Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Sony 505 Review: A Report from Corrina

In retrospect, I think I expected a wondrous magical device.

When I was picked to test drive the Sony eReader, I was more than thrilled. I could buy books, load up my reader with as many as I wanted, and never run out of something to read. My kids were happy, too, because they could get a book FAST without waiting for it to show up in the mail or running to the bookstore. (Kids. Instant gratification is all they want. J

I thought that my whole reading life was about to change.

Not so much.

The stuff I believed would be problems actually turned out not to be a problems and I ran into problems I didn’t anticipate.

I worried that I could never enjoy reading without a physical book in my hand. But the reader feels substantia. I held it just like a book and I soon forgot that I wasn’t holding a paper-bound book.

The text is readable and I just love the feature that allows you to switch to large print in one click. Love the large print to pieces.

I… read more »

A Wicked Liaison by Christine Merrill: A Guest Review by Corrina

I love thieves.

Not the real kind. I assume they’re not at all fun. I’m talking fictional thieves. They’re clever, they’re fun, and, most of all, it’s exhilarating to watch them break all the rules.

So when my friend Christine Merrill told me that the hero of her Regency historical, A Wicked Liaison, would be the charming thief who appeared in her previous book, An Unladylike Offer, I was instantly hooked.

Regencies are a great setting for thieves because the rules governing proper behavior are so strict and confining. It’s a ball to watch Anthony Smyth, the hero, pretend to fit in with the right crowd, all the time trying to pull something over on those who use the rules to cloak horrible behavior. Like the villain of the piece, who’s using society’s mores to trick the heroine, Constance, into becoming his mistress.

Constance is far more trapped by the rules than Smyth. Women at the time, of course, had very limited options, especially when they didn’t have control over the purse strings. In this case, Constance is a Duke’s widow who depends on her wastrel stepson to provide her with food… read more »

Sony 505 Review: A Report from Jennifer

I was tickled pink when the magic box of future books showed up on my front porch.  The Sony 505 is a thing of beauty.  It’s sleek, fits nicely in my purse, and impresses people in meetings.  Not having Internet at my house, I took a laptop to my favorite bar (it’s like a coffee shop, right?), sat down at my bar stool and ignored the scowly face of James Joyce on the wall next to me as I set up my new toy.

The “Quick Start Guide” was not really quick.  Nor did it really get me started and it sure as hell didn’t guide me anywhere.  I had some touch and go moments where I worried about pulling the plug at the wrong moment (the picture and the grammar in the guide contradicted each other nicely), but I figured it out.  Using the Sony bookstore and and the reader was a lot like navigating iTunes or an iPod, without the magic of Steve Jobs to make it idiot proof.  To wit, the first two times I tried to buy books, the Sony bookstore… read more »

Make Me Yours by Betina Krahn: A Test Driver Guest Review by Sabrina

There is something I need to say before I start this review…I LOVE the Sony 505 Reader and it’s going to kill me to return it! My reading life is changed forever and I don’t know if I can go back now. 

The ability to carry multiple books with me, that I can whip out at anytime, is amazing. Likewise, reading on my treadmill has never been easier. It’s hard to walk/run with a book in your hand, but the largest font size on the Sony allows me to see from a distance! I didn’t want to love it, but I did! 

Now, on to the review of Make Me Yours. 

One of the most frequent names tossed around as someone to add to your TBR pile is Betina Krahn, and with my handy Harlequin gift code in hand, I purchased a Harlequin Historicals bundle from the Sony Store. Yes, I said Harlequin and Historicals in the same sentence. If you haven’t checked out Harlequin lately they will surprise you. Not only do they offer all genres of romance, but the quality of the writing is on par with… read more »

Sony 505 Review: by Test Driver Shannon

I never thought I would be in this situation—a woman torn between two devices. After six months of blissful monogamy with my iPod Touch, I believed myself to be settled and perfectly content with a device that gave me everything I asked of it.

But then came temptation—the promise of a no-strings-attached fling with a device promising a larger screen and a longer battery life. Size and stamina, baby!  But I’ve been a romance reader my entire life and I know this plot well—the fling becomes True Love and I live happily ever after (until September) with the Sony, the iPod having revealed some nefarious flaw proving it to be unsuitable as a hero after all.

My iPod is a device of many talents. I hold it in the palm of my hand, where it jumps to do my every bidding at the merest swipe of my thumb. I have to push the Sony’s buttons to get it moving and trying to find those metal nubbins drags me out of the book I’m trying to lose myself in. It’s awkward to hold,… read more »

Sony 700 Review: by Test Driver Les

Pt. I:  Meet Cute

So Sony 700 showed up on my front porch in a plain brown box, with none of the exotic fairy-tale wrapping of his distant cousin Kindle.  That didn’t stop my teenage daughter from squealing “SOOOOO CYUUUUTTTE!!!” at the sight of him, and despite my embarrassment, I privately agreed.  Short, sleek, and slim, he was almost everything I love in a hero;  I only hoped he didn’t exhibit the psychotic tendencies I also had a fondness for – in fiction.

I’m not much of a one for small talk, so after a cursory tussle with the unwieldy (and uninformative) instructions, I decided to see how well Sony operated on intuition alone.  Unlike others who found him hard to get started, I thought charging, installation, and set up was a breeze.  He was a bit of a nuisance to shop for – the design of the Sony Store seems deliberately obfuscatory, and certainly had no desire to pander to my innate cheapness.  Once I made my selections, though, loading them on the e-library and thence to the reader was a matter… read more »

Sony 700 Review: A Report from Evangeline

Since getting a hold of my Sony Reader I now characterize my life in two parts: BS and AS (Before Sony; After Sony, natch). Before Sony, my TBR pile overflowed ominously, the uncracked spines of unread books glaring at me whenever I entered my office. They glared even harder when new books joined them, impulse buys I can’t resist when I go to a bookstore or a store with a book section. Because of the volume of books left unattended, I find myself less and less willing to put a dent in the pile because I’m the kind of reader who will read the first 10 or 20 pages of a book before doing to same to the next, as I struggled to decide what to read. Granted, I find myself doing this on the PRS 700, but I feel less guilty because the TBR pile is, well, a TBR list of electronic books. 

The second the Reader arrived in the mail I ripped open the packaging to hear the Hallelujah choir singing. In my hands was the device I’d coveted for years, the… read more »

Sony 505 Review: A Report from Randi

I made the switch to Ubuntu when I got my new laptop - Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system.

As far as the Sony estore is concerned, Ubuntu does not exist.  In fact, I had to do some work to uninstall the Sony software after I realised it wouldn’t actually work.  Just corrupt my poor laptop.  Further, when I plugged in my ereader (just to charge it!) I actually had the opposite response as in the newest comic.  The laptop was all ‘ooh, new technology’, and the ereader wouldn’t even light up.  But the software side is funnier, and more pertinent to the spirit of the test drive.

Sony 505 Review: A Report from De

I think I’m a little different than most of the other test drivers. I’ve had an eBookwise reader for 5 or 6 years, that I used to use constantly. In December 2007, I bought an EEE PC 701 4G, the first of these new fangled ‘netbooks,’ and switched most of my ereading to it. Going into this test drive, I didn’t need to be convinced of the gloriousness of ereading, I was looking for a chance to convince others.

My initial impressions: The quick start guide is a mess. Also, it’s not really useful. Or quick. It is a starting place, I’ll give them that. And, I suppose it is a guide. Vaguely. That’s about about all that can be said.

Charging wasn’t intuitive. Plug it in and it charges. That part I was fine with. Knowing when it was done charging wasn’t so easy. There were three very computer-literate people in my house that afternoon, and none of us could figure this out. We stumbled over the answer when we disconnected the Reader so I could take it to work with me. Sony really… read more »

Sony 700 Review: by Test Driver Tami

PERMISSION GRANTED

Now that I’ve poked, prodded, played with, dropped, and otherwise abused my Sony PRS-700 eReader (thanks again to the generous folks at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for giving me the opportunity to test drive one of these babies!) it’s time for The Review.

In order to fit my review in the wordcount requested by the Smart Bitches, I basically had to resort to bulleted lists and incomplete sentences. It was horrifying. Worse than that, it was boring. Drier than the thanksgiving turkey at Aunt Edith’s.

Taking pity on me, the Smart Bitches graciously permitted me to ramble.

*cracks her knuckles* Obviously, they had no idea what they were getting into.

“Hold on to yer lug nuts, it’s tiiiiiime for an overhaul!”

The faint of heart will find the original bulleted lists at the bottom of the post, nestled lovingly in the TLDR (too long, didn’t read) section.

My Kingdom for a Press Release: Sony Announces Wireless Reader

The website isn’t updated at Sony and I’d give anything for a detailed press release, but here’s the data on Sony’s new Daily Edition wireless reader, from the ZDNet live blog:

Here’s a picture of the three new Sonys side by side, from Slashgear:

Oh noes! Even as I write this, I am bummed. From the Slashgear article:

It will be available in December and use AT&T 3G, though there will be no monthly charges for the data connectivity.

My hopes dropped like the calls I try to place on the AT&T 3G network in the NY Metro area, illusory like the five bars of signal strength that taunt me when I have no connectivity.

I love the idea of bargain shopping at different bookstores from the Sony unit wherever I am, and I hope the shopping and downloading process is as easy as… read more »

Sony 505 Review by Test Driver Phyllis

I was picked for this test drive because I said, “I don’t think so. Convince me.” 

And then I was picked. And then I got excited.

First reaction: my Sony 505 eReader has a brown cover. I’m so not into brown.

It has a gray screen. I’m much more into gray.

It’s a bit heavy. More heavy and solid than a paperback. Lighter and more streamlined than a hardback, though. It’s a tad awkward too, because the cover is pretty lightweight compared to the actual reader, so it’s always off-balance.

I also have this nightmare vision of my toddler-who-throws-things getting her hands on it. That’s a lotta bucks straight down the tube if she does. I keep it in a high drawer.

The instructions. Oy. I read the first part of them – they fold out to cover approximately the same square footage as my house – and have winged it since then with not too much trouble. 

I had downloaded the ebook Library software from the Sony website before I got the reader, because I wanted to… read more »

Bound to Please by Hope Tarr - Test Driver Review

Test Driver Hapax purchased this book from the Harlequin bookstore as “part of a historical bundle that I wanted to read for the other authors.” Hapax asks that I let y’all know the review is spoilerific, so proceed with caution.

This was my first experiencing in actually sitting down and trying to READ an e-book.

Dear Saint-Jerome-and-his-slavering-lions, just drool me to death Right Now.  The pain…

And I can’t blame the Sony for this one.  I’m fairly certain, in fact, that the e-reader is the only reason I kept paging through, because I wanted to read the next book in this Blazing Bundle, and Sony, in its generosity, didn’t provide me the option of jumping around the table of contents.  So flick through I did, 700 pages of engorged print for my aged and increasingly baffled eyeballs.

The opening had some promise, actually. Our barely pubescent Heroine, Brianna MacLeod, the feisty tomboy with the obligatory untamed red hair and flashing green eyes, has a veritably unique Meet Cute with an even younger hero, lanky dark-haired grey-eyed Ewan Fraser, who admired the vigorous manner in which she relieved her bladder in… read more »

Sony 505 Review by Test Driver John C. Bunnell

PASSION AMONG THE PIXELS

Episode One

by John C. Bunnell

*...there was one fierce moment of unbridled mutual ecstasy, and then they collapsed into each other’s arms.*

#

After exactly ninety-three seconds of utter stillness, the woman whispered hoarsely, “Is she gone?”

Her companion tilted his head sideways on the pillow, cracked one eye just the slightest bit open, and listened to the silence for several moments.  “She is indeed,” he said, stretching and untangling various limbs from those of his bedmate.  “Closed out of Word entirely and logged into – yes, that will be *City of Heroes*.”

The woman sat bolt upright, one hand reaching for the drawer of her nightstand.  “Oh, good!  She’ll be online for hours.”

“Why, Connie,” said her partner dryly as she opened the drawer and withdrew a flat rectangular object covered in brown leather.  “I’d almost think you didn’t care for me.”

She shot him a withering look.  “Only on the page, Ernest.  You know the rules; interpersonal chemistry for prose characters only applies when the Author actually writes… read more »

Medusa’s Master by Cindy Dees: A Test Driver Review by John C. Bunnell

I didn’t realize at first that *Medusa’s Master* was part of a series -quite an extensive series at that.  Nonetheless, one of the best things I can say about the novel is that it’s admirably self-contained, and retains focus and pacing even when a platoon of guest stars invades the book in later chapters.

Although labeled as a “H.O.T. Watch” novel, Dees’ introduction and the text make clear that the book is also seventh in the “Medusas” series, focused on an elite Spec Ops force made up wholly of women.  Korean-born Katrina Kim (called “Kat”) is just five-foot three, but she’s a trained sniper, linguist, electronics and black-ops specialist - and immediately on meeting H.O.T. Watch operative Jeff Steiger deep in a hidden Caribbean base, she flips him painfully flat on his face with one expert martial arts move.

Impressively, this leads neither to a knock-down brawl nor to a dozen chapters of macho posturing.  Quite the opposite, in fact; Jeff and Kat quickly develop a sincere, if wary appreciation for each other’s abilities.  However, they’re also victims of what Jeff calls “Cupid’s Bolt”, as Dees plays the Love At First Sight… read more »