Tag Archives: readers

December 30, 2013 ・ Books

How to Take Charge of Your Reading Fears

As an avid horror reader in my teenaged years, my mother would often caution me about how much of “that trash” I read, to be careful I didn’t fill my head with horrors so terrible that it tainted my soul. My mother is quite religious and thus the “taint your soul” aspect of her cautions were almost inevitable. Her argument was that we become what we fill our hearts and minds with. Thus if I read too much horror stories, I would become horrible myself.

I guess there might be a certain amount of logic in that. Lately,

December 19, 2013 ・ Technology

How safe are the eBooks on your eReader?

When the Kindle first hit the market, we were all still trying to figure out how Amazon was going to be engineering the move from hardback books to digital formatting. At first, the offerings were limited and in some cases the quality was sub-standard. OCR software mistakes were obvious and irritating. Gradually, however, the Kindle library grew in both quantity and quality as more and more books became available in digital form.

I think Amazon neglected to put enough checks in place, however, because in early to mid 2009, they were at the center of a furore over

November 11, 2013 ・ Books

Help! Technology is leeching the life out of reading!

Einstein is quoted as saying, “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal” and considering the way some people see indie publishing today, Einstein may not have been far wrong.

When Amazon introduced their Kindle and the 99c eBook, reading material was suddenly, seemingly endless. I could buy 10 books where before I could only get 1. It felt like a windfall. For many years, I would finish a book and twiddle my thumbs until the next one would fall into my hands. Now I could buy 10 at a time based on

October 25, 2013 ・ Books

You might be a reader if

A few weeks back, we did a series of meme images for writers. Today I am going to regale you with a few for readers…

I think … no, I know that readers tend to have a more forgiving sense of humour than just about anybody else; at least in my experience. When I ponder how I can get about books and reading, I have to giggle to myself. I can get pretty crazy. Right now, I am looking around my workspace and seeing books lying around everywhere. They’re on the bookshelf, sure. But they’re also on my

September 16, 2013 ・ General

Social reading; sounds like an oxymoron

When you think of reading, you think of a solitary activity, don’t you? I do. Reading has always been a solo venture for me. Of course, in the beginning, I had to have help with it – my mother would read to me, or help me read for myself by pointing out errors in pronunciation or helping me with context by either explaining words that I didn’t understand, or later on, pointing me towards the massive Concise Oxford that sat on the bookshelf. Still, none of that was particularly social. It was more a matter of supervised, or