Random Musings: e-Books AND 'Tree-Books'

My last post on e-books was e-Books Vs Tree-books, but now I'm thinking that is the wrong viewpoint.  I'm thinking more along the lines of e-books AND tree-books*.  After my last post, you may be surprised at my change of direction, but...

I own a Nook.  *gasp*

Would I have bought one for myself? Never. 

Do I love it? Absolutely.

Will it ever replace tree-books for me? Never. 


I love the smell of tree-books and the feel of them.  I love being surrounded by them in my office. I love them. They're irreplaceable. My hard covers are organized by favorite authors and genres.  My 3 year old comes in and calls them sparkly and it makes me smile.  (I even have her chanting my mantra, "books are friends," when she sees someone mistreating a book.) But, I am actually enjoying my e-reader far more than I thought I would. Not only for convenience sake (I currently carry ninety-nine books -and counting- around with me at all times and it still boggles my mind, plus the ability to have a new book at my fingertips in an instant is dangerously too convenient), but for other reasons as well.

I'm a hardcover girl and that's more than my wallet can "bare" sometimes. If a book is a keeper, something I'm going to read again and again and one day want my daughter to read, I want it in hard cover.  But there are lots of books out there that I enjoy reading that are just fun reads.  Things I'm not going to pick up again, things I don't need to keep forever.  If I don't need to own a book in hard cover, I used to buy it in paperback, but I must admit, I hate paperbacks. I hate how they look all bedraggled and worn even with the most careful use. So e-books are the perfect solution for me.

My e-reader has also opened another avenue for me. I checked out my first library book in 15 years this year  - an e-book! I don't like library books.  I hate how tattered they become, even the hardcovers and the cellophane wrappers on the beautiful dust jackets, a necessary evil, I know, but still. I also have a mini-phobia about germs and library books... all the places they've been placed and the people who have sneezed on them and... you get the idea.

So, though I love my tree-books, I love my e-books too. It means more books for me, and how can that be a bad thing?!?

*I cannot take credit for the term "tree-books".  One of Julie's friends found it as new entry in the Urban Dictionary and I fell in love with it.,

Random Musings: e-Books vs. 'Tree-Books'

Recently, Julie did a post about the Urban Dictionary's addition of the term 'tree-book' as a way to distinguish a book from it's electronic counterpart, an eBook. It's a clever distinction that is becoming more necessary in this digital age. Julie is a tree-book girl and so am I. When Amazon introduced their Kindles, I wasn't even interested ~ and I love new gadgets!


I did make an effort. I read my first eBook a while back, but still wasn't a fan. I attempted to read it on my nice big 18" computer screen, but even that didn't seem to help. I ended up printing it out to read it off a page (*hanging head in shame*). Quite frankly, I spend enough time staring at a computer screen... I'd rather tax my eyes in a new way by squinting over the printed page. Also, there's something about the feel of a book and (don't laugh) the smell of paper. I love seeing my books all lined up waiting for me on my shelves, like old friends.


Although, as Bethanne Patrick, better known as The Book Maven from Book Maven Media, tweeted not so long ago, "Thinking more and more about fact that it's not all about ebooks; it's about reading, keeping reading alive no matter the 'mechanism'." I think this gets to the heart of the matter. If eBooks create more readers, how can that be bad? Even if they aren't for me, I'm glad they're enticing people to read.

Who knows, it took me a long time to switch to mp3s too (picture me clinging to my CD cases) and I'm still not a total convert. Would I be willing to try eBooks again, say on a shiny new iPad? You, bet! But until then, I'll stick to my personal library...

Random Musings

It's not really a musing but more of a bookish word for the day. My friend sent me this and I thought it was too clever not to share.

Urban Word of the Day: Tree-Book

Definition: A book printed on dead trees, i.e. paper, as opposed to an e-book, which only exists electronically.

Example of usage:

Thomas: Hey, how do you like your new Kindle?
Andrew: I don't know, I haven't used it yet. I'm still trying to finish all the tree-books I'm reading.

I'm a Tree-Book girl and darn proud of it!!

Jenn's Review: The Cart Before The Corpse

Summary: Famous southern carriage-horse trainer Hiram Lackland, a handsome widower, dies mysteriously after retiring to a farm outside Mossy Creek. His estranged daughter, Merry Abbot, also a horse trainer, arrives to settle his estate. But Merry quickly plunges into bit-chomping dilemmas when her father's friend and landlord, mystery-novel maven Peggy Caldwell, insists he was murdered.

Before Merry can so much as snap a buggy rein, a handsome and annoying GBI investigator, Geoff Madison, is on her case. Then there's the troublesome donkey: Don Qui. Short for Don Quixote. And the fact that Hiram was teaching all of Mossy Creek's lonely women how to--ahem--drive his carriage.

Can Merry rein in the truth? What kind of horse play was her rakish dad involved in, and why would someone want to giddy-yup him into an early grave?

Stay tuned for the answers in this first episode of, "As the Carriage Wheel Turns."

Review: If you are a huge fan of Murder, She Wrote, this book is for you. Otherwise, this is brutal. This is the first time I've ever been able to say that I couldn't put it down because I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Where do I start? The writing was... floundering, at best ~and that's ignoring all the grammatical and punctuation errors in the uncorrected manuscript (this was an Advanced Reading Copy, so these things are to be overlooked). The character's are never developed and wander around the town (as well as the book) haplessly. I didn't find any of them compelling and didn't really give a damn about what happened to any of them, except perhaps the animals.

I realize that this is a spin off of a Mossy Creek series, but it is touted as a start to a new stand alone series. If this be the case, then there should at least be some development to the character of Merry, who is new to the town. However, there is no substance to what should be emotional and dramatic time for Merry. Peggy, who is portrayed as being the 'Jessica Fletcher' of Mossy Creek, suddenly becomes a capable stable hand and horse handler. Random relationships are thrown together for different characters at the end of the book with nothing to support them.

There are way too many plot devices, only a few of which are well managed. It meandered from scene to scene with no real sense of flow. It also didn't help that the narrative kept jumping voices each chapter making it seem even choppier. As for the horses, I like horses as much as any suburbanite girl, but there was a lot of technical jargon about carriages that bogged down an already lumbering story. As for the culprit, I won't spoil it for those who plan to prove me wrong, but I thought him/her quite incapable of the murder; it was rather ludicrous, actually.

Somewhere, there might have been a story in there, but it was buried by too many ideas and poor execution. I have never put down a book while reading it's climax (I'd rather be ridiculously late than be interrupted then), but I walked away from this for half a day right in the middle of the showdown between the protagonist and antagonist. Please don't waste your time.

Oh, and this was my first eBook. More on that to come...

Final take: 1.0/5