You Can Have My New Sony Reader...

When you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Just like Charlton Heston and his guns. People, I love my new Reader. I love the built-in light, I love the 150 or so books I have on it right now, with room for about a thousand more. I love the way you can organize them, to make titles easy to find. I love the way, with the help of a program called Calibre, I can import books in other formats and convert them for reading on the Sony, and even share them with Allysen, who is discovering that she loves reading on her new iPod Touch. I've actually been getting a lot more reading done since adopting my PRS-700.

I've named it Plato.

Most of what it's filled with now is free ebooks, either from the general sources like Gutenberg.org, Manybooks.net, and Feedbooks.com—or from the free offerings of Tor, Baen, and other publishers. I've bought a couple of ebooks, including the Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (but, ironically, his iconic and groundbreaking story about the net, "True Names," does not seem to be available in ebook form).

I'm slowly returning the world of productive work, following the holidays. I've signed up my novels The Infinity Link and Seas of Ernathe for the ereads program, which already features five of my novels, so they'll be available in electronic format before too long. (Also, The Rapture Effect and Dragon Rigger should be available very soon.) Right now I'm proofing The Infinity Link, actually reading it for the first time in many years. It was my first BIG book, published in 1984, and I'm pleased to say I'm enjoying it.

Hope you're all having a great beginning of 2009!

"You'll never make much money writing books like that. But the very best people will come to your funeral." —said to Edgar Pangborn, as told by D.G. Compton