Johnny 505: the Test-Drive Conclusion

I just got an email from one of my fellow test-drivers about whether or not I will be keeping Johnny 505. This was my reply:


"After all my bluster about the ereader market being outrageous I still ended up keeping mine. I thought about holding out for one of the new ones with wireless and all that, but I like task specific gadgets. Especially when it comes to reading.

When it came down to it, the convenience of having 100+ books at my fingertips - be I at work, commuting, or just lying in bed - was the main draw for me. While I will continue to purchase paper copies of books I truly enjoy (I don't want to end up the technological age equivalent of the gentleman from Twilight Zone's "Time Enough at Last"), most of my "looking for something to read" purchases will be done for my Sony505."

Kiss Me Deadly Review

So all the books I used my Harlequinn giftcard on have either been reviewed on SBTB already (hi Victoria Dahl!) or were purchased by people who are funnier than me and say they are going to review them (Blaze Historical Bundle, you are in safe hands, I swear). Instead, I chose one of the free Harlequinns that is out right now, a Nocturne called Kiss Me Deadly. It has vampires. I freely admit the last vampire book I read was Twilight (if that even counts). It’s really not going to take much to impress me here.

Kiss Me Deadly
Michelle Hauf
Harlequin Nocturne
Romance: Contemporary
Grade: C+

Our story starts with Nikolaus Drake who is a vampire. I’d love to say Nikolaus was a centuries old semi-human monstrosity but a) he’s the hero, and b) he was turned in like the seventies or something. Which so does not explain how he came by a name like “Nikolaus”. Anyway, Nikolaus is killed by a witch before the story even begins.

It’s okay, he gets better.

Here’s the crux of the story – a witch’s blood is the equivalent of Alien blood to vampires. If so much as a drop touches them they are ever so painfully toast. This makes vampires and witches natural enemies. It’s like the Montagues and Capulets, but with poison blood. When Ravin Crosse – witch – fires a blood bomb into Nik’s clan, things get slightly uncomfortable and lots of vamps die [Note: Nikolaus’ clan name is the Kila, which I imagine is meant to be pronounced as a variation of kilo. If, however, you are like me, you will pronounce it “Killah” which is both hilarious and not the least bit subtle if it was intentional.] Anyway, Nik survives his blood bombing by chowing down on a buddy and vows REVENGE (and this is total all caps revenge, you can tell) on the witch. When he arrives to exact his REVENGE she has just finished a love potion. And would you look at that... hijinks ensue.

He’s in love with her! She spits blood on him! He’s immune to her now! And lurves her! She assures him it’s fake! He doesn’t care! Vampires murdered her family two hundred years ago (whoa, way to be a cougar there hun)! Not all vampires are bad! Yes they are! No they’re not! (This goes on for a while, longer than I thought was necessary at least.)

I know what I’d do if a hunky vampire showed up in love with me, but Ravin has vampire issues and way more self-control than me. So while I sat on the sidelines shouting “Ride him cowgirl!” she takes nearly a hundred e-pages to reach the same conclusion.


As to why she had a love spell just lying around... Ravin made a pact with the Devil (dun-dun-DUN!) and one of her three tasks is to make the love potion. Only he can release the vamp from it. This is in no way becomes a plot point and the Devil (dun-dun-DUN!) immediately releases the vampire from the spell.


What? You’ve actually read a book before? Okay, how’s this... the Devil (dun-dun-DUN!) releases the vamp at the most inopportune time possible – right after Ravin proclaims herself in love with Nikolaus.

Dear Ravin (and to a lesser extent all heroes/heroines who fall in love with someone while the are under a spell or amnesiac),

Falling in love with a person who is not themselves at the moment is not a good idea. I cannot stress this enough. I don’t care how perfect they are, they are for all intents and purposes either brain-damaged or drugged – pick one. DO NOT make a pass at this person. It’s a gross abuse of trust, I don’t care who you are. (Okay, if you knew the person beforehand you might get a pass on this one but I’m going to want to know why it takes brain damage to make you make a move). When people regain their sense of self they’re going to have a lot to deal with, they don’t need your sorry ass hanging around.

So why on god’s green earth, Ravin, did you think a vampire sworn to REVENGE was going to harbour warm fuzzies when he regained himself? You told him and yourself it was a bad idea! And guess what?

It was a bad idea!

Okay, where was I? Anyway, when Nikolaus gets his memory back there are many hard feelings (not like that). While he was away screwing a witch, Truvin (Really? Truvin? We’re just making names up now? Okay, whatever, Truvin) has taken over clan Killah and turned them back to eating peoples. Every vampire ever is apparently some variation on ‘vegetarian’ when it comes to eating people. I call ‘em like I see ‘em y’all.

Anyway, Truvin does bad things to Gabriel (Gabriel who? I don’t know either) a vampire friend of Nik’s. When Nik gets all righteous fury on his ass, Truvin kidnaps Ravin, oh noes! and threatens to kill her. Then werewolves (Werewolves? Just roll with it at this point, serious) show up and kick some peoples asses – but not Nik’s cause he’s a phoenix now with all the witchy blood and sex in him and can totally walk in sunlight and everything.

Also, there is a first-born child subplot that seemed extraneous but maybe we’re setting up a sequel I don’t know, and the Devil (dun-dun-DUN) is around a bit more.

...and it was the best vampire novel beginning with eating a friend’s corpse and ending with werewolves prancing into the sunrise I ever did read.

Honest, in the Venn diagram of ‘Things I Like to Read’ and ‘Things I got from Harlequin”, this book does not make the overlap. It wasn’t bad, per se – it just wasn’t good. I can find no fault with the writing, and while the dialogue sounded like a broken record (“I love you!” “No you don’t!” “Yes I do!” “No you don’t!”), there is nothing I can put my finger on as being wrong. I don’t know. It was so far outside the realm of things I like, I think the fact that I didn’t dislike it should probably be read as a ringing endorsement.



I’d read something else by Ms. Hauf. The world-building was pretty fantastic and I enjoyed living vicariously in the Minneapolis she created. I’d probably not want to hang out with those particular characters, but the world merits further exploration.

Final Review for Johnny 505

I read somewhere that the ancient Greeks had dozens of different words for types of love. There was brotherly love, romantic love, the love one feels for a battlefield comrade, etc. I’m not sure what the word is for the love one feels for an electronic reading device – but I’d bet it has ‘kos’ in it somewhere.

The reader does what it says on the box, and it does it (almost) perfectly. It’s easy to use, mostly intuitive, and very sleek and very very pretty. Actually, after the chorus of angels finished their refrain of ‘ah-ah-ah-ah-ah’ when the box was opened one alighted on my shoulder to mutter a cooing ‘aww...’. I’ve found I can read about a thousand pages worth of text before I lose the first bar. The final bar lasts right around that, maybe 850 pages. This is an easier way for me to gauge the battery than time as I tend to read during breaks, only 15-20 minutes at a time. The only reason it gets an (almost) perfect, rather than a perfect is that there is sometimes a significant lag when you ask it to turn a page. If I own a device that is meant to perform only one function, I want it to perform that function in a timely manner.

The Sony e-store software is very slow, but the interface is easy to use. It could be much better, and I look forward to a revamp when they release the new line of readers. However, if you are not running Windows, you are SOL in regards to your reader.

I made the switch back in July to Ubuntu which is a Linux based OS. Also, it’s awesome . The Sony e-library software is worse than useless on it however. The recommended alternative, Calibre, was supposed to be the best program for your reader evah! Instead, I got an obsessive, controlling, and manipulative program who wanted oversight over my every reading need. Not cool, Calibre, not cool.

I kind of wish there were a way to just go to a bookstore and wave my 505 in front of the book I wanted and voilà! It will be on it. That may take out some of the ‘convenience’ of it though. I don’t know. If I were smart enough to solve these problems I’d be a whole lot richer than I am.

The thing is... when I’m not trying to put books on it, buy ebooks, or deal with my 505 in relation to another piece of hardware – it’s the most amazing gadget I’ve ever had the pleasure to use. It’s so convenient and I cannot tell you how great it is to be able to change books in the middle of a workday because the first lost my attention. The reader just lives in my purse, holding all the wonders of the world.

If all of the problems I have with the actual ownership of the reader were overcome (starting with the price, good god!) I would gladly purchase three of these. I’d be the coolest nerd in the archaeology department, not a difficult title to hold actually. As it is, I shall yearn for the days I can justify owning one as it is still definitely a luxury good and my student loans think I’m an idiot for even considering shelling out the moolah for something I don’t really need.

But man oh man, I want.

Update 29 Sept 2009: As I am not taking out a loan for my MSc (as I'm not doing my MSc), I went ahead and bought Johnny. Save 20k, spend a hundred bucks. not a bad trade. Insert picture of us running through fields of wildflowers here.

The Brass Bed Review

{So here’s what happened. For my Sony test-driving requirement I have to review a Harlequin romance. I wrote the following review, then realised it was a Random House romance I picked up for free. So... my bad. But here it is anyway.}

The Brass Bed
Jennifer Stevenson
Random House
Fantasy

Grade: D+

So in the first few pages of The Brass Bed we are introduced to the idea that there is magic in these here worldly waters. The sky is developing some sort of pink haze/fog and pigeons are smoking cigarettes. Why? I do not know. Me of the future, having finished the book, is there a reason the pigeons are puffing up? No, although the pink fog is caused by road rage and occasionally eats people. So there’s that.

Our main character, Jewel Heiss, has been sent by her not-quite-a-cop boss to follow his wife whom he suspect has been knocking boots with a certain someone (and while he himself has had numerous affairs, pity the wife who does the same). This particular someone is also charging the wife $350 a pop that she’s putting on her credit card as a ‘sex therapist’. Seriously? This is the crack criminal mind that Jewel has been sent to decipher? After telling us that the wife can be “slippery as pup shit”, Jewel then gets her to confess to having mind-blowing sex every time she sees him within two paragraphs.

Then, under some sort of misguided attempt to bring the man in on fraud charges, Jewel ends up in the ‘sex therapist’s’ office where she falls asleep on the large brass bed that the wife has had her ‘experiences’ on. She even thinks to herself that the wife was there not two hours before. And yet, she still lies down.

Our girl is as dumb as a box of rocks.

She does, however, have mind-blowing sex with a swan. In a dream. And while my kink flag flies high, there was nothing the least bit sexy about this scene. Come on, if she’s going to have sex with a swan at least let me get turned on by it!

~ahem~ Uh, where was I?

So, the world moves on. It turns out there is an incubus trapped in the bed until he satisfies one hundred women. Jewel is lucky customer one hundred.

A genie shows up but in typical genie fashion grants your wish in the most cumbersome way possible. The incubus living in the bed gets lost, then found. Jewel starts to fall for the sex therapist. If this seems to be going by fast it’s because so little of it was worth remembering and I don’t want to re-read. Also, very little was worth remembering

Jewel, in the style of cop stories everywhere, gets suspended. Mostly over the whole genie thing. The wife steals the bed which her husband proceeds to destroy. In the interim, she and the hubby make-up before the pink fog can eat them. The bed destroying causes the incubus to take shelter in the backseat of a nearby car where Jewel hops in to have a conspicuous orgasm so that she might again free him..

I could not make this up. Well, I could... but I beg leave to think I could have written it better.

The sex therapist is involved in all of this in a totally contrived way and ends up her partner in the ‘hinky’ division which is exactly half as fun as it sounds. In the meantime, sex therapist is slightly pursuing her for reasons surpassing all human understanding and incubus has to actually love before he is allowed to be free. Maybe.

~deep breath~

And that’s where I quit caring. (Actually I quit caring long before then, but as I thought I was reading this for a review, I powered on.)

None of this is really solved at the end, which promises a sequel The Velvet Chair. I will not be purchasing said book. I can see the wisdom behind releasing the first in series for free. Karen Marie Moning sucked me in with Darkfever and I’ve read what there is of the series twice since in two weeks. But you are no KMM Ms. Stevenson. I appreciate the effort, but yours is a name I will avoid until informed otherwise.

Calibre

[Click to embiggen]

Here's what I want from a program. To do what I want it to do and not a bit more. I keep my computer's records immaculate. Everything on my computer is labeled, cross-referenced and categorised. My life may be a mess, but my computer knows where it's at. I do not need for you to take over my book collection. I can do that myself Calibre.

Do not offer to erase everything from my computer just because I want to erase it from your database. I do not need you to run my life or to arrange it for me.

I do not need this Calibre! I'm sure that deep down you're a very nice program, but you're coming across a little manipulative and creepy. If you were my library boyfriend you'd be Edward from Twilight.

J:505

So Calibre... Calibre... I cannot use the Sony software on my Ubuntu laptop. They do not mix (see the previous J:505 comic). As an alternative, there is this amazing "amazing" software called Calibre that does the work of ten Sony stores, plus two!

I have more to say about Calibre, but I'm going to leave it for the next comic because... well... you'll see. That comic is drawn, but the file got corrupted. Should be up tomorrow.

Walkin' on Sunshine (oh-oh-oh)

I had such dreams of a Lovelace/Johnny 505 pairing. I was prepared to ship Ubuntu/Sony.

My dreams are crushed.

J:505

So... I just got a new laptop. I love my new laptop. My new laptop is named Lovelace.

Johnny 505 does not love my new laptop.

My new laptop has no idea what this strange thing plugged into it is.

(Click to embiggen, it's hard to read at this size)

Based on how other Smart Bitches have handled operating systems outside of Windows, I know how to fix this...

I think.

Johnny and I go to the Beach

So... my pale self and I decided that a trip to the beachfront was in order. No, I don't know why I felt that sunny California and my lily white skin would be a good combination. It is a family vacation, my brother and I are flying in to see Mom, I had no choice really. And there are worse things in life than staying on Sunset Island, a three minute walk from the ocean.

Anyways, further updates about my vacation (and the fact that SPF50 is a freakin' lie) will be forthcoming. But for the moment, let me tell you about Johnny on the beach.

To start, all I brought was the ereader. No cables, no computer to hook it up to, just the ereader. So if the batteries go, I’m totally screwed. I will say that I did not take into account that on my vacation I might be required to interact with family and thus, not actually a whole lot of time for reading. I promise, Johnny, I will pull myself away from the Wii and play with you soon.

I had thought that sand and sun would be a problem, and sand definitely is. Or would be if I took him out of his protective zip-lock condom. I have sand in places I didn’t even know I had. I’m also a little afraid to open the condom as there is a string of sand along the seam that will not go away. Yet lo unto those who leave their reader out in the sun. Turned on. It shall burn the letters into the screen, which was not cool at all. Luckily, I didn’t leave it for very long so by futzing a bit with a few pages and turning it on and off a couple of times I managed to get rid of the after image. But don’t be me people, the cover is a wonderful and useful device that should by applied at all times.

[Afternote: So, dumb me, I never even tried the following. I put the cover on while the ereader was in the zip-lock. Worked like a charm. Ereader safe and secure, with cover. We are go for beach, I repeat we are go for beach.]

You can lag it up your...

Here is how I (am forced to) read on the Sony. When I get to the last line on the page, I hit the page turn button. Around the time I’ve finished the page is about the time the page actually turns. This is especially annoying as I’m only viewing one page at a time and thus run into this problem every fifteen seconds or so.

Why is this happening? It’s not like my laptop, which does god only knows what in the background while I work. You have one function Johnny. Sometimes, the lag is so long I question whether I hit the button and hit it again, thus skipping a page when Johnny 505 finally rouses himself from his stupor. I know I have an older model ereader. I know that my computer is slow thus the lag in the Sony estore, while frustrating, is understandable.

But when you are acting on your own, you should not have processing problems! You are performing one job! If my book is boring you hum or something, don’t play solitaire in the background and eat up the processing power. Johnny 505! I am talking to you young man ereader!

On a slightly brighter note, I used Johnny nearly a week before he lost a single bar on his battery indicator. So that’s cool…

But it does not let you off the hook for the page-turn lag sir! Don’t sass me! Go to your room!

If I kill someone over this, I'm going to blame the entire collection of Smart Bitches.

Also see the origin of Johnny 505, the second comic, and some text-based Sony eReader observations.

RTFM

Text-based Johnny 505 observations:

The Sony readers are apparently not the easiest thing to set up. Besides the completely awful layout of the paper instructions (serious, it's like a meter square), they were misleading. Several people who have attempted to set up their test driving e-readers have had trouble.

I didn't read them. I don't read manuals until something goes wrong. Sometimes this has led me into trouble. (Remind me to tell you the story of the day I got HAL's new internal DVD drive) Most times, and with most of today's technology, you can plug in and go. That actually really impressed me with Johnny. Plugged him in, loaded the software, and away we went.

Now the software. The ebook Library software sucks so hard. It's slow, which may be HAL's fault - he is six years old poor guy which is like 114 in people years, and there is no intuitive way to back-navigate. While I can get to where I want to go, when I want to go where I've been I run into roadblocks. There is a back button, but it applies to the entire program. So if, say, I click between the store and my reader, when I go back to the store the back button takes me to my reader, rather than where I was in the store. Some people are using Calibre software, and I shall be looking into this. But for the moment, and in the spirit of the test-drive, I'd rather use the software Sony gives us for a while first.

And hey, there should be way of marking books on your reader you have read. When I'm at work looking throught the library for something to read, I'd like to bypass to things I have yet to read. Or books I started and didn't finish.

Also, while I do have bad eyesight, my reading vision is 20/20. Yet I still have to zoom in at least once to comfortably read. You only get three options and the ones that are truly comfortable mean that you have to click through to the next page every few sentences. With the page-turn lag on the reader, this is annoying as all hell.

Still, these are mostly nitpicks that would make my experience better but aren't necessarily dealbreakers for me. I'm still desperately in love with Johnny.

For further Sony 505 lovin', see J:505 comic number one and two.

J:505

For those of you who don't use the Sony ebook store, those swirly arrows spell doom. They are the 'waiting' symbol the store uses and I feel like I spend a goodly portion of my day looking at them spin and spin and spin...

They mock me.

But Johnny rocks nevertheless. My paper books are going to stage a coup d'etat.

Go to SBTB now. You too may win awesome things.

But mine will be awesomer.

Why Smart Bitches *Rock*

So let me tell you what’s up with me. A couple of weeks ago, my first favourite blog decided to do a ‘lendaway’. It wasn’t really a giveaway because we don’t get to keep what we were given. They called it a ‘test drive’.

Of what, you may ask? Oh my dear gentle reader, a Sony 505. It's an e-reader. You know how you never realise how wrong things are in your life until they go right? This experience has been totally like that,

[click image to embiggen]

(No, that wasn’t artistic exaggeration, angels actually did sing when I opened the box. Serious.)

Yes, I have, currently in my possession a Sony 505. And it is awesome. I’ve only had it like eight hours (six of those I spent at work), and I can still say without qualification, it is awesome. I started reading The Patchwork Girl of Oz at work because a) I read ‘Skin Horse’ and wanted some background for Unity* and b) I totally cleaned out the selection of free books the Sony store offers. Rock on.

Check out Smart Bitches, Trashy Books [also in the sidebar] if you get a chance, and check back with me for further J:505 adventures. (Yes, I did name it Johnny 505 so I could make a 'Johnny 5 is alive' joke at some point in the future. Hush.)

To the Smart Bitches themselves, you rock so fully. I love you so much.

*If you don’t know what that means, see ‘Webcomics you should be reading’ on the sidebar