I, Android | The Beauty of the eBook App

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1001 book list, android apps, audiobook, ebook, goodreads, gutenberg project, librivox, the art of war

 
For god’s sake. Stop being such a paranoid android,
and learn to love the little green man…

I take it back. Every negative word I have written about the ebook/ audiobook phenomena (or any format that deviates from the traditional way of reading) has as of today, come to an abrupt end. Who or what converted me so completely and painlessly? The world of android apps, of course. Those wonderfully cute and colourful icons of free information that you stream onto your phone, those friendly and extremely useful gadgets that help pass the time, convert your money to any currency you want… or allow you to access thousands of classic novels. All for FREE. Now that is an app to die for.

Among the thousands of these tiny little widgety things I discovered an oasis of reading material. The website I happened to used was Android Market that came pre-installed on my phone. It’s a really useful website that offers information about the different types of apps on offer. Searches can be made separating the best paid and free apps on the market, and it allows direct download into your phone via a USB cable. What’s more, I really liked the reviews of the different products. Very valuable if you are a techno-phobe like me and dread getting into trouble with glitches and viruses.   

I quickly discovered that there was really no need to pay for many of the stuff I wanted to use, because the free ones operate just as well as the paid ones. Among my sojourns in the ‘Books and Reference’ section, I discovered a lot of apps for Bibles, Moon phases and other religious books. Ideal for those who wish to carry their scriptures with them while on the go.

Wondering what I managed to find? Here’s my list of book related apps:

•  Goodreads – A must have. Before I had to log onto the full website and frantically toggle between full and mobile mode (full mode wont let me update my shelves). So this is a real godsend. Works like a dream.

 

•  Free Audiobooks (Travelling Classics) – Excellent for when you are on the go. Thousands of titles are available, and is especially good for those trying their hand at the 1001 BYMRBYD. This is like the ‘Gutenberg Project’, only all texts are from the ‘Librivox’ library and are narrated by ordinary people. I must admit, I didn’t quite like ‘Librivox’ because it kept me close to the computer (limited, rather), but with this app I can cook, clean, do anything and listen to quality unabridged classics from Dickens to Aesops Fables. Once the novel is downloaded, it will continue to works even without internet access. Get this while you still can!

 

•  The Art of War eBook – I have a beautiful hardcover 
  version of this I got from Borders years ago. It’s sitting on my shelf gathering dust! This however is a great condensed version of the military/ tactical classic from Sun Tzu that everybody has heard about, but few have actually read. This will help feed my love for Asian non-fiction.

It has in some respects been a day of revelation to me. I who was a proud reader of the ‘written word’, has finally ‘got’ it. I hope to discover many more bookish apps and through sharing them hope to help other conservative minded readers make the switch over to the digital realm a little more easier. Do you have any bookish apps that you have discovered or can’t do without? Please do share!

Exclusive Interview | Bret Easton Ellis on ‘Imperial Bedrooms’

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Brett Easton Ellis, exclusive, goodreads, Imperial Bedrooms, interview, Less Than Zero, Lunar Park, Rules of Attraction, teenage angst

Goodreads has managed to track down Bret Easton Ellis for an interview on his latest novel ‘Imperial Bedrooms’. The novel is a follow up to ‘Less Than Zero’ which deals with teenage angst in LA. In this read, we see the characters of ‘Less Than Zero’ grown up and middle-aged. Here is a little sneak-peek:

“The nihilistic, drugged-out characters of Less Than Zero pushed teen angst to a whole new level of depravity. Published before Bret Easton Ellis was even out of college, the book (and later its loosely adapted film) was an instant success. He has since continued to populate his bleak literary landscape with dissatisfied and often violent characters in The Rules of Attraction and American Psycho, and has playfully examined his own morals in a mock-autobiographical horror novel, Lunar Park. Now, 25 years after Less Than Zero, Ellis returns to Los Angeles to pick up the story in Imperial Bedrooms, where he imagines what his malcontent teens would be like in middle age. He chatted with Goodreads about why there’s a piece of himself in every one of his characters.

Goodreads: Given the ’80s zeitgeist-touching status of Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms is heavily anticipated by both fans of your work and detractors of sequels. Are you feeling more pressure than usual with this book release?

Bret Easton Ellis: Feeling pressure suggests that the person I’m writing the book for is an audience. I’m actually obsessed with the material, and I’m writing the book for myself. I emotionally become involved in an idea. It took me three years to write the shortest book of my career because I was interested in the story. Now it’s going out into the world. It is what it is, and what will happen, will happen. I do think, however, that some readers will definitely feel betrayed because Less Than Zero, as an artifact, is beloved in a way. People have a lot of strong associations with it. It is one of the first novels they read, or it is one of the first novels they read as a teenager. I think a lot of people are expecting Less Than Zero 2: The Party Continues. And that’s just not what I felt it would be. I hate to think of Imperial Bedrooms as a sequel. I wasn’t thinking “sequel” as I wrote it. I was really just thinking about Clay and where he’d be if he came back to L.A.Lunar Park, I reread Less Than Zero for the first time in what must have been 17 or 18 years. I became obsessed with this idea: “Where is Clay now?” I had to find out where he was—emotionally. And that’s shaded a little bit by where you are in your life, too. If you’re super-happy, then maybe Imperial Bedrooms would have been a different book. I don’t know, but obviously it was a bit of a dark period, and I think that’s reflected in Imperial Bedrooms.”

Click here to read the full interview.

50 Books A Year | Reached 30/50!

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50 books a year, book challenge, goodreads

Just a quick post to mark my 30th book read this year (yay!). *Finally* got round to finishing ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ and I am feeling positively elated, if not a tad bit tired. What a feeling. Here is the run down of the books I’ve read so far for the ’50 Books A Year Challenge’ on goodreads.com:

1. The Twits by Roald Dahl
2. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe
3. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
4. A Partisan’s Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
5. The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara
6. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
7. A Man’s Head by Georges Simenon
8. The Lost Estate by Alain Fournier
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl
10. The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho
11.The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. Crazy by Bejamin Lebert
13. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
14. The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd
15. The Calligrapher’s Night by Yasmine Ghata
16. Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
17. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
18. Memoirs of a Master Forger by William Heaney
19. The Electric Church by Jeff Somers
20. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
21. Disquiet by Julia Leigh
22. Push by Sapphire
23. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
24. Esther’s Inheritance by Sandor Marai
25. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
26. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost by Ismail Kadare
27. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
28. The Book about Blanche and Marie by Per Olov Enquist
29. A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
30. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

That’s the grand total so far… All reviews of these books will be up, I promise, I just have to carry them over from my old blog over at live.com.

Thirty down, twenty more to go! If you have any book recommendations I’d love to hear from you – or if you have any personal reading challenges or book lists.

Welcome to Zee’s Wordly Obsessions Book Blog

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bibliophile, bookaholic, goodreads, welcome, wordly obsessions, Zee

I just wanted to say a quick ‘hi’ to all bibliophiles out there who live, breathe and sleep books. Welcome to ‘Wordly Obsessions’, my book review blog which I fundamentally set up to keep track of all the books I read throughout the year, as well as make a note of all the reading challenges I am hoping to complete. Oh, please excuse the mess, my blog is still a work in progress! 

I am pleased to say that I have joined wordpress.com after months of deliberation between different blogging platforms, not to mention the fact that windowslive.com decided to do away with its’ only redeeming factor; the all-important statistics page.

So please come in, relax, and make yourselves right at home. After I get a little more acquainted with the vastness of my dashboard, hopefully this place will start looking more like a book blog.

Just a little bit of info about myself; my name is Zee and I am a self-confessed bookaholic and I’ve been reading for as long as I can remember. I am a graduate in English Literature with particular taste for Gothic/ Sci-Fi and the old Romantic texts. But in general, I read anything (even better if it’s well-written). Like all bookaholics I am after the ‘good’ read, the one that stands out from the rest. It’s turning into a kind of quest for me, so I see reading books as a kind of treasure hunt. 

I have recently joined goodreads.com in an effort to broaden my reading horizons so please feel free to go on over and check out what I’ve got on my bookshelves. I hope you enjoy your time here. Please come back soon, reviews will be up shortly and I’d love to read your comments.

Zee.