Tag: books

Valentine Week, Day Six: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy1 Comment

This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker. Find the review here.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES. Find the review here.

Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake. Find the review here.

TODAY, Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson

Sexing the Cherry, novel of magical realism by Jeanette Winterson
Find it on Amazon, or wherever you like to buy your ebooks, or from bricks and mortar book sellers.

Sexing the Cherry (1989), by Jeanette Winterson, published in the U.K. by Bloomsbury (in the U.S. by Grove Press), is a hard book to label. Is it a novel? A meditation? A long, gorgeous prose poem? It won the E. M. Forster Award, and has been described as magical realism, as post-modernist, as intertexual. The whole of it uses the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses as a sort of anchor. It’s not your normal fantasy novel, or any type of genre fiction. If you don’t like literary fiction and read to be soothed rather than challenged, maybe skip it. If you want a trip into the marvelous and strange, read it.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

Winterson’s book (notice I don’t say novel!) is the third in this series to use the Twelve Dancing Princesses as a basis. I could have blogged about so many more. I won’t recap the fairytale–you can read that in the earlier posts in my Fairytale Fantasy series. I have to say I’m amazed at how many writers chose this particular fairytale as an inspiration. I expected that of Cinderella (see last year’s blog posts), but this one I never figured for one of the three or four absolutely iconic fairytales for Western readers, so I didn’t expect so many novels based on it. If you love this fairytale, go onto your favorite search engine and marvel at the lists and lists of Twelve-Dancing-Princesses-themed novels. Almost all of them are either fantasy or fanciful romance, or both. I’ve been hearing a new term lately: romantasy. I guess that covers a lot of fairytale fiction pretty well. It just doesn’t cover Winterson’s book.

The magical realism label really does fit it well. What is magical realism, exactly? It’s not fantasy, or any type of genre speculative fiction, but it encompasses the fantastical. The term seems to have been applied first to certain types of writing coming out of Latin America, such as the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but it has also been applied to the works of writers worldwide who blur the lines between realism and a supernatural or magical take on the world. Prominent examples of magical realism written in English might be the novels of Salmon Rushdie (and we see what kind of political trouble he got into for blending the realistic and the magical), or to point to a writer not as well-known, Sarah Perry (Melmoth, The Essex Serpent).

My thoughts on this book:

I love to put an outlier in these fairytale fantasy blog series, and Winterson’s book is definitely that. I found it fascinating, but I was careful not to read it the way I’d read a novel. I took it in slow, bite-sized pieces. There’s a kind of plot, I guess: a monstrous woman known as the Dog Woman adopts a young boy, Jordan, in 17th century England at the time of the English Civil War. The Dog Woman is a slum dweller, and her life and physical presence and practices turn the stomach. If you have a delicate stomach, reader, be warned. She is so gigantic, so hideous, and so commanding that she can stalk around 17th century England doing whatever she pleases, including murder, and no one stops her. She’s the antithesis of the obedient woman.

Jordan, by contrast, is a sensitive soul. He becomes enthralled with the exotic fruits and vegetables appearing even in the slums of London, exhibited as wonders, as the Age of Exploration brings them to England’s shores: pineapples and bananas, especially. Take a look at the original cover for Winterson’s book–it represents the book a lot more accurately than the lovely cover I’ve posted above:

Jordan becomes an assistant to that very intriguing real 17th century personality John Tradescant. His father was gardener to King Charles I (whose execution by adherents of Oliver Cromwell becomes a prominent plot point–using plot very, very loosely). The son spent years in colonial America and other places around the globe, collecting plants and experimenting on new ways to cultivate them. Winterson’s title, “Sexing the Cherry,” is about that process.

And about so much more. A series of surrealistic episodes involving Jordan form a contrast to the Dog Woman’s messy, violent, frequently hilarious (I believe “Rabelaisian” is the term), mostly scandalous life in the slums. Jordan’s episodes involve questions of gender roles, questions about what it means to be human, questions about humanity’s place in the universe, and in these episodes, Jordan’s storyline shifts from 17th century England to the present and back again with dizzying speed. Who is he, really? Who is any one of us, and do constraints of space and time really bind us?

This is where the Twelve Dancing Princesses come into the book, in case you were wondering. Jordan meets one of them, becomes entranced by her, and then loses her as she seemingly escapes the narrow role she has been forced to play. His search for her leads him to her eleven sisters (the princesses), and as he encounters each sister, he learns her tale of how she escaped the cruel or sometimes just boorish prince who has claimed her. Why this particular fairytale? It seems to speak to Winterson, maybe as a stand-in for the lives women in Jordan’s era have been forced to lead. His transitions back and forth to the present suggest perhaps that these strict and damaging expectations are still operating in the world. There’s nothing stridently feminist in the book in terms of bald statements and sermonizing–I suppose I’d say it’s simply, profoundly inherently feminist.

What I loved most about this book: The gorgeous writing. I love fantasy–reading it, and writing it. I love any kind of well-written speculative fiction, and I don’t care whether it’s “literary” or “genre” or what it is–if it works, and ON ITS OWN TERMS, I’m going to love it. But, primarily, I’m a poet. And Winterson’s book is poetry. I was blown away by it. The writing isn’t divided into lines, nothing rhymes, but it’s poetry in the best sense of the word. And that’s how I read it. Here’s an example. Writing about a moment of extreme jeopardy: “The moment has been waiting the way the top step of the stairs waits for the sleepwalker.” Read that one and think yourself deep into it. Wow.

You can read my poetry blog, by the way, at https://utopiary.wordpress.com. I’m nowhere near the poet Winterson is, though. I’m guessing almost no one is.

A side-note: Genre fiction lovers, don’t feel left out by this post! I’d just like to point out that John Tradescant is the main character in a two-book series by Phillipa Gregory (Earthly Joys and Virgin Earth). I really, really liked these books, even though a lot of times I don’t like her books much. You might want to try them–I think they aren’t as well known as The Other Boleyn Girl and some of her other very popular historical novels.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Kindle app on my iPad. Getting the book was very easy. I went to the Amazon web site and bought the book through One-Click, and presto, it appeared on my iPad. The experience would have been even easier and faster if my Kindle device had been available to me.

Valentine Week, Day Five: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy2 Comments

This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker. Find the review here.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES. Find the review here.

Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

TODAY, Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake.

Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson

Dark Breaks the Dawn fantasy novel
Find this novel in the iBooks store (just called Books on your ios device), or at the web site of the publisher, Scholastic, or at other ebook and bricks and mortar booksellers.

Dark Breaks the Dawn (2017), by Sara B. Larson, published by Scholastic, is another YA novel based on a dance theme, in this case the ballet Swan Lake. Evelayne, princess of Éadrolan, has already lost one parent, her father, to the war that rages between the two kinds of Draíolon who inhabit the divided land of Lachalonia. Early in the book (so early I’m not going to say spoiler alert!), she loses her mother the queen, too, catapulting her to the throne when everyone regards her as too young and untested and untrained to face the warlike rival kingdom of Dorjhalon. Within Lacholonia, there are two kingdoms, the Light (Éadrolan, home of the light Draíolon) and the Dark (Dorjhalon, home of the dark Draíolon). Time out of mind, the two kingdoms have worked together to keep the balance of the land–summer and winter, day and night–until the dastardly king of Dorjhalon decided to grab all the power for himself. The story of the novel is Evelayne’s coming-of-age, coming into her own as queen and warrior, and also of her awakening love for the lovely, barky Lord Tanvir. As she fights to avenge her parents and save her land, she needs cunning, might, and ingenuity. She also needs to learn how to wield her special royal powers, accessed through a gemstone embedded in her body, as well as through shape-shifting into a ritually chosen creature–in Evelayne’s case, a swan. The twist at the end poses a dilemma: Evelayne’s very strengths might prove her undoing.

Swan Lake–the story of the ballet

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

Once more, a renowned Tchaikovsky ballet provides the underpinnings of a fantasy novel. I won’t say “backstory,” because the novel doesn’t really hew to the story of the ballet. Tchaikovsky supposedly used German and Russian folklore in constructing his story, although there is apparently no evidence of that. So once again we’re experiencing a “literary” fairytale–or in this case, I guess, a “choreographical” fairytale–perhaps inspired by a fairytale ethos and folkloric elements but not actually derived from folklore.

In the ballet, an evil sorcerer curses the beautiful Odette and her companions to be swans by day and only turn back into human form at night. Prince Siegfried, out hunting, observes this transformation and falls in love with Odette. The sorcerer snookers Siegfried into an engagement with his daughter Odile, whom he has enchanted to seem like Odette. When Siegfried realizes his mistake, he rushes to find Odette. She decides she’d rather die than stay a swan, and when she does, oh so romantically, Siegfried dies oh so romantically with her. The spell is broken, the other swans turn back into human women, and they watch ecstatically as Odette and Siegfried ascend to Heaven, together eternally.

Take a look at the ballet.

Except for the swan transformation, nothing of the plot of Tchaikovsky’s ballet features in Larson’s novel, and there’s absolutely no dancing. That left me scratching my head. Is the Swan Lake connection really just a marketing device? Yet Larson thanks a ballet studio owner in the novel’s dedication, so I guess we can say she is inspired by the Swan Lake story, even though she doesn’t overtly use much of it. Tchaikovsky had an affinity for fairytale subjects, so it’s no wonder that so many fantasy novelists have been charmed into using his work, in whatever way they choose to use it.

My thoughts on this book:

Of all the fantasy novels I’ve reviewed in this series of blog posts, Larson’s book is the most typical of the genre, especially for the YA readership. There’s the obligatory map at the beginning of the book. A good fantasy book has to have a map at the beginning, am I right? There are warriors wielding medieval weapons like swords and bows, and–this being fantasy, not historical fiction–magic spells. There are important battles. There are magical and/or enchanted creatures. There are tongue-twisty elvenish names. There’s a realm that does not exist in the ordinary world, and the idea of a Chosen One whose destiny is to save that realm. There are extremes of good and evil (or light and dark, in this case). In YA fantasy especially, there’s the spunky heroine, and her need to sort out her ambiguous feelings for a young man (or men). And in the subgenre of shifter fantasy, there’s some type of shift between human and beast-form. Larson’s fantasy novel sports all of these familiar tropes. I should also mention that this particular novel fits into the “high” or “epic” fantasy type, the “sword and sorcery” type (frequently seen together), and–with the shifter trope–dips a toe–just a toe–into paranormal romance.

What I liked: The writing, and the deft handling of the plot.

What I didn’t like as much: All those torturous names. And too many of them begin with the letter D! I kept having to flip back to earlier parts of the book, especially in the beginning, to make sure I knew who was who and what was what. I think this is really a legacy of Tolkien. Now, ever after, high fantasy books have to have these impossible names for everything and everyone. But remember that Tolkien, a trained philologist, thought up a hypothetical language (a hobby he had practiced for years), and then used that language to shape his novels, not the other way around. So the strange names emerge organically in Tolkien. I do think that naming is an important part of world-building, though, and I see how the author uses place names and names of people to further her world-building, which I mostly admire.

One aspect of this book I REALLY appreciated: There’s a twist at the end, but it’s no cheap-shot O. Henry-esque ending. The twist is earned. It grows naturally out of the story.

And a deal-breaker: In another book I’ve blogged about in this series, I admired the way the novel, a first book of a series, did not leave us hanging. There was no cliff-hanger. In this book, there is. Is there ever. We drop right off it. To me, this is a truth-in-advertising matter. I purchased a book, not a part of a book. A story, not a part of a story. If I’d wanted to pay for part of a story, I would have. If I’d wanted to live in the world of Dickens, spinning out his novels endlessly as newspaper serials, I would have time-traveled back there. Sure, if the book is one volume of a series, there might be loose threads and tantalizing hints at the end. (Or if you are especially skillful, and signal far enough ahead that you’re going to do it, you might be able to get away with it–witness Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind. On the other hand, that commits you to going on. Witness the anger of his fans when he can’t seem to do that.) (Ugh, a parenthesis after a parenthesis, but–I’m not one of those angry fans. I’ll take whatever he can give us.) (And even The Name of the Wind ends with a pretty satisfying conclusion in spite of our knowing it’s just Day One of a three-day recounting of the hero’s adventures.) Larson’s book, though. It just. Stops. I can’t abide that. I will not read on.

Other readers may very well disagree. Some readers may like cliffhangers. I can’t imagine why. There are some interesting stories about cliffhangers, by the way. Tolkien famously sent The Lord of the Rings to his publisher as one enormously fat volume. The publishers figured it would never sell, so they arbitrarily chopped the book into three separate volumes to sell separately. That’s why the first two books stop so suddenly. The publishers didn’t think the three books would sell, even presented more neatly bite-sized. Were they surprised.

By contrast, T. H. White didn’t want The Once and Future King to be one enormously fat volume. He wanted three separate books. His publisher jammed them together. Go figure.

Two personal notes: I have a lot of sympathy for this writer in spite of my antipathy for cliffhangers. I write series of fantasy novels myself, and I always struggle about how to end them. Another cause for sympathy, and a little bit of trepidation: I’m writing my own swan story, nearly finished, so when I began reading this book, I got nervous I’d somehow inhale it and inadvertently copy some of it. Mine is different enough that I’m not nervous now. Mine is (VERY LOOSELY) based on the Children of Lir Irish legend, not on Swan Lake, and while I have transforming swans in mine too, they don’t transform in the same way or for the same reason as Larson’s swan does. Whew. The perils of the writing life. Oh, also–Larson has lots of readers, and I have few. So there’s that.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the iBook app on my iPad (actually called simply Book). Getting the book was absolutely a no-brainer, and the navigation and special features are great. I find reading ebooks this way to be a very satisfying experience. Purchasing through Amazon’s Kindle is just as easy, although not through its app, wherever you have installed it–tablet, desktop, phone, etc. Apple has arranged for its own e-reading app to be easy for users of its devices, and has made other e-reading experiences more difficult. I don’t like that. I guess, to Apple, it’s just business. But whatever, the iBook e-reading experience is great.

Valentine Week, Day Four: Fairytale Fantasy

On By janewisemanIn fantastic fantasy5 Comments

This year, DANCE your way to Valentine’s Day! Novels based on fairytales and folktales featuring dance.

In preceding years (you can find all the posts archived on my blog, btw–just look for February!), I have posted novels based on worldwide fairytales and folk tales, and on two “literary” fairytales (Cinderella and Rapunzel). This year, I’m featuring a whole week of novels based on fairytales and folktales involving dance. Here are the posts:

Day One of Fairytale Fantasy Week: Entwined, by Heather Dixon–a novel based on the classic fairytale “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Find the review here.

Day Two: Midnight in Everwood, by M. A. Kuzniar–a novel based on the story behind the classic fairytale ballet, The Nutcracker.

Day Three: Valentine’s Day itself! The amazing fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke–a novel with a strong dancing subplot. ONE OF MY TWO FAVORITES.

TODAY, Day Four: House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig–another novel based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”

Day Five: Dark Breaks the Dawn, by Sara B. Larson–a novel based on the fairytale ballet Swan Lake.

Day Six: Sexing the Cherry, by Jeanette Winterson–a final choice based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” but be warned–it’s nothing like the others.

Day Seven: A wrap-up and a special exploration of the “dance mania” of the medieval period, plus a free download.

TODAY, a review of House of Salt and Sorrows, by Erin A. Craig

Find at Barnes & Noble, or at any ebook seller, or at bricks and mortar book stores.

House of Salt and Sorrows (2019), by Erin A. Craig, published by Delacorte Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House), amusingly described by a review in the Wall Street Journal as a tale of “a Grimm sea.” Craig’s novel is a YA horror/gothic-tinged take on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Twelve sisters have seemingly been cursed as they die off one at a time. The protagonist of the story, sister #6, Annaleigh, tells the tale in the first person, a typical YA tactic. Her four eldest sisters are dead, each in a different grisly way. Ava, dead of plague. Octavia, fallen off a ladder. Elizabeth, drowned in a bathtub. Eulalie, plunged from a cliff into the rough seas surrounding the sisters’ island home. (I know, I know. . .it sounds straight out of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs;/B is for Basil assaulted by bears. . .”) Because of the supposed curse, everyone now shies away from the sisters, even the new eldest, Camille, who will inherit her father’s riches. But Annaleigh suspects murder instead. This novel serves up generous lashings of gothic horror, mystery, an ingenious invented mythology, and YA tropes like the spunky girl torn between two equally attractive boyfriends, while stirring in the fairytale magic of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” The distraught surviving sisters relieve their stress and grief by heading into a mysterious magic passageway for nights of forbidden dancing. Meanwhile Annaleigh confronts red herring after red herring (definite sea thing going on here in my post) as she drives toward a solution to the mystery.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses–the tale

First of all, as in years gone by, I should mention what I mean by “fairytale.” No fairies are necessarily involved. The term has evolved to refer to a particular magical type of folk tale that may involve fairies, princesses, and the like, but may not. (A subgenre of fantasy, involving the fae, is an entirely different matter). And sometimes, what readers have come to know as “fairytales” aren’t any such thing–not folklore, passed down anonymously through the generations and centuries, often by word of mouth, but literary creations by artists hoping to mimic the fairytale aura. I should also mention that my blog posts on this subject won’t refer to anything Disney, except in passing. The Disney take on fairytales occurs in a whole world of its own, it has its faithful fans, and I don’t intrude there.

My first post in this series gives the same information: The original tale was collected in 1815 by the Brothers Grimm, nineteenth century German folklorists who were–and remain–famous for their efforts. Present-day folklorists classify this tale as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 306, “the worn-out shoes.” You can read the original Grimm version in translation here. Later collectors of fairytales published French, Russian, Scots, and other versions. Some of the tropes (characteristic features) of the tale include the princesses numbering as many as twelve (sometimes only one), the shoes that mysteriously wear out, the magical place of forbidden dancing, the clever suitor who discovers the secret and wins the hand of the eldest princess. More disturbing features include the idea that the princesses are trapped in the magic dancing venue until rescued, and unsuccessful suitors may come in for cruel or downright grisly treatment. Magic and/or imprisoning mirrors may be involved. Any adaptation may include some or all of these tropes, or turn them topsy-turvy.

My thoughts on this book:

This is a wonderful YA fantasy novel with characters to love and root for, good writing, an ingenious mythological/magic system, and then, on top of all that, horror and mystery. If you like your YA completely sweet, though, the horror might put you off. It gets intense.

I did think, however, that the “Twelve Dancing Princesses” stuff felt a bit tacked on. Was the dancing stuff really necessary to make this plot work? I get the twelve sisters dying off one by one part, and the sinister man Annaleigh meets at the magical ball. I got a bit weary of it all, I must confess, but reader! I am old! I am not the audience for YA. So young readers may love every little bit.

One aspect of this book I REALLY appreciated: it’s part of a two-book series, Sisters of the Salt, yet there is no cliffhanger ending at the conclusion of this novel, book one in the series. If you don’t plan to go on with the series, you’ll still get a satisfying reading experience. If you do go on to the next one, House of Roots and Ruin, about the youngest sister, Verity, I’m not sure how much depends on your having read book one. I doubt I’ll read it myself, but I am sure many YA readers and readers who love YA will rush to purchase it. Go for it!

Content warning:

The horror! The horror! I can imagine some young teens, or maybe even older readers, might get freaked out by the horror and the description of violent, grisly deaths. If this is you: be warned.

My experience buying this book:

I read this book through the Barnes & Noble app on my iPad. Getting the book, for me, was difficult enough that if I hadn’t been committed to reading on different ebook platforms, I might have given up and gone to an easier way to purchase, like Amazon’s Kindle, or even One-Click from their web site, or of course–since I’m using an iPad, Apple’s seamless iBook app. I’m sure if I had a Nook, Barnes & Noble’s dedicated reading device, buying the book there would have been just as easy as buying on my Kindle. As it was, needing to buy from the Barnes & Noble web site put one more difficulty between me and my addiction (books!). The main problem is not with Barnes & Noble. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog series, it’s a problem Apple created when it ensured that only its own iBooks store could process ebook sales directly in-app. That said–the Barnes & Noble purchase felt unnecessarily complicated. (By contrast, the Kobo process was a breeze, and the Amazon process is practically a no-brainer.) I think it took me five or six tries before I finally purchased the book on the Barnes & Noble site. That’s enough to drive an e-reading reader batty–and away. Once I did have the novel on my app, though, reading it there was a very satisfying experience–lots of intuitive tools and easy navigation.

Two great solutions. Let’s hear them again!

  • Buy a paperback or hardback copy from your local independent bookstore! (oh, all right, from a chain big box bookstore, I guess, if you just have to.) I myself am hooked on the convenience of ebooks, but you don’t have to be.
  • GET THE BOOK FROM YOUR LIBRARY. You may be able to find it there in paperback/hard cover, but in the U.S., your public library is full of free-to-read ebooks, and librarians are great at finding it for you in ebook form if you can’t find it yourself. I’m not sure about library policies in other parts of the world, though. Let’s hear it for librarians, unfairly embattled in these hard times. Who knew anyone would take out after librarians, of all selfless people? It’s like picking the wings off butterflies. Really beautiful ones, too.