Broken Pencil

Without conscious decision, I’ve started reading eBooks (again) on my Palm Vx. Recently I’ve gotten through:

• Down and Out in the Magical Kingdom by Cory Doctorow
• Eastern Standard Tribe by the same
• A Place So Foreign and Eight More also by Cory
• Free as in Freedom By Sam Williams via Plucker
• Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, via chuggnutt.com

And I’ve got a bunch more queued up.

Part of the reason I find myself liking eBooks now is the same as Rory:

If I get caught in line for too long somewhere, I can read a few lines of Shakespeare or go over another T.S. Eliot[sic] poem, trying to figure out what in the hell it is that he’s trying to say behind all the words that he so expertly put down.

Ok, not quite that intellectual, but because I have the book(s) in my pocket, I find myself reading more often. eBooks are a convenient format.

The art of the con

Watched Catch Me If You Can last night. It’s an entertaining adaption of the book about and by Frank Abagnale. As usual this left me thirsting for more, so off a googling I went.

First stop Wikipedia, then his official site, then the book itself. Then the realisation I was currently reading Tom Sawyer on my handheld, so why not this as well? A quick browse of various eBook retailers, and I landed at the door of eReader.com.

The titular pencil

I’ve been aware of, and used, this service since its original incarnation as Peanut Press (later Palm Digital Media and now eReader) but it’s been a while since I last visited.

Hmm, lots of interesting books. They do wishlists – cool. Let’s set one up. Now let’s link to it like I do my Amazon one.

Ah.

It would appear that:

1. You need to be logged in to view your wishlist
2. You cannot view anyone else’s wishlist, and hence you cannot buy anyone books from their wishlist (apart from giving them a gift certificate)

So unless I’ve missed something completely obvious, it’s a personal shopping list that is, in the words of Sir Edmund Blackadder:

like a broken pencil…pointless

Aside from the pointless wishlist, I’ve found eReader to be a fairly complete and easy to use service, and their range of books have greatly increased since their early days. I look forward to reading more eBooks, and I may have to try out some of the other retailers as well.