March Madness of Literature

I’m loving it, Powell’s Books and The Morning News have a March Madness complete with Brackets for books.

“The Tournament of Books is an annual battle royale between 16 of the best novels published in the previous year.”

 Quick, they’re already in the Semi-finals. Commentaries are great, 2666 just lost in the semis. Can’t say that I’m surprised.  Books often described with the word “epic” are usually bad news.

Speaking of madness, there’s the Kindle 2. I still think $359.00 is too much and you still have to buy the books. No leaving this baby on the airplane, or dropping it into the tub. Even if the Kindle books are cheaper than the actual hardback, most of the prices I saw for the new books were around $10.00 or I guess I should say $9.99. Reviewers still say color illustrations are bad, and the screens aren’t big enough. I also read you can have it switch to audio and it will read the text to you. I suspect not nearly as nicely as audiobooks.

It  might be nice not to lug around several books in the airport (in case you finish one and need another), but since I usually take used books on the plane and can jettison them when done I don’t think the Amazon Kindle 2 would be any help. And it’s nice to pass along the book to the next person who might be desperately looking for something to read. I wonder how durable they are, will the batteries wear out in record time, will the screens go black, what’s the self life of these new books online?

What does everyone else think? I’ll have to take your word for it because the purchase price isn’t in my budget these days.

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