renaissance poisson

firecat asked how the kobo falls short of my ideal, and a) it's a long list, and b) it's not that the kobo falls short in specific, but that all ereaders fall short at this point, so i thought i separate this from the reader review itself.

• full text search.
  
• full colour, high resolution, primarily to view images. though i could live with high-level grayscale instead and forget about reading graphic novels/comics on my ereader.
  
• comics view functions, if i get colour e-ink.
  
• foreground and background colour/contrast control.
  
• intuitive navigation.
  
• annotations: highlights, notes, drawings.
  
• clipboard.
  
• bookmarks.
  
• integrated dictionaries of my choice.
  
• wifi/3G/bluetooth (this is not a top requirement).
  
• if the above, then also integrated google/wikipedia lookup.
  
• integrated translation for several languages of my choice.
  
• several fonts of my choosing, as well as sizing.
  
• tagging of books.
  
• handle the major formats so i can stop converting.
  
• touch screen (pressure-sensitive stylus would work best for me, but multi-touch could make navigation very easy).
  
• handwriting recognition.
  
• split screen or easy switching back-and-forth so i can see different passages at once.
  
• open-source OS.
  
• external memory expandability.
  
• good library management.
  
• lightweight.
  
• decent battery life (a full day would be acceptable, a week would be fabulous), and quick charge.
  
• USB connectivity.
  
• rugged.
  
• well-priced (and naturally it should come with a pony).
  

i don't ask for much, do i. *snrk*.

i don't need easy integrated purchasing from anywhere i am, and i can totally live without wifi as well; that would just be nice for looking up information. i'm also fine without audio.

when the cover of a book features a grungy skull instead of naked torsos, you know this isn't your average erotica, even if it was shelved with the lovely smut when you bought it. which was a good hint for me to time the reading for an evening when i was looking for a good story instead.

blurb: When Craig Robertson's religious fanatic father disappears, Craig is forced to return to the home he'd left behind after an underage affair in order to look for answers. His new lover, private investigator Paul Maloney, agrees to help so they can continue to enjoy their fledgling relationship.

During his initial search, Craig finds items that belonged to Michael, his lover in that long-ago ill-fated affair, and soon discovers that Michael has disappeared as well. The search becomes an investigation into Craig's past, and, because of distressing gaps in his memory, he's terrified of the truths he might find. Finally Craig tells Paul his deepest fear: that Michael is dead and he himself is responsible.

While Paul refuses to believe his lover is a murderer, Craig's obsession with uncovering clues grows, and their fragile relationship begins to disintegrate. Now on his own, haunted and stalked, Craig has to face down the horror of his memories if he wants to have any hope of a future at all.

i thought it was rather a captivating psychological mystery. the whole thing was hard for me to read because it had religious zealots in it of the type of my birth family (the supremely self-righteous, god-fearing kind who think they must beat said fear of god into you). while there is some sex and not just fade-outs, it's not erotica, and while there is romance, it takes a back seat to the story of craig uncovering his suppressed past. i figured out early on who did what, but that didn't bother me, since this is less about whodunnit, but more about craig dealing with the slowly unveiling reality of what really happened.at times i wanted to shake craig, but i believe that was more a personality difference between the character and myself than bad writing. in many ways craig is stuck at the emotional maturity of a traumatized 17 year old, and even when i was an emotionally traumatized 17-year old, i was much more prone to using logic to attack my pain than hiding from it, suppressing my memories, and going "lalala, i can't hear you" to people who point at the logical flaws in my arguments.

to some degree i could identify much more with paul, the PI, who had different tools to cope with the things they find out. but he, too, has secrets, and it's not a simple task to mix romance and business, especially not when neither of you are gonna win a prize for good communication.

the writing was good. both main characters are complex and conflicted, the supporting cast features strong women (this is a positive marker for me; i hate gay fiction that casts women only ever into the role of villains), the plot holds together pretty well for something that's not genre mystery. the villain is a bit uni-dimensional, a bit too nasty, and he gets away with things that might make modern city folk raise their eyebrows -- but i am ok with that because hey, i come from that background, and it is so very nasty, and has such dark secrets behind every door that i am ok with the broad brush; it's even a bit cathartic for me.

the romance, while not being the primary line of the story, is still interesting. both men have secrets, both are gun shy, both aren't exactly great at communicating intimately, but i liked the slow development here, the fragility of a budding romance that comes under immediate pressure where the writer shows a delicate balance between the definitely possibility it will crumble -- or become a source of strength.

i'm shelving this under "gay fiction", and i'll be looking for more from this author. in fact i found out after reading this that there's a semi-prequel, paul's story before he meets craig: maloney's law. i wish i had read this beforehand, because i am sure it explains much about the baggage paul brings to his relationship with craig.

The following Alerts were triggered today:

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TITLE: Farthing by Jo Walton
PRICE: $14.00 CATEGORY: Science Fiction
EPUBLISHER: Macmillan/Tor Books
DESCRIPTION: One summer weekend in 1949 ?but not our 1949? the well-connected ?Farthing set?, a group of upper-crust English families, enjoy a country retreat. Lucy...
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b100457/Farthing/Jo-Walton/??r=12a14

TITLE: Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
PRICE: $15.95 CATEGORY: Fantasy
EPUBLISHER: Macmillan/Orb Books
DESCRIPTION: A captivating World Fantasy Award-winning novel about the social life of dragons returns to print in a trade paperback edition
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/b100586/Tooth-and-Claw/Jo-Walton/??r=12a14

yay! finally ebooks of some of jo's work can be bought out there in public!

unfortunately only in 2 DRMed formats, by publishers who think most ebook buyers are willing to pay these kinds of prices, while they don't even bother to clean up their blurbs. the current rebates at fictionwise are a massive 60%, so i was gonna buy the ebook of T&C anyway, to read on the boat (already have farthing as pdf from tor's giveaway).

but, alas we also have "GEOGRAPHIC RESTRICTIONS: Available to customers in: US" which i've never before seen at fictionwise.

*sigh*. i guess i cuddle up with my hardcovers for now.

need to find out more; this is just a marker:

magellan media partners are doing an ongoing study of o'reilly titles and the effects of piracy on sales, and the correlations look very interesting so far.

for example, from moment of first seeding, pirated books shot up in sales to higher than initial release.

the study is for sale for a mere U$99 -- at those prices i think i might look for a pirated copy, *snrk*. but i can download a PPT presentation if i sign up with my email address. ok.

via cory doctorow on twitter, here's the "moneyshot" from a presentation yesterday: http://tinyurl.com/yzlnj8e

and will never do so, no matter how spiffy they make them.

i don't want amazon deleting my copies because they've decided "there is a problem". that business model reeks to high heaven.

the whole idea that ebooks are licensed displeases me to begin with, but the big-brother approach amazon takes scared me off their product from the very start.

barnes & noble have acquired ebook seller fictionwise.

hm. didn't B&N try their own ebook store a few years back, in cooperation with microsoft? i studiously ignored that because a) microsoft and b) DRMed content only. i continue to ignore DRMed work, and usually buy my ebooks in pdf format, since the OLPC is happiest reading that. if i ever MUST have something that's DRMed i buy it in a format that's been cracked, and convert it as soon as i've got it downloaded. it's a pain, though, i usually just don't bother buying it.

i guess B&N trying again because amazon seems to really make a go of it, what with the kindle in edition 2 now. possibly the mainstream is waking up to the glory that are ebooks, now that the readers are getting cheaper and ebooks are easier to find.

i spend a fair penny at fictionwise these days; i hope nothing changes for the worse. of course their own announcement is filled with how this portents an exciting future -- but somehow that rarely seems to mean "exciting" in a way i'll appreciate.