This morning's NY Observer brought the depressing news: Doubleday Cuts.
The article mentioned that several "big bets" missed their mark. I knew about Jon Krakauer's Pat Tillman bio being pulled, but I never even heard about The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson, let alone read it. Now, I'm certainly not a font of all publishing knowledge — but I usually know about the big titles. So something went awry with this one.
Yesterday I realized that I didn't have any of Gregory Maguire's books on hand for this week's BarnesandNoble.com Center Stage Book Club — the area I've just begun moderating. I knew, of course, that I wanted to get A Lion Among Men, his new release — but I thought it would be useful to have copies of Wicked and Son of a Witch nearby as I jump in and out of the discussion.
I had a fairly busy Monday, including a couple of regular calls, some research, and some writing. I decided that I would stop at the Georgetown Barnes & Noble on the way back home from an author interview I was conducting in town. When I pointed my Mini Cooper onto M Street yesterday evening, however, it was raining, the traffic was lousy, and I wanted nothing more than to go straight home and settle in to my cozy armchair to read.
But I needed those books!
Regular readers of my other blog may realize where this is going. As I waited patiently at a red light, a light bulb went off in my brain: I could simply download these books onto my Kindle! In fact, I could have downloaded all of them in the time it took that light to change, but I didn't — I waited until I got home (hi, Mom!).
Not only did the download save me time and trouble, it saved me money.
What would you have done? It's OK if you want to flame me for using my e-reader. I'm more interested in learning all of the pros and cons here than I am in protecting my delicate Maven's skin.
I may have finished up at Publishers Weekly, but I'm not a lady of leisure. I've got to get this blog moving, keep Author, Author! going, host Center Stage for B&N.com, and work on a book project, too…
I couldn't be happier.
But this blog needs to be beefed up, quickly, so I'll be working this week on adding a blogroll, links, posts, and more. If you've got any suggestions for any of those, please let me know.
In the meantime, here's something I'll be featuring regularly:
What I'm Reading Now (And How):
When Christ and His Saints Slept by Sharon Kay Penman — Trade Paper
The Given Day by Dennis Lehane — Hardcover
The Numerati by Stephen Baker — E-Book
If you've arrived here from my Publishers Weekly blog, thank you for visiting — I hope you'll like it here, and come back often. I plan to blog five days a week, just like before. You can find my author interviews and book lists at WETA.org's "Author, Author!" site; here I'll do book reviews, talk about my reading life, and riff on publishing in general.
