On Today’s Bookshelf (XVI)

It hasn’t been very long since my last On Today’s Bookshelf (XV) was published, just two months. But it seems that I have had the (mis)fortune (depending on one’s perspective) to discover a lot of books that interest me. And so I have been spending money acquiring yet more books for my ever-growing to-be-read pile. Fortunately, many of them are in ebook form, although if I read a nonfiction book in ebook form and find I really enjoy it, I tend to buy a hardcover version for my library. (It would be so much better for me if publishers bundled the ebook with hardcover version for just a few dollars more than the hardcover alone. I’d always buy the bundle.)

I admit that I get a great deal of pleasure from sitting in my library and looking at the hardcovers on the shelves, remembering the books as my eyes slide over the spines. As much as I like the convenience of ebooks, ebooks fail to evoke in me the sensory pleasure (or the memories) that print books bring forth. Scrolling through a list of ebooks just doesn’t provide the same degree of pleasure I get from sitting in my library surrounded by print books.

Books are the armchair way to experience the world in which we live. Few of us have the resources, whether it be financial or time or something else, to spend years traveling our world and participating in discovery. Consequently, we rely on others to do the legwork and to share their experiences and gained knowledge. Books are a guilt-free addiction. Editing fills part of my craving; the rest of my craving is fulfilled by the books I acquire and read. Alas, there isn’t enough time to sate that craving and so I keep on acquiring.

Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or have acquired and added to my to-be-read pile in the two months since On Today’s Bookshelf XV was published) either in hardcover or in ebook form. I have already started On Today’s Bookshelf XVII.

Nonfiction –

• Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966 by Michael S. Bryant
• Confronting the Good Death: Nazi Euthanasia on Trial, 1945-1953 by Michael S. Bryant
• Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity by Prue Shaw
• A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law during the Great War by Isabel V. Hull
• Triangle: The Fire That Changed America by David Von Drehle
• Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen
• The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum
• What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa by David E. Murphy
• Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
• God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy
• 1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See by Bruce Chadwick
• Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Romeo Dallaire
• Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister by Robert Hutchinson
• House of Treason: The Rise & Fall of a Tudor Dynasty by Robert Hutchinson
• The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor
• Thomas Cromwell: Servant to Henry VIII by David Loades
• Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force by John L. Allen
• Vienna 1814 by David King
• The Destructive War by Charles Royster
• The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, 1848-1898 by Lisa Tetrault
• The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940 by Frederick Brown
• How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust by Dan McMillan
• Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth and the Wars of Religion by Susan Ronald
• Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics by Terry Golway
• 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline
• The Last Alchemist, Iain McCalman

Fiction –

• The Inventor’s Secret by Andrea Cremer
• Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson
• The Dark Citadel Trilogy (3 books): The Dark Citadel, The Free Kingdoms, and The Golden Griffin by Michael Wallace
• The Mapmaker’s Daughter by Laurel Corona
• Paris by Edward Rutherford
• The Legend of Oescienne: The Awakening (Book 3) by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson (I previously bought and read book 1: The Finding and book 2: The Beginning)
• Last Rituals (Thóra Gudmundsdóttir Series #1) by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
• Power Down by Ben Coes
• The Soul Forge by Andrew Lashway
• The Heretic’s Daughter by Kathleen Kent
• Blood Money by David Ignatius
• Stone Cold by Joel Goldman
• Natchez Burning by Greg Iles
• The Increment by David Ignatius
• In the Hall of the Dragon King by Stephen Lawhead
• Agency Rules by Khalid Muhammed
• The Scavenger’s Daughters by Kay Bratt
• Promise of Blood and The Crimson Campaign (Books 1 & 2 of the Powder Mage Trilogy) by Brian McClellan
• The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman
• Mirror Sight (Book 5 of the Green Rider series) by Kristen Britain
• The Tattered Sword and The Huntsman’s Amulet (Books 1 & 2 of The Society of the Sword series) by Duncan Hamilton
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman

As you can see from the lists, nonfiction and fiction are about equal. Interestingly, for the past 6 or so months, the majority of my reading has been fiction, which should have meant that fiction would greatly outnumber nonfiction. But I know that it won’t be long before I return to nonfiction to the near exclusion of fiction. More importantly, most of the nonfiction I acquire in hardcover, whereas the fiction is largely acquired in ebook format.

A goodly number of the nonfiction books I acquired I discovered from reviews or ads in the New York Review of Books. One of the things I like about the NYRB is that the book reviews almost always not only discuss the book being reviewed, but other books relevant to an understanding of the subject matter. Thus the reviews act as leads for me to acquire other, older books.

Am I the only editor whose TBR pile keeps growing and who cannot stop buying books? What are you reading/stockpiling? I know I ask that question with regularity, but it would be nice if more of you listed books you are buying/reading in the comments — it would expose the rest of us to books and authors we haven’t read.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

On Today’s Bookshelf (XIII)

It has been months since I last shared what I am reading with you. (If you are interested in reading prior On Today’s Bookshelf articles, please click the link “On Today’s Bookshelf” above.) Alas, I wish I could say that my to-be-read pile is getting smaller, but it isn’t. It seems as if not a day passes when I am not adding yet another book or two or three to the TBR pile; although I am managing to make my way through the books, I am adding new books faster than I can read what books I already have in the TBR pile.

In a way, my situation has become more complicated. Recently, Barnes & Noble sent me a coupon for a great deal on the Nook HD or HD+. The HD is a 7-inch tablet with a 720p screen; the HD+ is a 9-inch tablet with a 1080p screen. I already own — and am very happy with — a 7-inch Nook Tablet (it’s just not high definition) but after looking at the device in my local B&N, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy the HD+ for slightly more than half price. So now I have a Sony 7-inch eInk reader that my wife uses, a 7-inch Nook Tablet, and a 9-inch Nook HD+ Tablet.

What I have done is divide my books. On the Nook Tablet, I read fiction; on the Nook HD+ I am reading nonfiction and occasionally watching a video. The Nook HD+ is perfect for nonfiction and for PDF documents. However, the more I use the HD+ tablet, the more I like it, so I expect it won’t be long before all my books are on the HD+.

Here is a list of some of the books that I am reading (or acquired since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post) either in hardcover or in ebook form:

Nonfiction —

• If Rome Hadn’t Fallen by Timothy Venning
• The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara Tuchman
• Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss
• Empire: What Ruling the World Did to the British by Jeremy Paxman
• Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions by Susan Tice & Cami Ostman
• Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk
• Hitler’s Commanders by Samuel W. Mitchum, Jr.
• Carthage Must be Destroyed by Richard Miles
• Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
• Perfect Victim by Christine McGuire & Carla Norton
• A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester
• Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Mahon
• The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany 1944-1945 by Ian Kershaw
• Belisarius: The Last Roman General by Ian Hughes
• The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West by Tom Holland
• All Hell Let Loose: The World at War 1939-1945 by Max Hastings
• The First Four Notes: Beethoven’s Fifth and the Human Imagination by Matthew Guerrieri
• The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman
• Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy
• The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language by Mark Forsyth
• A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman
• Cicero by Anthony Everitt
• Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan 1839-1842 by William Dalrymple
• The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars by Paul Collins
• The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
• The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century by Alan Brinkley
• The Second World War by Antony Beevor
• The Watchers: A Secret History of the Reign of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford

Fiction —

• House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion, Vol. 1 and In Fury Born (2 books) by David Weber
• Antiagon Fire by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
• Inda; The Fox; Treason’s Shore; and King’s Shield (4 books) by Sherwood Smith
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
• The Purples by W.K. Berger
• City of Dragons and Blood of Dragons (2 books) by Robin Hobb
• The Serpent’s Tale; A Murderous Procession; Mistress of the Art of Death; and Grave Goods (4 books) by Ariana Franklin
• I am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits
• The Cadet of Tildor by Alex Lidell
• Season of the Harvest and Forged in Flame (2 books) by Michael R. Hicks
• The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett
• A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison
• The Blade Itself; Last Argument of Kings; and Before They are Hanged (3 books) by Joe Abercrombie
• Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas (2 books) by Amish Tripathi
• Game of Souls by Terry C. Simpson
• Ruins of Legend; Nature Abhors a Vacuum; and In Defence of the Crown (3 books) by Stephen L. Nowland
• The Traitor Queen by Judi Canavan
• The Concubine’s Daughter by Pai Kit Fai
• The Pledge by Kimberly Derting
• Little, Big by John Crowley

That’s some of what I am currently reading. I’ve got about a dozen hardcovers on preorder and a growing list of hardcovers I want to purchase.

Please feel free to share your reading list with us. Doing so may well bring your favorite authors some new readers.

On Today’s Bookshelf (XII)

I can’t keep away from books, which is probably why I retired from my life as a lawyer and became an editor. Once books and reading get hold of you, they never let go — somewhat like that alien being in the latest science fiction thriller. It has been quite a while since the last On Today’s Bookshelf (March 2012), so here are a few of the hundreds of books and ebooks I have acquired since then —

Hardcovers —

• Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States by David Hackett Fischer
• Princeps by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
• The Story of Ain’t by David Skinner
• Heaven on Earth by Sadakat Kadri
• Henry Ford’s War on Jews by Victoria Saker Woeste
• On Politics: A History of Political Thought by Alan Ryan (2 vols)
• When General Grant Expelled the Jews by Jonathan Sarna
• The Atheist’s Bible by Georges Minois
• Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran by Habib Levi
• The Story of English in 100 Words by David Crystal

eBooks —

• The Witness Quartet: Silent Witness, Privileged Witness, Expert Witness, Hostile Witness by Rebecca Forster
• Voices of the Dead by Peter Leonard
• The Stolen Crown by Susan Higginbotham
• The Devil’s Cradle by Sylvia Nobel
• Night Swim by Jessica Keener
• Leaving Before It’s Over by Jean Reynolds Page
• El Gavilon by Craig McDonald
• Cooking the Books by Bonnie S. Calhoun
• The Savior of Turk by Ron D. Smith
• To Serve the High King by Fran LaPlaca
• The Death of Kings by Marcus Pailing
• Paradise Burning by Blair Bancroft
• Daisy’s War by Shayne Parkinson
• Cephrael’s Hand by Melissa McPhail
• Song of Dragons: The Complete Trilogy by Daniel Arenson
• The Phoenix Conspiracy by Richard Sanders
• Circles of Light (6 vols) by E.M. Sinclair
• Whispers of a Legend by Carrie James Haynes
• The Other Worlds by M.L. Greye
• Anca’s Story by Saffina Desforges
• Blaze of Glory by Sheryl Nantus
• Blue Murder by Emma Jameson

Many of the books and ebooks in the above lists I have yet to read. The lists are not recommendations, just a compilation of books and ebooks I have bought (or received as gifts) in the past few months. It is not a complete list. I’m sorry to write that my appetite for books grows much faster than my ability to read the books.

I looked at my to-be-read pile of books and discovered that I have more than 2,500 books waiting for my attention. (At the time of On Today’s Bookshelf (XI), my TBR was approaching 500 books, of which about 70 were hardcovers. I wish I could say I made a serious dent in that TBR pile before going on a shopping spree, but I didn’t.) Fortunately, most of the books are ebooks, so they take up little physical space.

One part of my problem as regards hardcover books is that most of the hardcover books in my TBR pile (and in the list above) lead me to buy other books. I will read an interesting point in a book, look at the note to the point, and decide I need to buy a copy of the book cited by the author in support of the interesting point.

A second part of my hardcover problem is that I have a long-term subscription to The New York Review of Books, each issue of which I faithfully read — both articles/reviews and the advertisements — which leads me to buy even more hardcover books.

Then I run into the problem of favorite authors coming out with new books, some of whom are very prolific, publishing a couple of new hardcovers every year.

At least when I retire, which is likely to be years from now, I won’t wonder what I’ll be doing. I’ll be attacking my ever-increasing TBR.

The Disappearing Book — A Boon for New Authors?

Thanks to Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader, I came upon a video, called “The Book That Can’t Wait”:

The essence of the video is that the publisher put together a pbook anthology of new author writings and gave it away (it was in a sealed bag to prevent air from getting at it). The catch was that the ink would disappear in 2 months leaving a blank book.

The idea is touted as a way to force people to read a book rather than simply add it to their To Be Read pile. I’m not sure how effective it is, as the ink doesn’t disappear until the seal wrapping is removed, which means I could add the book to my TBR pile and get to it 12 months later — as long as I didn’t break the wrapping.

But I find the idea of having the ink disappear in 2 months intriguing as a marketing tool. As with most tools, it is double-edged. Because the ink disappears, it is unlikely that readers will pay for the book, which means the publisher has to give it away for free. The other edge is that it is expensive to create such a book, only to give it away for free without assurances that it will actually be read in the immediate future or that if it is read, that the reader will like the contents enough (or some of the contents since this is being used as an anthological introduction to new authors) to buy books written by one or more of the profiled authors.

It also suffers from the marketing problem of being a pbook in what is fast becoming an ebook world.

The advantage to the disappearing ink is that a publisher knows that the book is unlikely to be “harvested” by readers simply because the book is free. This harvesting problem is becoming cause for concern as readers, myself included, grab free books and add them to an ever-growing TBR pile. My TBR pile currently has more books than I could read in 3 years of doing nothing but reading books 12 hours a day, yet I still add to the TBR pile because I don’t want to let bypass me a book that could lead me to a wonderful new reading experience. If it is in my TBR pile, there is a significantly greater likelihood that I will read the book than if I need to try to remember that I am interested in a particular book.

In a way, this is the problem with the publishing industry overall — both traditional and self-publishing — especially ebooks. Every day dozens of new titles are added to the catalogues and a good number of those new additions are books that I might want to read and so want to add to my TBR pile. Perhaps it is the problem of being overwhelmed with choice.

The gimmick of the disappearing ink certainly is an eyecatcher. I suspect that this would be a good way to entice me to set aside what is currently in my TBR pile to tackle the disappearing ink book. I know from past experience that if I find a new author who I like, I will buy the author’s books immediately on finishing the sampler book. In other words, the disappearing ink book could act as an effective method of moving books from the bottom of my TBR pile to the top.

This tactic was done with a pbook but a similar tactic could be done with ebooks. Put together a collection of books by different authors and give it a 60-day life from moment of download. Links could be included to each participating author’s other books, and if you buy a book from a participating author using an included link, you get both a code that extends the lifespan of the disappearing ebook by 30 days and a discount on the purchased ebook.

The biggest problem with this marketing idea is that ebooks that are offered for free are continuously offered for free and thus even if the ebook expires, it is easy enough to redownload. The primary incentive for reading the ebook now would be the link to an expiring discount on other books by the author. Yet, again, the fact that the ebook could be redownloaded tends to negate that advantage as well.

Do you have any ideas on how to adapt the idea of the disappearing ebook to a marketing strategy that could be successful? Or is this really just an idea that is best used for pbooks?

On Today’s Bookshelf (VII)

Adding to my TBR (to-be-read) pile seems to be a neverending process. Since the last On Today’s Bookshelf (VI), I have added the following books:

Hardcover —

• The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman
• The Eichmann Trial by Deborah E. Lipstadt
• Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg
• Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial by Steven Lubet
• William Bouguereau (2 vols.) by Damien Bartoli and Frederick C. Ross
• Blackveil by Kristen Britain

Hardcover — Preorder

• The Language Wars: A History of Proper English by Henry Hitchings
• Jerusalem: The Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore
• How Firm a Foundation by David Weber
• The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove

eBooks — Nonfiction

• Germs, Genes, & Civilization: How Epidemics Shaped Who We Are Today by David Clark
• A Philosophical Dictionary (6 volumes) by Voltaire
• Secret Holocaust Diaries by Nonna Bannister
• Hitler’s Pre-emptive War: The Battle for Norway 1940 by Henrik Lunde
• Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard

eBooks — Fiction

• In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V edited by David Weber
• Mrs. Quigley’s Kidnapping by Jean Sheldon
• Deadly Withdrawal: An Aggie Underhill Mystery by Michelle Hollstein
• The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
• The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick
• Letters from Earth by Mark Twain
• Paid in Blood by Mel Odom
• Warriors of the Cross by T.R. Graves
• Stars Rain Down by Chris Randolph
• Blue by Lou Aronica
• Life Blood by Thomas Hoover
• Syndrome by Thomas Hoover
• You Can’t Stop Me by Max Allan Collins
• Protector (Jane Perry Series #1) by Laurel Dewey
• Medical Error by Richard Mabry
• Sword Lord by Robert Leader
• The Labyrinth by Kenneth McDonald
• Arm of the Stone by Victoria Strauss
• Redcoat by David Crookes
• The Shepherd by Ethan Cross
• The Twentyfirsters by Kekoa Lake
• Rogue Forces by Dale Brown

Of the above listed books, I have read, and thus removed from the TBR pile, The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, Blackveil by Kristen Britain, and Honor Killing: Race, Rape, and Clarence Darrow’s Spectacular Last Case by David E. Stannard. All three are excellent; I plan to do a review of Honor Killing as I think it is a particularly worthy book, even though the publisher did a terrible job creating an ebook version (words were dropped and too many sentences begin with “I” when it should be “It” or something else that begins with an “I”).

If you are reading or have read a particularly interesting book that you think others might enjoy, why not add a comment to this article and let us know. It is only by sharing our reading lists that we can broaden our exposure to worthwhile reads among the nearly 1 million books published each year, especially among the self-published/indie books.