by Kim Hubbard
I admit it: As a rabid book lover, I was dubious about going digital. And at first Amazon's Kindle reader—the new sleeker, amped-up version—seemed to realize my fears. Sure, you can download a novel in 60 seconds. But that musty, friendly, library-book smell? Not included. The text-to-speech option sounds robotic, and the $359 price tag (though my reader was on loan) means you'd buy loads of bestsellers at Kindle's usual $9.99 ($5-$20 cheaper than hardcovers) before breaking even. Plus, as my scientist husband helpfully noted, "kindling" means stimulating the brain to ignite seizures. The Kindle flashes as you turn a page, making me feel on the edge myself.
Hoping for a tech-savvier view, I asked my 12-year-old to take a break from watching YouTube while texting on his cell phone and give Kindle a try. He easily lost himself in Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (ironically enough), but later announced, "I hate that thing. It's too hard to flip back if you forget something." Yet the Kindle's charms sneak up on you. Soon I was reading newspapers on the subway, no folding necessary. My shoulder didn't ache from lugging reading material. Older books on Kindle tend to be cheaper, I found; thousands are actually free. And I don't even notice the flash. Kindle instead of books? God forbid. In addition to them? I'm sold.
by Jane Alison |
People PICK
MEMOIR
It could only have happened during the free-love '60s: When Australian-born Jane Alison was 4, her diplomat dad and a friend's father switched places, and families, after falling in love with each other's wives. Amazingly, all four parents seemed to believe things would turn out fine. They didn't. In this wrenching, luminous memoir, Alison explores the incalculable damage done: the fraught, shifting alliances; her guilt as both dads apparently favored her over her doppelgünger stepsister; the crippling shadow her childhood still casts. "Girls who grow up without fathers are so full of longing," a writing teacher tells her. Alison had two, but the longing has never died.
by Isabel Gillies |
REVIEWED BY MOIRA BAILEY
MEMOIR
Not long after actress Isabel Gillies (Law & Order) finds her poet-professor husband lovingly decorating the bathroom with family photos, her marriage is down the toilet—flushed by an Audrey Hepburn-esque lit teacher who's harnessed "Josiah"'s heart in breakneck pentameter. The other woman's take on dads who leave their families: "It happens every day." Gillies (now happily remarried) movingly evokes the salt-on-wound sadness of loving a spouse turned stranger.
by Michael Robotham |
REVIEWED BY JONATHAN DURBIN
THRILLER
Australian Robotham's latest offers an unsettling look into a killer's mind—mostly from the vantage of deviant-psychology professor Joe O'Loughlin. Haunted after he's unable to stop the suicide of a woman police have asked him to talk down, O'Loughlin investigates and uncovers a psychopath who uses victims' children as bait in a game of murder. Robotham is a fine storyteller, and his characters, including hard-bitten detective Veronica Cray, are captivating. Shatter may not reinvent the genre, but it lives up to its title.
>TOM HANKS "I got a Kindle for newspapers and magazines, not for books. Quite frankly, I prefer to buy books from my neighborhood bookstore."
DEMI MOORE "I love my Kindle.... It rocks. I actually read faster on it.... My count is 12 books in 3½ weeks." [from Moore's Twitter page]
DICK CHENEY "I own a Kindle now, one of those electronic books," Cheney told CNN. "And so I follow a lot of issues. But ... I don't receive that CIA brief every morning."
>• Can't get enough of YouTube's touching '71 reunion between Christian and the lads who raised him? In their newly reissued memoir, Ace Bourke and Jack Randall tell the story of the cub they bought at Harrods—and the five months they shared in a London flat before Christian was set free in Kenya. (Best part: the cute baby pics.)
>• "It's not a memoir!" the My Name Is Earl star insists (she's only 31). Her new book includes thoughts on:
HER SHORT-LIVED EATING DISORDER "When I was 15, for a few months all I ate was one English muffin," Pressly says. "Then I started purging, [but] I stopped. I have such great friends. If not for them, I might've ended up in the hospital."
SON DEZI JAMES, 22 MONTHS "The love of my life. I'll never love another man as much."
THE CRITICS "Friends give backhanded compliments like, 'I actually enjoyed the book!' I'm like, 'Thanks. Glad it shocks you that I have a brain.'"
CELINE’S INFERTILITY STRUGGLE: MY PRIVATE HEARTBREAK
Daily injections, painful tests and four failed IVF attempts: The singer, 41, reveal her dreams for a second baby. ‘I’ll try until it works’
