Paper Books or E-Readers?

I had this talk with my dad the other day: whether it was better to read on an e-reader--like a Kindle, Nook, etc--or paper copies. I do both, and hadn't put much thought into the methodology behind which one I choose for particular reading items. After the talk with dad, I now have things all racked and stacked.

E-READERS

I have an 8-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab with both the Kindle and Nook apps on it, and honestly, for reading fiction, I don't see too many downsides to using this over traditional people. It's amazingly convenient for traveling--I can take dozens of books in something the size of a paperback. I can bookmark, make comments, highlight, and so on. I don't have to worry about the paper fading or the cover tearing or anything. I can't dog-ear a tablet, and I can easily put in my backpack when I go mountain biking, so I have my choice of books to read during breaks.

However, I do NOT like reading from my tablet at bedtime, which is the time I most commonly read, because the blue light from the screen is known to disrupt sleep patters. Since I already have trouble sleeping, doing something that makes it harder right before bed is not the best idea for me. I do have a blue light filter, but I find reading off a paper copy more relaxing anyway. Also, e-readers have batters that run out, often need updating, and provide their own distractions, with the web and email just a touch away.

And e-books are generally cheaper than their paper counterparts, for obvious reasons, so there are some monetary gains from buying them.

PAPER BOOKS:

I much prefer paper books if I know the author, so I can get the copy signed. As I pointed out above, I also like them for bedtime reading, and for all around relaxation. I take paper books on airplanes, since you have to turn off electronics during takeoff and landing, and that's just more time to read. I also use paper books where I think the light of a tablet might disturb other people, or in bright sunlight.

I'm also not a fan of electronic magazines. For some reason, holding a magazine in my hands--being able to roll it up, thumb through the pages, and so on, is more appealing to me than swiping on a screen. Besides, I can't roll up my tablet to smash a spider. Gets too expensive. (Note; I do subscribe to Fantasy and Science Fiction on my Kindle app and love it...)

Paper books also look much better lining the bookshelves in a writer's home, something all of us like to do. Putting a tablet on the shelf just doesn't have the same effect.

So I guess I'm a hybrid reader, using e-books in some situations and traditional paper ones in others. They both have their place. A good story is a good story, be it in ink or ones and zeroes, so whatever lets me read it the best is what I'll use.

Meet Mike Tolbert - Smothered Excerpt

Since I missed my excerpt post on Sunday, here it is today instead. Meet Mike Tolbert, handyman and former U.S. Marine. In this scene, we get a peek into the demons that haunt Mike's mind.
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Mike swerved around a Prius that pulled out of a 7-Eleven on his right. Apparently the driver didn't care about right-of-way, choosing to place his tiny hybrid in front of Mike's five-thousand-pound Ford pickup just to make Mike swerve. As Mike cruised past him, a hipster with a scruffy beard and a frown flipped him off and shouted something about Mike's gas guzzler.

Typical Prius owner, Mike thought. More interested in making a political statement than learning how to drive.

It wasn't like Mike drove a pickup by choice. It was simply the vehicle best suited for a handyman's job. The truck was clearly marked, too, so the jerk had to have known it was a work vehicle. Some people protested just to have a cause.

Traffic on East Colfax had thickened more than Mike expected on a holiday, making his drive to his next job site slow-going. He hated working on Memorial Day, but he needed the money, and his customer—an older woman whose husband had just passed—needed help. This day he normally reserved for remembering his fallen comrades, the men he'd lost in that God-forsaken, overheated litter box called Iraq. Men—boys in some cases—who'd died in gruesome, horrible ways, usually screaming or frightened out of their minds.

Guys Mike would never forget.

Guys like Kyle.

They'd been on patrol in a suburb of Fallujah, a squad of Marines working to keep looters at bay and insurgents hunkered down. Corporal Kyle McElroy had point, with Mike following about ten yards behind. The sun turned their Kevlar into slow cookers, boiling their bodies and simmering their minds. They were professionals, but even pros struggled in that kind of heat.

Mike was looking up at a rooftop when the car bomb detonated, slamming him to the ground. His ears rang, and his vision blurred. He struggled to his feet to find Kyle on his back beside him, blown backward from the blast. Where Kyle's right leg had been only a bloody stump with a jagged spear of bone remained, the rest gone from just above the knee. Blood oozed from Kyle's nose and ears, and his left arm was bent underneath him, twisted almost beyond recognition.

Mike knew what would come next. The staccato firing of AK-47s erupted all around them, bullets whizzing past, ricocheting off the street, surrounding buildings, and vehicles. Mike managed to drag Kyle's limp body into an alley, while the rest of the squad ducked for cover. Mike applied a tourniquet to Kyle's leg, stopping the loss of blood, but they needed help fast. Kyle was alive, but not for long.

He heard Sergeant Ortiz on the radio, calling for air support to suppress enemy fire. Mike raised his M-4 carbine, peeked around the corner, and found himself staring down the barrel of an AK. A lone insurgent, scarf covering his mouth and nose, aimed at Mike's head.

What I'm Reading October 6th, 2016

I'm a slow reader. Like, hear-the-words-in-my-head slow. So I don't make enough progress to blog this particular topic weekly like I should.

But this week, I do have a new addition, Barbara Nickless' fantastic new mystery Blood on the Tracks (buy it HERE) from Thomas and Mercer, the crime imprint of Amazon. This is Book One of the Sydney Rose Parnell Series, and tells the story of a former Marine with PTSD who works as a railroad cop, trying to solve a brutal murder by a hobo. I'm about a quarter of the way through, and this one is a TOUGH book to put down at the end of the day. If I'm not careful, I'll find myself still reading at midnight, having to get up four hours later for work! I'll let you in on a little secret--Barb and I have been friends for a good fourteen years or so, and everything of hers I've read, I've enjoyed, but this is a step up even for her. Gritty, tense, and real. A strong female lead with realistic flaws, and a gripping story.

I'm also still reading the Alien Artifacts anthology from Zombies Need Brains, and it certainly lives up to the standards they set with their previous anthos. Wonderful stories of humans finding alien artifacts throughout the universe and how those affect the people finding them. Again, it's hard to build a themed anthology that's interesting, since the reader already knows at least some of what's going to happen, but ZNB's editors pick diverse stories that keep you reading.

And I finished Christine Feehan's Shadow Rider. Great story! I love Christine's writing, and her characters are both over-the-top and believable, something that's really tough to do. I struggled a little with the role of the female lead in this story, though, as she entered into a relationship with a male who dominates her completely. She's not QUITE submissive, but close, and seems to enjoy being told what to do, both romantically and otherwise. My suspicion, though, is that Francesca is going take on a bigger role in the family's shadow riding business as these books go along, meaning her character arc will bring out her feistier side, and make her a more active participant in her own life. Don't get me wrong -- I loved the book, and I have faith Christine will bring Francesca along nicely.

That's it for today. Read on!

Smothered Excerpt - October 2nd

Sundays mean excerpts! This is a scene in Mike's point of view from Chapter Seventeen, when he finds out his ex-wife's new beau has hit his daughter:
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Mike stepped out of his truck and into the oppressive heat and smothering humidity. He looked at the house in front of him. Sitting on a cul-de-sac, it looked exactly like the ones on either side of it, just with different paint and facings. Even the grass, with mosquitoes floating up from it to greet him, had been cut to the same length.

Mike saw the damage right away. The front gutter had ripped from the roof over the garage and now hung from one end, blocking the door. The homeowner—a twenty-something woman with her blonde hair in a ponytail—stood inside her garage, talking on her cellphone, gesturing wildly for Mike to come closer. Mike left the truck unlocked and strolled up the driveway, mopping at his brow while she chatted.

Denver technically sat on a high plains desert, so humid days were a rarity, but today he could have sliced the air with his packing knife and eaten it like pizza. With the heat came the mosquitoes, another rarity at 5,280-feet elevation. It made him love Denver even more: the lack of mosquitoes and cockroaches. They were around, but not nearly like they were in other places he'd lived.

Still, on this day, with leftover rain pocketing in low spots and still dripping from trees, the city had turned "muggy and buggy," according to one local meteorologist. And this neighborhood in Centennial had taken the brunt of both.

"Oh, thank you for coming so quickly," the blonde said, said, stuffing her phone in her back pocket. "My husband is deployed and I need to get to work. My boss is already pissed. I've had to take so much time off since Brad deployed. I think they might fire me. I'm Christine Stanley."

Mike looked around the garage. Posters of F-22 Raptors, B-2 bombers, and other aircraft plastered the wall. Hanging by the door into the house, a dark blue jacket gathered dust. A tricycle sat in one corner next to a two-seat stroller.

"Your husband's in the Air Force?"

"Air National Guard," she told him. "F-16 pilot at Greeley. They sent him to the desert again, covering for some active guys to come home. Of course, like every deployment, they botched up his pay. I hope you take credit cards."

"Well, to thank him for his service," Mike told her, "I'll get this fixed and you won't owe me until he comes home."

The relief on her face transformed her. Gone was the stressed-out woman trying to make ends meet while her husband was gone, and in her place stood a woman who seemed, for that instant, to have everything together.

"Thank you," she said.

"From one veteran to another," he said, "it's no problem. Now let me get this out of the way so you can get your kids to daycare and yourself to work."

Mike held up the gutter while she backed out under it, her kids waving. When she was gone, he surveyed the damage while cars whooshed by outside and birds sang in the trees. It looked like someone had jumped up and hung on the front lip of the gutter, pulling it down. The gutter was bent in the middle, forming a "V," and all the nails holding it had torn loose from the roof edge except for two at one end where the downspout held it up.

Mike set up his folding ladder and had climbed three steps when his cellphone rang. Normally, he'd have ignored it, but the ringtone was assigned to Maria. He never ignored her calls.

"Hey, munchkin," he began. The sound of sobbing stopped him.

"Daddy, can you come pick me up?" she asked through choked-off sobs.

"I'm on a jobsite right now, sweetie, what's wrong?"

She said nothing, which by itself put Mike's senses on high alert. In the background he heard Michelle's shrill voice yelling, the same shrill voice that had been directed at him more times than he could count.

"Maria, what happened? Where are you?"

"We're at Pitt's house." Now Pitt was yelling, presumably back at Michelle. Mike couldn't make out the words, but he knew rage when he heard it. "Daddy, he hit me."

Mike's world stopped. He no longer heard cars passing by, birds in the trees, or anything. His mind filled with the sound of Maria's voice and nothing else.

"He did what?" He kept his voice as even as he could, but his hands were shaking and he had somehow stepped down off the ladder without knowing it.

"He slapped me."

"Where?"

"On my butt. There's a hand print, Daddy. I took a—"

The sound of a scuffle reached Mike over the phone, and he held his breath until he heard Maria yell, "That's mine! You can't take it!"

She sounded distant, so Mike knew she didn't have her phone.

"Who pays for this phone, you ungrateful brat?" Pitt's voice still quivered with rage. "I do, so I will take it anytime I want, you understand?"

"That's my dad on the phone." Her voice was quieter this time. Confident. She knew Pitt stood on thin ice. Too bad Pitt didn't.

"Oh, so that's how it is? You go running off to your daddy every time things go wrong here?"

"At least he doesn't hit me."

Mike had heard enough.