What I Like About the New Vook

• Gone are the short dramatizations that repeated part of the text. Instead, there are mini-documentaries that relate to the chapter. I wasn’t against the dramatization, per se, but I had not liked the way it repeated the text, providing no new content. It makes sense to me that this version of the Vook didn’t have them.

• There is now a clearer separation between the story content and the ancillary video material. Once I figured that out, I took out my earphones while I was reading, which is more comfortable for me.

• There were still images included with the text of the book.

Still Image from the Text Part of the Vook

• The videos were high quality and added quite a bit to my enjoyment of the whole Vook experience. Including Gothic Historians for a Gothic piece was fitting as were the older silent-film type clips with voice overs. It was a nice balance between engaging visuals and talking heads.

The beginning of the first video.

• I like the new slider at the bottom to help me navigate at a faster clip through the text. Gone are the up and down arrows at the top that didn’t really do anything for me.

I liked the slider on the bottom for navigation. The up and down arrows are replaced by the chapter number (3, in this case), and I can have white text on a black background. The blue link leads to a dictionary definition.

• Unlike the previous Vook that I’d read, the navigation was consistent and worked fine.

• White text on a black background–hurray!

• The icon for the app was easy to see and it was relevant.

What I Didn’t Like About the Vook

• I wasn’t able to place bookmarks, which has been a standard part of the ebook experience and a feature that I tend to use.

• After stopping and restarting the app, the text of the book doesn’t pick up where I left off. Again, I think this is pretty much expected in any ebook. Likewise, when I went to the table of contents for the book, I couldn’t easily get back to where I had been reading.

• The app bombed twice during the videos. This was never an issue with the previous Vook, but the OS has changed, I’m sure I’ve installed and uninstalled lots of apps, and you just never know where conflicts can arise. It was annoying but I’m not sure I can really fault the Vook. Oh, wait–even as I write this, the iTunes store has offered an update for “typos” and “persistence”.

• I was initially confused by the non-fiction video content at the top or end of a fiction chapter. I think this confusion probably stems from my previous experience where the videos shown in the book were dramatizations of the text. After watching the first video and checking the others, I simply read the story, then watched all of the videos afterward.

The thumbnail for the video shows Anne Rice in a coffin and I was confused since I thought it might be a dramatization of part of the text.

• I’m not sure if the gravedigger in the video about the black plague was a character or not. I’ve decided that he is, although he was so unlike the silent film actors that I couldn’t quite tell.

• Most of the videos end a little abruptly, which is fine, but I was hoping for something a little less abrupt on the last one. I call it the “last” one, although you don’t have to watch them in order.

• A final niggling detail: the video titles in the table of contents didn’t match the title as shown in the video. Oh, this is picky, I know.

Nice Improvement

I enjoyed this Vook much more than the first one and not just because it’s by Anne Rice. Some of things that I had wanted are now here (white text, video that adds context instead of repeating the story). Some items on my wish list are still missing (can’t read text in landscape, can’t listen to my own music while reading). Overall though, I was encouraged by the changes that I found and I’ll probably start to actively look for more Vooks that I might enjoy.

His arrival in Philadelphia is one of the most famous scenes in autobiographical literature: the bedraggled 17-year-old runaway, cheeky yet with a pretense of humility, straggling off the boat and buying three puffy rolls as he wanders up Market Street.
Walter Isaacson
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

John Wilkes Booth awoke Good Friday morning, April 14, 1865, hungover and depressed.
James L. Swanson
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer

Vatican propaganda notwithstanding, Peter was never “bishop of Rome.”
Thomas Cahill
Pope John XXIII: A Life

“I promise you four papers,” the young patent examiner wrote his friend.
Walter Isaacson
Einstein: His Life and Universe

Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn afternoon in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.
Simon Winchester
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

In the early nineties (it might have been 1992 but it’s hard to remember when you’re having a good time) I joined a rock-and-roll band composed mostly of writers.
Stephen King
On Writing

If the intended reader of this book should want to go beyond disagreement with its author and try to identify the sins and deformities that animated him to write it (and I have certainly noticed that those who publicly affirm charity and compassion and forgiveness are often inclined to take this course), then he or she will not just be quarreling with the unknowable and ineffable creator who–presumably–opted to make this way.
Christopher Hitchens
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

I am not all here, it’s true.
Terry Brooks
Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

The title of this book differs by only two letters from that of a book first published in 1988.
Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow
A Briefer History of Time

In November 2008 the surviving members of the original Monty Python team, stunned by the extent of digital piracy of their videos, issued a very stern announcement on YouTube.
Chris Anderson
Free: The Future of a Radical Price

Flying into Australia, I realized with a sigh that I had forgotten again who their prime minister is.
Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country

What should we have for dinner?
Michael Pollan
The Omnivore’s Dilemna: A Natural History of Four Meals

Anybody else have non-fiction line they’d like to throw out?
Do any of these lines make you want to read the book? Or just the first paragraph?

I have blogged, commented, and tweeted about my great admiration for ebooks, and my great desire not to have to move boxes of books ever again.  I have also been a purchaser of digital books.  It would seem, however, that I am also “an unusually active book customer” and so deserving of a limited-time offer: buy a 6″ Kindle for $249 and, if I’m not happy with it, get a refund AND keep the Kindle.  Say what?

Yes, you read that right.  Essentially buy it in the next few days, use the Kindle with my Amazon account, send an email within 30 days that I’d like a full refund (including shipping), and get my money back.  It’s a free Kindle.

Well, I’ve seen them in public and always kind of wanted to try one.  But one of the reasons I’m an active ebook buyer is that I’m pretty darn satisfied with my current ebook reader–my first generation iPod Touch.  It fits in a pocket or purse easily, it also has games, movies, music, news, RSS feeds, e-mail, and the web (if I’m near WiFi).  I’ve had it for a couple of years now and it has yet to show its age.  It’s got about thirty audiobooks on it now and about thirty ebooks as well.

Well, who knew that “free” could be so clarifying.  I like gadgets, but I think I’ll pass on this one.

Anybody out there like their Kindle more than their iPod or iPhone?

Peek-a-Booo!

These pop-up books by my friend Marie Cimarusti are so incredibly fun!  Fabulous to give as gifts to friends who are parents of toddlers, they make me look like I know what to buy for the little ones.  Every single one that I’ve given has been raved about.  It’s a total kick to watch the wee ones unknowingly mimic the peek-a-boo as their parents unfold the pop-up. Sometimes, they do the pop-up themselves because they simply cannot wait to see it.  If you order now, you can still get it in time for Halloween!