Month: October 2011

Jingle Hells

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

If Lucifer is capable of true love, is he really such a bad guy? Misty Evans’ Witches Anonymous series keeps teasing me with that question.  Jingle Hells is the second book in the series, and I’m having even more fun following Amy Atwood’s adventures in the town of Eden, as she tries to resist Luc’s charms and stay true to her vow of “no more magic”.

Amy’s boyfriend, Adam the actual first man, is off on a trip to the Middle East to find the location of the Garden of Eden. Amy is lonely for Christmas, and her ex, that old devil Lucifer himself, would just love to worm his way back into Amy’s bed, and into her heart. The fact that Luc really is thinking about Amy’s heart makes me think that Luc isn’t such a bad guy after all, which is a very strange thing to say about Satan. Even romantically speaking.

But while Adam is out of town, Amy has a whole bunch of otherworldly visitors–also of biblical origins. For a girl who has already sold her soul to the Devil, Amy is suddenly receiving an awful lot of signs from the godly side of the street. First both Samson and Delilah burst into her ice cream shop wanting her to solve their millenia-old lover’s squabble. Then two bands of angels arrive, one from above, one from below. And get this, it’s the so-called “good” guys who want to keep Samson and Dee apart! And then there’s this cat…and Luc arranges for a delivery of the Bible, with instructions for Amy to read Genesis, just before Adam returns from his trip.

If you read the last book, you might remember that Amy’s sister Emilia started everything by getting luring Luc into her bed. Well, she’s back. And it’s all her fault.

Java Brownie Chip ice cream is the cure-all for breaking up with your boyfriend. There’s a liberal application of it required in this story.

Escape Rating B: This is fun stuff. I like Amy. She’s someone I’d want to have coffee with. Or better yet, some of that ice cream of hers. There was less of her Witches Anonymous group in this story, which was too bad, because some of them are hilarious, but more clarity about the folks in Amy’s personal life. I liked the backstory on how Amy met Luc, and where Keisha (her partner/coworker) fits into things. Adam’s role was much clearer.

Gabe, AKA Gabriel the manipulative Archangel, made a cameo appearance. He will clearly be back as the man/angel of mystery.

Emilia got off just a little too easy. She needs to feel some serious guilt and remorse for the mess she caused. I hope that comes in the next book, but right now, Emilia’s story feels a tad unfinished to me.

I like Luc more everytime he shows up. Which goes back to my original question. If the devil feels true love, how bad can he really be? Just bad enough to be really, really good?

 

A Vampire for Christmas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Who would have thought that a vampire might be a good thing to find in your Christmas stocking? Or even better, helping you out of your Christmas stockings! In the new anthology, A Vampire for Christmas, with novellas from Laurie London, Michele Hauf, Caridad Piñeiro and Alexia Morgan, sometimes a vampire is just what a girl wants Santa to bring her for the holidays.

Like all collections, the stories vary in appeal.

Laurie London’s “Enchanted by Blood” is for those who prefer their vamps to come complete with political machinations. Trace Westfalen has already given up his human lover Charlotte Grant once. And wiped her memories. All in the service of preserving the secret that vampires live among us. And in the interests of preserving his possible seat on the ruling council. Not to mention the secret of his nasty cousin’s even nastier habits. However, when he finds Charlotte in trouble, he can’t resist coming to her rescue. When he sticks around long enough to let her fall in love with him again in spite of her memory wipe (he never fell out) their troubles begin all over again. Will Trace decide that love is worth the cost?

Caridad Piñeiro’s entry, “When Herald Angels Sing”, is a Christmas redemption story with a twist. A guardian angel’s assignment is to redeem the soul of a vampire. Little does she know that the vampire’s task is to redeem her heart.

On the other hand, “All I Want for Christmas”, by Alexis Morgan, has a very pronounced urban fantasy flavor. Everyone who frequents Della’s Diner, from the fry cook to the customers to the punks who try to rip her off, seems to be some sort of supernatural creature. Including the cop investigating drugs and disappearances and finding himself wanting to sink his fangs into purely human Della.

My favorite story of the bunch was Michele Hauf’s “Monsters Don’t Do Christmas” for its terrific characters and very unusual take on who is and who isn’t a real monster. Daniel Harrison is a vampire, but he’s not the real monster of the story. The real monster is a purely mortal woman, who just so happens to be a superstar. I loved this story.

Escape Rating B: Collections are always mixed. Some of the stories work for me, and some don’t. But that’s the point, you discover someone or something new. For me it was Hauf’s story. Her take, that the superstar machine creates a person who feels more of a monster than an actual monster, made the entire book.

A billion wicked thoughts about ebooks and libraries

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | conferences> ebooks> libraries

On October 12 I attended the second annual virtual conference about ebooks and libraries, sponsored by Library Journal and School Library Journal. The title of the conference was Ebooks: the New Normal, and I wondered, is it really?

The conference itself was really cool. This is a conference about ebooks, after all. It should be a virtual conference. Requiring a physical conference to talk about a virtual product would be either ironic or contradictory. The sessions were great! At the same time, as one of the attendees pointed out on Twitter, it’s hard to sit down for drinks together afterwards to rehash the conference. Putting it another way, hash tags just don’t taste as good as a glass of wine with new friends after the conference is over.

But back to that thought about whether ebooks are the new normal, or not. Ebooks are definitely a permanent part of the library landscape. Ian Singer of Media Source quoted adoption rate statistics that ebooks are in over 90% of academic libraries and over 80% of public libraries. But “in” and “integrated” are two different things. A lot of academic library ebook collections are mostly for research. And a lot of public library ebook collections are just getting started.

What about those “billion wicked thoughts”? One of the speakers in the afternoon Pecha Kucha session was Ogi Ogas, author of A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire. His advice to libraries regarding ebooks is that we need to not just stock a lot of ebook romances, but that we need to get involved in archiving fanfiction. Wow! Why? Because men like pictures and women like stories, meaning romance fiction. His research follows the publishing trends, and the library ebook circulation trends, that romance sells, and romance circulates. Ebook romances of all stripes and types are the hottest circulating genre of ebooks, and romance authors are the hottest circulating authors except for the big name bestsellers like Patterson and Roberts. Except, hey wait a minute, Nora Roberts is a romance author.

Robin Bradford, Fiction Collection Development Specialist at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library, said something similar in her earlier presentation. She said that purchasing for the ebook collection isn’t like buying for the print collection. She showed the top 20 ebooks from IMCPL, and there they were, hot romance authors in the top 20. Lauren Dane had 4 books in the top 20. (Go Lauren, she’s really good!) Robin’s point in general was that the ebook audience may be different from the print audience and we have to purchase what will circulate. Another one of her comments that was clearly a big takeaway based on the Twitter chat was that the ebook users want the authors’ backlist if it’s available. And it increasingly is thanks to publishers like Open Road Media.

But about that whole normal thing? One of the issues that’s part of the old normal, and an even bigger part of the new normal, is budget limitations. Ebooks may not take up any room, and genre fiction can be less expensive than hardcover books, but library budgets have shrunk. We can reallocate money from some other places, like periodicals, and standing orders, and reference books. But databases also cost more, and that expense isn’t going away.

Libraries do a lot of their collection development from reviews. Not for the upcoming bestsellers, the sure things, but authors and titles they don’t know and have never heard of, they do. When a library is looking at an ebook collection, as Robin Bradford and other speakers pointed out, the library shouldn’t be duplicating its print collection. There are a lot of titles from publishers such as Carina and Dreamspinner and Samhain that are ebook-only, and many are written by new or relatively unknown authors. In other words, if these were print, collection development would look for reviews. Even when the individual titles cost less than $5, the money does add up. There are reviews out there, if a librarian is willing to go hunting through the blogosphere, but that takes a lot of time. Or it’s a labor of love.  Library Journal has been reviewing ebook-only titles in their Xpress Reviews online since July 2011 (full disclosure: I am one of their reviewers), but libraries need more resources in order to integrate ebook ordering into collection development. We need the equivalent of AudioFile or VOYA for ebook only titles, except online, of course!  When that exists, ebooks will  truly be the new normal in libraries.

Who’s with me on this?

Witches Anonymous

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Witches Anonymous, by Misty Evans, is almost as deliciously tempting as the Dove chocolate square that the main character keeps promising herself if she manages to resist all of the other temptations that keep getting thrown her way. Poor Amy, most of us find Dove chocolate difficult enough to resist!

Amy Atwood is the witch in Witches Anonymous, and we meet her as she is about to attend her first meeting of the self-help group. Yes, WA is modeled on AA, complete with 12-step program. Amy used to be perfectly okay with being a real, honest-to-badness witch–up until she caught Lucifer with his devilish hands (and other body parts) all over her sister Emilia.

Until Amy caught them in the act, Emilia had always been the “good” witch, and Amy had always been the “bad” witch. Now the tables are turned. Emilia has turned to the dark side, and Amy has sworn off cursing and hexing and all spell casting. Because as everyone knows, one spell leads to another, and once you start down that slippery slope, it leads right back to having Lucifer in her bed, and Amy is through with him. If he wants Emilia, he can have Emilia. He only gets one sister. Period.

But at her first WA meeting, Amy meets Adam on her way in. Adam, tattooed, Harley-riding, Adam, looks like more than enough “bad boy” to keep Amy happy, even if he is only human.

But nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Adam really is Adam. As in Adam and Eve. That Adam. And the Archangel Gabriel has arranged for him to re-enact that original temptation, with Amy cast in the role of Eve. Gabe is hoping that Adam will resist this time, and that Gabe will get to play God in Eden, the revised edition. But Lucifer has other plans. You see, he really is in love with Amy, and he wants her back. Bad. But can a devil who truly loves actually be all bad?

And Amy’s formerly goodie-two-shoes sister? She really is kind of a demon.

Escape Rating B-: Oooh this was fun! Witches Anonymous is mind candy of the purest form. Which is a really good thing. I giggled all through dinner reading it. This is a “put your ereader in a baggie and read in the bathtub” book. I liked Amy a lot. She’s a fun character. I got less of a handle on Adam, or Luc. I was never quite sure how much Adam, the Harley-riding firefighter, knew about his role as Adam, the first man and possible resetter of the cosmic balance.

But I loved that Gabriel, the angel, was actually the bad guy and Lucifer was actually the good guy. Very cool.

Lust on the Rocks

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Lust on the Rocks, by Dianne Venetta, is the perfect kind of story to read on a rainy afternoon. There’s more than enough drama to keep you turning pages to see what happens next. And there is a happily ever after–but the characters do grow and change, and going on their journey with them is very satisfying.

Samantha Rockwell is the best friend of Dr. Jennifer Hamilton, whose story is told in Jennifer’s Garden (also very much worth reading!) Sam is a high-powered attorney at a prestigious law firm in Miami, and is one case away from making partner.

The case that she’s sure will make her the first female partner in the firm’s history is Perry Fitness. It’s a corporate lawsuit for major damages. Perry was negligent, and a customer died on the premises. His widow is Sam’s client.

Sam starts with two issues. Her mentor wants her to take one of the firm’s new associates as co-counsel in the case, in addition to her usual teammate. The partner is pushing, hard, for Vic Marin to be on Sam’s team. Sam can tell that Raul has a hidden agenda, but she’s not sure if he’s testing her partnership potential, or trying to scuttle it. And Sam finds Vic way too much of a temptation, all on his own. Their sexual chemistry could cause her enough distraction without any other “sidebars”.

And Perry Fitness is definitely “dirty”. There have been other deaths, other negligence claims. The question is whether to just go for damages, or to go for a criminal prosecution. Sam’s client wants the whole thing to be over so she can move on with her life. Vic wants to go for the manager of Perry Fitness with everything he has, because Vic has a hidden agenda of his own. One that should have kept him off the case. And Vic also has a not-so-hidden agenda. He wants Sam, possibly forever.

The question is, what does Sam want? Partnership, or love? She’s always wanted a partnership. She’s been working for it since day one. Love has never even been on her radar. Sam’s never believed she could have it all, and has always focused on what she was sure she could get. What if that isn’t enough?

Escape Rating B: I inhaled Jennifer’s Garden and Lust on the Rocks in two days. I got absorbed in the characters and the setting and really felt for them.

I have a soft spot for romances with an older woman/younger man theme. This one did a nice job playing with that without going over the top.

One story element that pushed it into the realm of fantasy was Sam’s previous relationship behavior combined with her being a lawyer on the fast-track at her firm. While I couldn’t help but admire her ability to not just flirt with, but catch, every man she wants, the idea that her employer knew about her exploits made me think that in real life, she wouldn’t be on the fast track. I think the double standard unfortunately still applies.

There’s a secondary plot in Lust on the Rocks about Sam’s younger sister Jess. I won’t spoil the story any further, but Jess has some very rough decisions to make. Her choices have consequences, and all of them are long-term. There wasn’t an easy out for her, and the story showed her struggle. It also highlighted some of Sam’s issues. Sam wanted to fix things for her, and had an extremely difficult time not taking over.

Lust on the Rocks will be out on October 19. Look for it!

Jane Austen Made Me Do It

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

Jane Austen made me do it. Made me do what? Mostly made me have a lot of fun reading this collection of short stories inspired by her works!

Jane Austen Made Me Do It, the book, is a collection of short stories inspired by the life and works of Jane Austen. Of course. The collection was edited by Laurel Ann Nattress, and features stories by a host of writers from Stephanie Barron to Lauren Willig.

I read most of the Jane Austen oeuvre during my interminably long commuting days, which means I listened to it on audio. I enjoyed them immensely, but I’m not obsessive. I say this because the stories in JAMMDI fall into two categories, the ones that require detailed knowledge of particular Austen works, and the ones that use Austen’s life and works as jumping-off points.

The stories that used Austen as inspiration were ones I particularly enjoyed. You might even say I found a couple of them, well, inspiring.

In “The Ghostwriter,” by Elizabeth Aston, Jane’s ghost comes to the aid of a 21st century author who has spent much too much time admiring Mr. Darcy and not nearly enough energy on her own love life or on her sagging book sales. Jane’s apparition leads Sara to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, an unpublished manuscript by one of Jane’s contemporaries that will be a shot in the arm for her dying career. While Sara copy-edits the found manuscript, Jane fixes up her love-life for her.

“The Chase,” by Carrie Bebris, is about how Jane’s brother Francis received his commission as Post-Captain, based on Francis own logbooks. This story was as vivid a recreation of a naval battle as any of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey and Maturin series.

My favorite was the story by Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway titled “What Would Austen Do?” A high school student whose mother is a Jane Austen aficionado has saddled him with the name James Austen. Mom may even have married Dad just so she could snag the Austen last name! The story starts with poor James getting hauled into the school principal’s office and being accused of becoming a drug user. Why? Because he’s been exhibiting unusual behavior. What unusual behavior? He’s become polite and mannerly to his teachers. He wears khakis and button-down shirts to school. And he has strange paperwork in his locker. With numbers on it, and weird words like “arming” and “inside hand” and “ECD”.

If you want to find out what “ECD” stands for, you have to read the story. It’s worth it.

Escape Rating B: Because this is an anthology, it’s a mixed bag. There were a couple of stories I absolutely adored. “What Would Austen Do?” being at the top of the list. The ones that required really deep knowledge of Jane Austen’s works were not as much fun for me. Collections like this are classic instances of the principle “your mileage may vary”.

The stories that used Jane Austen as a springboard were the best ones. The attempts to out-do or re-do her work fell a little flat. The stories that took flight from her, most of those were terrific.

Queenie’s Brigade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Rooting for the underdog can make for a fantastic story. When it’s the last space ship left to lead the Rebellion, it’s the stuff of great space opera. Throw in a forgotten prison colony and enough sexual tension to power the ship by itself, and you’ve got that best of all possible universes–science fiction romance. Queenie’s Brigade by Heather Massey is just that, a terrific science fiction romance. Something there just isn’t enough of these days.

Michael Drake is the captain of the UFE Relentless. And his ship is that last survivor. Being the captain, he knows in his bones that duty must come first. And his duty is not to go down with his ship. His ship is equipped with technology that was “adopted” from a captured enemy vessel. Drake’s duty is to take his ship and crew out of certain death and equip other ships with the new tech, then come back and kick the Calithian Empire’s ass out of Earth space.

But the hyperspace jump that took Relentless out of the battle did not put her into friendly space. Or even neutral space. That hybrid tech was not precisely reliable. Or totally aimable. Relentless and her crew found themselves at the equivalent of the ass end of nowhere, orbiting the worst penal planet in Earth’s jurisdiction, desperately in need of repairs and out of options.

Only one problem. The penal planet had been taken over. The inmates were running the jail. The most hardened criminals that Earth needed to incarcerate. And those convicts outnumbered the crew of the Relentless. Something Captain Michael Drake was all too aware of–after the new “overseers” of Hades Station had him and his crew firmly in their clutches.

Drake had hoped to use the convicts as military manpower to help drive back Earth’s invaders. After seeing them in action, he was even more impressed with their potential, even though it was turned against him and his crew. But their leader, Queenie, truly captivated him–in every possible way.

Escape Rating A: I read this in one sitting. When I picked it up to write the review, I got sucked into it again. It’s that good.

The beginning of the story is from Drake’s point of view, but after that, it alternates between Drake and Queenie. Queenie is a fascinating character, having been raised to be “tough as nails” in order to become the leader of the prison gangs, but not ever being allowed to lower her guard with anyone. Drake is the first person who treats her as an equal.

There have been a lot of comparisons between Queenie’s Brigade and the book/movie The Dirty Dozen, because of the whole “recruit convicts to become soldiers” aspect. Since the Dirty Dozen already were soldiers, after all, they were in the military stockade when they were recruited for that specific mission, I didn’t see that link so much as a couple of other things.

One that caught my attention was the issue of the hereditary penal colony. Drake assumes Queenie must have been convicted of some crime, and is shocked to discover that she was born on Hades. Earth has successfully buried the secret that a sentence to Hades is forever. It reminded me of Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Or the warrior women in Kate Douglass’ DemonSlayer (Demonfire, Hellfire, Starfire) series, where the Atlantean society has forgotten that warrior women even existed, let alone that they were imprisoned, and that their daughters are still imprisoned.

Then there’s the relationship between Queenie and Drake that eventually leads to romance. At first, it’s a struggle for the two leaders to find a way for their groups to work together. They need to each maintain leadership of their own crew, and Queenie has to be seen as in control, or she will lose control of the prison gangs that run Hades. But they have to find a way to eventually meld the groups, or they’ll never get off Hades! Queenie and Drake made me think of Janeway and Chakotay on Star Trek Voyager, except that the roles were reversed, and Heather Massey did right by them. Thanks Heather!

Brass and Bone

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews> C Reviews

Brass and Bone by Cynthia Gael was a pretty good one-third of a story. The only problem is that I was expecting a whole story. A fairly short whole story (I knew the book was only 86 pages) but a whole story nevertheless.

What I got was a decent beginning to something. And then an abrupt “Epilogue”. Simon, one of the two point of view characters says that he feels like he’s fallen into a “penny dreadful”. Fallen into is right. And just as suddenly dropped out of.

Brass and Bone started out as lovely Steampunk. Two secret agents, one clearly a guttersnipe raised above his station, the other a Lady working considerably out of class, stealing secret plans and fantastic machinery for Queen and country from, and for, mad scientists. Airships fly overhead and steam men ply the streets alongside horse-drawn carriages.

Did I mention that Simon, the raised-up guttersnipe, has been in love with Abigail, the Lady of the piece, for years? And that she seems to be totally clueless in the matter?

But in addition to Simon and Abigail, there is a second plot involving Cynara and Henri. Cynara is a witch and Henri is an agent of the Witchfinder General. The Witchfinder General seems to also be a corporation known as WFG, Ltd. A very rich and influential corporation.

There is clearly some backstory about WFG, Ltd. from Gael’s previous work, Balefire and Lodestone, and Balefire and Moonstone. But due to the brevity of Brass and Bone, the backstory wasn’t in evidence here. There was just enough to tease, but not enough to satisfy.

When the two stories join things both get interesting, and get too involved to wrap up in the 86 pages available.

Escape Rating C-: I liked what I got, but I’m incredibly annoyed. This was really the first 7 chapters of a much longer story. I want that longer story. At least, I want to know when the rest of it is coming out. I expect novellas to have beginnings, middles and ends, not just beginnings. I was just starting to really get into the story when it stopped. The rating would be higher if I could find an announcement anywhere of when the next installment was coming out! Grrrr!

A Thief in the Night

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Sword and sorcery may be the lowest form of fantasy. When it’s a book like A Thief in the Night, by David Chandler, that’s a really, really great thing. Bad boys doing bad things for all the wrong reasons. Sounds like fun because it IS fun!

A Thief in the Night is the second book of The Ancient Blades. If you’re curious about book one, Den of Thieves, read this first. Book three, Honor Among Thieves, will be published in late November, 2011, and I’m very grateful to the publisher and Net Galley for letting me have a review copy. I’d hate to be waiting until after Thanksgiving to see how it all turns out. I dislike “middle-book syndrome” on general principles. Enough said.

When last we left our heroes (I’ve always wanted to write that), they had just removed an evil sorcerer and his corrupted knight from the Free City of Ness. Permanently and with extreme prejudice. Malden, the thief of the title, had also learned more than was good for him about the way the city really works. In Malden’s case, if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a lot of knowledge is downright life-threatening.

Sir Croy, the Ancient Blade, won the freedom of his lady-love, Cythera the witch’s daughter. At the beginning of Thief in the Night, Croy believes they will finally be married. There are a few problems with his plan. Their betrothal signing is interrupted by a bar-room brawl. Started by a Northern Barbarian. One who holds yet another Ancient Blade. Said Barbarian wants Croy to help him hunt down a demon. Croy loves demon hunting even more than he loves Cythera, so Croy leaves the betrothal unsigned to start outfitting the demon hunt. Cythera is just fine with the interruption, because that’s the other problem. Croy thinks she’ll be a good little knight’s wife once their married, and she’s not so sure about that. And anyway, she’s in love with Malden. Oops.

About that demon. The demon is holed up in the Vincularium. For those who read Tolkien, think of it as the Mines of Moria, only with a worse backstory. The dwarves  buried a secret in the Vincularium, one they’ll do anything to keep buried. The humans buried one there too. History is written by the victors, or so it is said. In Malden’s world, where we say, “dead as a doornail”, they say, “dead as an elf”. The Vincularium is where the elves died. All the elves. Betrayed by their dwarven allies and killed by the humans.

But the Ancient Blades are sworn to kill demons. So Croy is going. His new friend Morget the barbarian is going. Cythera says she’s going. No one has signed those betrothal papers yet, so she’s still a free woman. And Malden, our thief–he wasn’t going. No profit in it. But…about those secrets. Someone in Ness wants him dead. Painfully. Sacrificed to the Bloodgod.  Going to the Vincularium suddenly looks like the less painful option. Or at least a delay of the painful option. Delaying death is always good.

Escape Rating A: One of the things I love about sword and sorcery is the way that it turns high fantasy tropes upside down. The central character here is Malden, the thief. He is not a hero, and he doesn’t want to be. He’s a survivor. Croy is a typical hero, and he’s naive to a fault. Malden’s voice is much more fun to listen to, he’s sharper and smarter. Also more of a smart-ass.

Cythera is also a survivor. She was a virtual prisoner for many years. Croy represents safety and security, marrying him is the safe option. He will protect her. But he is incapable of understanding her.  And yes, Malden loves her too.

I enjoyed watching every one of the starting assumptions get knocked down. The demon isn’t exactly a demon. The dwarves aren’t just clever artificers and merchants–they are prevented from being warriors by treaty, and only as long as it suits them.  The elves weren’t the villains that humans have always been taught. “Dead as an elf” isn’t actually correct, either. Dealing with the fallout from that is going to be fun in the next book.

 

 

On the shoulders of giants: Steve Jobs RIP

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Apple

When I heard the news about Steve Jobs last night, I was reading a book. On my iPad. My husband found out because he was checking blogs. On his iPad. What did I do when he told me? I looked for an authoritative news source. I checked wired.com–on my iPad.

Yes, we’re geeks. But that’s not the point. A year ago, we would have been in front of separate computers, checking the net from desktops. Or maybe laptops. And yes, one of the laptops is a MacBook Pro. Not mine. But the iPad changed that. The iPad made it convenient to curl up with a good book. One that also lets you surf the net and play some really cool games.

All the Apple origin stories that have been repeated in the past 24 hours have reminded me of some library computing origin stories. The first three “computers” to make their way into any public library were generally an OCLC terminal, a CLSI terminal, and an Apple II computer, usually in the Children’s Area. Not necessarily in that order. The Apple II was the only real computer of the three. Think of how far we’ve come!

The comment is so often quoted, “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Sir Isaac Newton said it first, ironically a man who is one of the giants on whose shoulders modern science stands.

Steve Jobs was a giant.