Saturday, March 5, 2011

I got my Nook - the first book I bought? I Beat The Odds by Michael Oher

I've been wanting a Nook or a Kindle for a long time now, and after doing some research, I settled on getting a Nook. I got the Nook because I can add a memory card to it and expand the number of books it will hold (and if I have more memory cards, that means even more books). My main reasons for wanting an e-book reader are that I just don't have the room for all the physical books I'd like to read, and when we travel, I can't carry enough books to read with me. The Nook solves both of those problems. Since I also have the Nook reader on my computer, and my computer has a 750GB hard drive, I can store thousands of books on it and transfer them to the Nook, take the Nook with me, and I have a portable library (and it doesn't take up nearly as much room as bookshelves full of books do).
The only drawback I have is that you don't get a physical manual with the Nook, it's loaded on the Nook itself. Not very conducive to learning how to use your Nook when you're trying to read the manual on the Nook and operate it at the same time. I solved that problem by going to Barnes and Noble and downloading the manual to my computer so I can bring up the manual on my pc and read it while I'm figuring out what I need to do on the Nook. Works for me.
I've heard some people say that the Nook doesn't turn the pages fast enough for them, but I haven't had a problem with that. And the charge lasts through a couple days of steady reading. What I really like is that the USB cable that came with it has an adapter that can be plugged into a wall outlet for charging (plug the USB cable into the Nook and into the adapter and plug the adapter into a wall outlet and voila! you're charging your Nook). The covers for the Nook on Barnes & Noble seem a little spendy to me ($29.95 is the cheapest one, and I haven't seen one I like yet). I think I've figured out a way to make my own cover for it, padded and out of fabric I like, so I'm going to do that.
One thing I found out is that any books you have in your library on the Nook have to be downloaded in order to read them. I had downloaded the Nook e-books off my computer on to the Nook, and had only downloaded one to read. When I was done with it, I wanted to read another one, and couldn't. This was because I was at my son's house, didn't have access to the internet, and couldn't download anything without internet access. So I had to wait until I got home and could access our internet connection to download another book (I downloaded all 6 books I had on there so that I can read any one of them or all of them without having to download them one after another).
Anyway, DH and I had seen the movie, The Blind Side, and I had seen on B&N where Michael Oher had written a book about his experiences and how he got out of the ghetto. I was curious to see how faithful the movie was to his real life, so I bought the e-book. Now, I know that movies take poetic license with the truth in order to make things more dramatic/interesting for the audience, but that movie did a real disservice to Mr Oher. It made him out to be a lot dumber than he really is, and that he didn't know much about football when he started playing it. He wasn't dumb, he just didn't have many teachers who cared enough to teach him the study skills he needed to succeed, nor did they really care if they taught him at all (he did have a couple of teachers who cared, but out of all the teachers he had before he got to high school, that wasn't near enough to help him). And he had studied football for years, from the time he was 7 years old, because he knew that sports and education was the only way he was going to get out of the ghetto and be able to make something of himself. He worked hard to find people who could help him do the things he needed to do, and for a kid who didn't have any positive role models in his family, that's impressive (he was one of 12 kids, had 5 older brothers, 3 younger brothers and 3 younger sisters).
I read this book in one sitting, and if you've seen the movie about Michael Oher, I highly recommend that you read his book. You'll come away with a whole new perspective on him. I know I did.

6 comments:

  1. I keep going back and forth on buying an eReader. I really love having an actual book, but I'm sure that's at least part just liking what I know. I also like buying books cheaply and eBooks are sometimes a little spendy. But then there are deals. (See what I do? Talk myself in, then talk myself out!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, I Beat the Odds was cheaper as an e-book than it was in hardback, even in hardback at Wal-Mart, which is usually cheaper on books than anywhere else. And Barnes & Noble has free e-books every Friday. Granted, they aren't always books I'm interested in reading, but I've been looking at the e-book titles and there are a lot of books I'd like to have that are less than $3. Can't buy a new paperback for that, and can't even buy a used one for that on amazon.com when you add in shipping. And our library system loans e-books on the Nook, which is another plus for having one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What other books/authors are you into?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alexfromphilly - I just went to google books and downloaded 41 free ebooks - everything from Sherlock Holmes to Edgar Allen Poe to Robinson Crusoe, Ivanhoe, The Man in the Iron Mask, and books by Albert Payson Terhune and Thornton W Burgess (most of those are books I read when I was in grade school/jr high/high school). I read a lot of science fiction/fantasy - anything from Piers Anthony to Roger Zelazny, horror by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, John Saul, stuff by James Patterson, and then there's the supernatural stuff by various authors (Christine Feehan, Lyndsay Sands, Laurell Hamilton, the Mercy Thompson series, the Sookie Stackhouse series, etc). Right now, I'm reading A Modern Legionary by John Patrick Le Poer, about an Irish lad who lies about his age and joins the French Foreign Legion at 16 (he runs away from school/home in Ireland to France).
    I tend to check out the first chapter or first few lines of a book and if it draws me in, then I'll read it, no matter what it's about. I've ended up reading a lot of books that I thought were good but other people didn't care much for (but then, I'm a bookworm and have a bad habit of being interested in just about everything).

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Vesta if you love supernatural stories, I highly recommend Dan Simmons' Summer Of Night. He's phenomenal.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Alexfromphilly - Damn, another author to add to my long list of authors........lol

    ReplyDelete

Comment moderation is enabled. If you're a troll and trying to slander someone or just being generally an asshat, your comment probably won't see the light of day. If you want to have a reasonable, civil discussion, welcome, and feel free to comment.
To the troll at IP: 70.242.65.196 , adsl-70-242-65-196.dsl.stlsmo.swbell.net, your comments will not be published, nor will they be read. They will be automatically deleted. Get a life, sad sack.