Old SciFi

In my hunting around for free eBooks I came across a few golden oldies. It struck me that I've never actually read "The War Of The Worlds". It's a short book (the ebook size is something like 1/5 of the size of "Shadow Of Saganami"; 251Kbyte vs 1306Kbyte). And, wow, have writing styles changed! It took a while to get used to the pace of the book. In writing style it reminded me a lot of "The Day Of The Triffids" (John Wyndham). But that could just be my memory playing tricks. A lot of first person narrative and exposition. The action feels a step removed as a result. And, wow, does the book show its age. A fascinating look into the attitudes and standards of people 100 years ago.

Next up; 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I know I had this on my bookshelf as a kid, but I'm not sure I ever read it.

Cybook 3 update

I'm getting used to this as a reading method. It's a little awkward at night because the screen is slightly reflective and so the bedside lamp causes a reflection. But I'm getting used to it. Battery life is an oddity. As an experiment I disabled the "auto off" feature, so it was on permanently. Over a 24 hour period the battery dropped by around 20%. That's not so good. That'd be approx 5 days of life if left permanent on. I reset it to 15 minute idle auto-off and recharged it Sunday. Since then I've read about 6 or 7 hours and the battery life indicator is still at 100%. So I think it's very possible this machine could easily last a week of my regular commute and night-time reading between charges. Maybe longer. I'm going to see how long it takes for battery life to drop an appreciable amount. Typically when I change trains I

In the cold, the Cybook is quite slow at page turning. Whether this is eInk technology running slow at colder temperatures, or something else I'm not sure. But it's definitely slower in freezing temperatures.

And that leads to my biggest worry; damage. Physical books can be used in almost any environment (temperature, humidity etc) that I'm likely to be in (excluding actual precipitation, of course). The ebook reader? Not so sure. It's always in my mind that I've got a $400 piece of electronics in my pocket, rather an $8 bunch of paper.