ease of reading
• Easy to organise one's books in it (well, with most eReaders this is the case)
• Never to be in that horrible situation of having come to the end of a book, and still having an hour to wait for the train and not having anything more to read.

And so it goes on and on.  Those are just the advantages that I could think of sitting here after spending the morning Scuba diving, thus not at my freshest!

A further point that has just struck me; I am addicted to sitting on cafe terraces with a book and a good cup of coffee, and with my eReader I don't have the irritating problem of a strong wind flipping the pages of my book. A small point, but an important one I feel.

For me personally, the main advantages of my eReader are the ease of always having a number of unread books with me when out and about and all fitting snugly into a large pocket on my trousers or in my small rucksack, and the second great point is that I am beginning to experiment much more with the books I read.

There are so many sources of free books online, ranging from sites such as Gutenberg to the huge number of self-publishing sites, so I am busy taking risks and downloading books by authors I have never heard of, never seen reviews of or in any other way have a clue as to whether they are readable or not.

There is no way I would do this if I had to go to a book shop and pay for these books, but simply surfing the web, stumbling across a book that looks like it might be interesting, downloading it and reading it at no cost is a risk I am happy to take.   As I have remarked elsewhere on this Blog, by doing this I have come across a number of very interesting and entertaining books, some of which I shall review here in due course.

To my pleasant surprise I am finding books written by Victorian  authors - not normally a period I feel comfortable with - whose books are vastly entertaining and readable.  An enrichment of my inner life that I truly feel happy about, and I have achieved this simply by owning an eReader.

So to sum it all up, an eReader isn't a replacement for a paper book, it is an addition, and that is what a lot of critics of eReaders are not seeing.

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As with most of my posts, I would be very happy if any of you felt moved to let me know what it is about eReaders that made you take the relatively expensive step of buying yourself one, so that I can post it here for the interest of others.

BAD TAX NEWS FOR BRITISH eBOOK OWNERS

The British Government have decided that Ebooks will be charged at the high rate of VAT until at least the budget of 2011.  This means that should you buy an eBook from any British online bookshop, such as WATERSTONES, you will have to pay 17.5% VAT on that book.

Apparently this is because of an EU directive which says that any member State may charge the high rate of VAT on eBooks until at least January 2011, and the British Government has decided to abide by this rule, in spite of the fact that the EU has made it clear that they will not be insisting that Governments charge this high rate.

This means that you will be paying the high rate for any digital books, and the low rate for any paper ones until the Government - at its discretion - decides otherwise.

I gather that Spain has decided to ignore this ruling, and are charging the low rate of VAT for eBooks.

Oh well, bad luck for British online eBook sellers, and good news for non-British eBook sellers, so it is off to BOOKS ON BOARD for you unfortunate British eReader owners for the next 12 months at least.

Source: THE REGISTER.