Life’s Weirder Than Fiction

My friend Stephe over at Dynastic Queen, pointed to this Newsweek article about a Kids’ Book on Plastic Surgery, designed to answer children’s question about their mother’s plastic surgery.

Naturally, it has a happy ending: mommy winds up “even more” beautiful than before, and her daughter is thrilled.

My reaction is as strong as Stephe’s, especially after having gone through some of the picture book: a slack-jawed amazement at how far we’ve come to prize the shell we live with and our willingness to pass on that message to children.

My next reaction was: give me a break. You need a book to tell your child you’ve had you nose done? How about a little one-on-one talk? Is spending time talking to your child gone out the window as well?

Tags: books, plastic surgery, Publishing, reading

Way in the beginning when I was first published –my, how time flies– you could read my book only as an ebook. I’d always been a proponent of the medium, but the number of ebooks available, in formats I could read on my Palm Pilot, were scarce.

Today, it’s not the case, especially with e-ink technology, which is used by the Sony Reader and Kindle. There also have been many projects over the year to make available most of the classics online for anybody to read. These, of course, are one way or the other, copyright-free. The site below has put together a list of online sites where you can find free ebooks for download. The site has a scholastic goal, but I like the fact that they’ve added a site for children’s stories and poems, which are usually difficult to find. Some sites such as fictionwise.com and eReader offer only a limited number of free ebooks but offer a bookstore of tens of thousands of great books, including current best-sellers. Fictionwise.com has all the available formats (and carries my own books, of course!)

List of Online Archives for Free Unabridged Books Online

Tags: e-books, ebooks, electronic medium, Kindle, Publishing, Sony Reader, technology