it has e-begun

[jazzfish]

Over vacation I read Charles Stross's six- three-volume Merchant Princes series. They're good stuff. The first one's a normal SF worldwalker book, and the next two are much more contemporary thrillers that happen to include a worldwalking component. Also, the twin central messages are 'Economic development is tricky' and 'Stop romanticising the past.'

They are also, as Charlie noted, big fat books. I mostly didn't notice this, because ereaders are a thing of lightweight beauty.

Over the weekend I got a desire to reread Umberto Eco's big thick secret-history Foucault's Pendulum. My copy is a giant hardback, because it looks nice on my shelf and because when I was carrying a large backpack around campus one more big book didn't really make a difference.

Now? I am genuinely *irritated* that I can't just open it on the iPad. Instead I have to deal with a physical volume that causes me physical strain to hold in one hand, and that doesn't fit in my coat pocket. I am almost (almost) considering plopping down more money for an ebook edition.

I suppose this is how 'and then i replaced my library with ebooks' starts.

---

Two quotes about Foucault's Pendulum:

1) "Dan Brown is a character in my book." --Umberto Eco, on being repeatedly asked if he'd read The Da Vinci Code
2) "Nobody gets Foucault's Pendulum except for literary critics and role-players." --James Palmer

Comments

[andrewducker]

It was that situation, only Stephenson-related, that led to half of my books going to charity stores.

[jazzfish]

Yeah, I expect it'll come up again when I'm ready to reread Anathem.

The real problem with replacing everything, or even half of everything, is that ebooks are harder to lend. (Give, yes, but I have ethical qualms there.) Not to mention that an awful lot of my books are not and never will be available as ebooks.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

That is how "and then I replaced all my books with e-books" started for me. That, and the realization that I could take 800 books with me for a three-week trip to Turkey, instead of having to pick and choose 3.

Also, I did get Foucault's Pendulum back when I was not yet a role-player, and was definitely not a literary critic, being, like, 14. I'm sure I'll get more out of it today, though.

[jazzfish]

This convenience for travel is a dangerous thing. I'm fine with resisting the siren song of the iBookstore, right up until I start thinking "so i'm gonna be gone for a week, what do i want to read, bother i'd have to carry a physical copy of that and that and those..."

I have definitely gotten more out of it on this reread than I did a decade ago, and that was light-years beyond what I got in high school. It is ... impressively layered. I begin to suspect that Mr Palmer may have missed one or two aspects of it himself.

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I attempted to read FP when I was in my early teens, and made decent headway, though any time I put it down, I'd have to reread back half a dozen pages to get back into the thread again; when I re-attempted a few years ago, I couldn't make it fifty pages.

[robbat2.livejournal.com]

Of the Merchant Princes, did you read the re-release, or the originals?

[jazzfish]

I read the first two when they were first released, and thought they were good but not good enough to own in hardback. Then I stopped working at a bookstore and didn't get around to picking up the others for awhile. Eventually I started grabbing them in paperback (used), and uilos read them and decreed them "meh." I suspected this was a combination of thrillers being Not Her Thing and the weird inflationary effect of the series plan changing from two books to six, so when Charlie went back and revised and edited them for the three-book rerelease, I kept an eye out for them.

Verdict: still not worth owning in hardback, so it's just as well they're not being released in hardback. Worth owning in trade paperback or in ebook. Looking forward to the completion of the sequel book-published-in-three-covers.