Izzy Reads, Page 5

Booker chat 2011 – Which ones will you read?

September 16, 2011

What do you make of the controversy about the Man Booker shortlist this year? Book bloggers like myself had plenty to discuss as the debate about readability versus literary quality rages on. I have some sympathy for the judges having more than a couple of partly-read Booker winners lying around the house. I never did make it all the way to the end of The Finkler Question last year and I still haven’t got around to buying Wolf Hall even though I’ve been meaning to read it for ages.

I don’t know about you, but I’m disappointed Alan Hollinghurst didn’t make the shortlist with The Stranger’s Child. As far as I am concerned, it’s the best book I have read so far this year. That said, I haven’t had time yet to read very many of the long or short-listed titles yet. I did read Julian Barnes  The Sense of an Ending which I liked very much and which I have reviewed already on this blog. I’m planning to read Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English and AD Miller’s Snowdrops. I’m also going to buy Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie, partly because the reviews reminded me of The Life of Pi which is such an exciting and surprising novel and I’ve already bought Sebastian Barry’s On Canaan’s Side, although I haven’t yet got around to reading it.

How about you? Which ones will you read this year? And which ones have you left lying around half-read from previous years?

 

: FICTION
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Five top considerations when choosing between print and digital

September 16, 2011

Reader’s Guide to Traditional Books vs Kindle Editions

From the reader’s perspective, for convenience, portability, and readability there is much to be said in favour of the Amazon Kindle but there are times when print still comes out on top. Here are five key factors to think about when you deciding which format to purchase.

  1. Newspapers: Surprisingly, Kindle is better for newspapers than both print and iPad in my opinion. Firstly, if you are a broadsheet reader, the Kindle is much easier to manipulate – particularly if you read in tight spaces such as reading the paper on your morning commute. Secondly, thanks to Whispernet, newspapers arrive on your Kindle early in the day and without any need to stop off at the shops. Thirdly, it’s quick to skim through and select the stories that interest you, and you can even tweet or post links on facebook to articles you want to flag to friends or colleagues.  There are some drawbacks – you may not get the full paper (eg ads, photos, family notices, etc). If you want the full traditional experience via digital, you should probably opt for the iPad edition. But bear in mind that the iPad requires that you download an issue before reading, and the downloads can be very time consuming making them not entirely practical if you plan on reading the day’s newspaper on the way to work. Who’s going to get up earlier to allow time for downloads?
  2. Illustrated Books: Garden guides are better in print. A Kindle edition is not going to help you identify or select plants for your borders. Nor is useful if you wish to browse books showing the gardens of historic houses. Art books, some science, space, anything with beautiful images is better in print or on the iPad. But there’s a trade off. The Beauty Bible, for example, despite the images, is one I’d prefer in Kindle edition so that I could use it as a reference source. Having it in my handbag would be a lot more effective when shopping than having it beside the bed at home.
  3. Notes: Kindle allows you to highlight text and to make notes. This is a tremendous advantage if you like to write reviews or want to remember passages or share them with friends. It beats pen and paper and it’s faster to highlight than to transcribe a passage.
  4. Sample Chapters: If, like me, you purchase books on the strength of reviews it is a definite advantage to be able to download sample chapters. Not only does it allow you to taste before you buy, it also means you have a record of books that you are interested in purchasing, and you can proceed to purchase at a time and place convenient to you.
  5. Portability: The iPod/iPhone gave us the ability to carry our entire music library around with us all the time. The Kindle does the same for books. It also means you won’t be constantly running out of space on your bookshelves

Image: istockphoto.com

To sum up, then, my advice is Kindle for fiction and selected non-fiction such as biography, history, etc. Print or iPad when colour and illustration is important.

 

: E-READERS, IPAD, Kindle

Anglo Republic by Simon Carswell

September 10, 2011

“Bankers like to say that their institutions are likeliest to die not of cancer in their loan book but of a heart attack in their treasury operation. This would ultimately prove accurate in Anglo’s case: the cancer would have got it eventually, but the primary cause of death was cardiac arrest.”

Simon Carswell’s account of the decline and fall of Anglo Irish Bank, Anglo Republic was published by Penguin in the first week of September 2011. I suspect I am not the only book blogger to have pre-ordered a copy and I have been reading it compulsively over the last few days. It’s a well-written and coherent account of the amazing growth of Anglo, how difficulties began to emerge, the escalation of those difficulties, the response of the bank’s senior management and board, the  with other banks, the involvement of the State, and the impact on the Irish economy. Even though much of the story is familiar because of the extensive coverage Anglo has received over the last several years, Carswell brings new insights not just to what happened but to how and why some of it happened.

If Tom Lyons and Brian Carey gave us Sean Fitzpatrick’s perspective in The Fitzpatrick Tapes  published by Penguin earlier this year,  Carwell gives us another angle. He has clearly had access to extensive material and the book is rich in detail. He also cites some stories by other journalists including this report of an interview David Drumm gave the Sunday Independent in October 2010.

Anglo Republic runs to 352 pages. Despite the level of detail it is a pacy read and page turner. A Kindle edition is also available.

Extracts were published in The Irish Times on Saturday 3 September and Monday 5 September 2011.

: BUSINESS, Simon Carswell