Doc: A Novel, by Mary Doria Russell--Review

Random House, ISBN 9781400068043, May 2011

This novel is a rather different look at the life of John Henry "Doc" Holliday, famous (or infamous) friend and ally of the famous (or infamous) Earp brothers. The shootout at the OK Corral is epilogue, not centerpiece. After telling the tale of Holliday's upbringing in Georgia and his education as a dentist on the recommendation of his doctor uncle, who felt that medicine was becoming the realm of quackery while dentistry was becoming ever more scientific, the book focuses on what is presented as his one happy summer as an adult: the summer he met the Earp brothers in Dodge City, Kansas.

The new-minted dentist John Henry Holliday begins a promising young practice in Atlanta, but before too long comes to the painful realization that he's suffering from the same consumption (tuberculosis) that killed his mother. His uncle, Doctor Holliday, recommends that he move to the hot, dry southwest, and helps him locate a practice to join in Texas. All is well for a few, brief months--and then the Panic of 1873 happens. The dental practice can barely support its owner, and Holliday is out of a job. He gradually starts to support himself by gambling, and after a few years of sinking deeper and deeper into this life, he meets Kate Haroney, a smart, educated, former minor aristocrat who lost her entire family and position and is now supporting herself as a whore.

This is a partnership that will last, off and on, for the next decade, and it's also what brings Doc Holliday to Dodge City, where he meets the Earp brothers. And this is the meat of the story that Russell is telling, the story of the summer when Doc thought consumption might be loosening its grip on him, starts up a dental practice again, and forges a friendship with the Earp brothers, especially Morgan and Wyatt. It's the summer when Morgan and Wyatt get a painful education in politics, and the summer that another figure who will someday be famous, Bat Masterson, is also in Dodge and starting to fabricate the stories that will be the cornerstone of his fame. Russell gets us convincingly inside these heads, especially Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, and builds a compelling account of how and why they made the choices that led them to that fateful thirty seconds in the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. We also see the beginning of Bat Masterson's myth-making about them, especially Doc Holliday, and the great distance between reality and myth in the story of Holliday's career as gambler and gunslinger.

One of the most touching strands in this story is Holliday's commitment to the positive good that professional dentistry can make in people's lives, freeing them from pain, even while it's clear to him that he'll never support himself with dentistry. In fact, it's his gambling that enables him to support his dentistry. Another, almost equally touching thread is Wyatt's rehabilitation of the horse Dick Naylor.

While there are gunfights and brawls in Doc, this is not a story of western gunslinging derring-do. This is a thoughtful and compelling look at some major icons of the American west, before they were famous and when they never expected that a gunfight would become the central event of their lives.

Highly recommended.

I received a free galley of this book for review from the publisher.

Ashfall, by Mike Mullin--A Review

Tanglewood, ISBN 9781933718552, October 2011

Alex Halprin is a few weeks away from his sixteenth birthday when, somewhat to his surprise, his mother agrees to let him stay home alone in Cedar Falls, Iowa, while his parents and his sister Rebecca head off for the annual summer visit to his uncle's farm in Warren, Illinois. The delightful sense of freedom only lasts a few hours, though, before an impossibly loud noise starts up, and something crashes into his house, and he's trapped under his desk while fire creeps closer and closer. He manages to dig his way out, and then is taken in by Darren and Joe, a neighboring couple whose home is, so far, undamaged.

The sky is dark. The deafeningly loud noise does not stop. Ash is falling from the sky. And the power, phones, and water are out. On a battery-powered radio, they mostly get static, but pick up bits and pieces of emergency broadcasts.

The Yellowstone supervolcano has erupted.

They huddle inside for several days, eating salad for every meal to use up the perishables first, and stuffing their ears with tissue and wearing headphones to shut out the noise and protect their hearing. Then looters break into the house, and during the fight Darren pulls out a gun and shoots all three of the intruders. Alex is shocked and horrified, and flees back to his own uninhabitable house. He decides he has to head for his uncle's farm in Illinois, and find his parents and sister. He salvages what equipment and supplies he can from the unburned portions of the house, and sets out on foot.

For the remainder of the book, we follow Alex's adventures and struggle to survive in a world turned suddenly stark and lifeless. He meets some people willing to give him a night's shelter and a meal once they know he's not a looter, and other people only too willing to kill him and take what little he has. And when he's out of water and hasn't had food in two days, he collapses in the barn of the Edmund farm. It's an interlude of peace, safety, and recovery--and then disaster strikes again, and Alex and Darla Edmund set out on a new round of travel, struggle, and survival in a wrecked landscape with almost nothing in the way of functioning society and government, with conditions improving only very slowly as they move eastward--and the remnant of the national government they find is one of the challenges they have to survive. They both have to learn new skills, learn to trust and rely on each other, and figure out how to remain civilized human beings in the face of the catastrophe and collapse all around them.

In some ways, Ashfall is reminiscent of the post-Apocalypse survival novels that were popular twenty years ago. It feels more grounded in reality, though, in part because Mike Mullin has worked hard at grounding the depiction of the effects of a supervolcano eruption in what scientists know and theorize about them, while also remaining grounded in a realistic but not unduly negative view of human nature. There's no magic, unexpected technology, and Darla is scary-smart but not more so than some people I've really known--and she's not without her own weaknesses and insecurities. Alex finds a toughness in himself that he hadn't expected, but which, again, isn't superhuman. These are real teenagers, dealing with horrific challenges. They're not saving the world; they're just making their little piece of it a little bit more habitable.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected when I started reading.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea With Ocean Experts, by Ellen Prager--A Review

University of Chicago Press, ISBN 9780226678719, May 2009

Prager has a noble purpose in this book: to convey the excitement and adventure of doing science, and specifically of doing ocean science fieldwork, through telling the stories of the experiences of ocean-going scientists. To a fair degree she succeeds, but not entirely. This feels more like a collection of anecdotes than a collection of stories--but some of them are, no question, great anecdotes! I'm reminded of Randy Olson's Don't Be Such a Scientist, in the sense that I would wonder if she had read it, and were working at applying his advice, except that her book was published first.

The book is arranged in thematic chapters, highlighting the challenges of ocean-going shipboard research, diving in coastal waters, the effects of weather in making hay of the best-laid plans, the benefits of serendipity and of direct observation in making critical discoveries that would elude remote observation using  ROVs and AUVs (remotely-operated vessels and autonomous underwater vessels)  to do deep ocean exploration and research, the joys and challenges of life in underwater habitats, and the sheer delight and wonder of seeing the undersea world first-hand.

Prager was previously the chief scientist for the Aquarius Reef Base program in Key Largo, Florida, which includes what is currently the world's only undersea research station. Some of her best tales include the challenges, dangers, and rewards of living in an undersea research station, able to dive and do active research for eight or nine hours a day. She also shares her own and other scientists' stories of surviving dangerous weather at sea on the ocean-going research ships of the Sea Education Association--hurricanes, waterspouts, sudden squalls, and even an encounter with pirates. There's a disarming honesty about the role played by simply human mistakes and errors in judgment in contributing to dangerous situations, as well as human ingenuity in surviving the dangers and recovering and doing useful research anyway. She seems to take a special glee in describing her own early experiences, including her own mistakes that sometimes placed herself and others in danger. Prager learned the hard way to check everything twice, including whether or not colleagues had actually done their part in the preparations.

On the other hand, she also learned the joy of making unexpected discoveries for herself, whether or not those discoveries proved to be ones that would move the science forward in a big way, and she talks about her passion for sharing that joy with students who may yet become scientists themselves. This is one of the two major things Prager is seeking to convey in this book: the joy, delight, and pure satisfaction of doing real fieldwork at sea.

The other major point she wants to convey is the importance of real fieldwork, the vital necessity of doing direct fieldwork to build a real understanding of the ocean that is three-quarters of the surface of our planet, a major source of both food and weather affecting us all. She and her colleagues are deeply worried about what essential knowledge we might miss, if the difficulties, expense, and dangers of underwater fieldwork cause us to cease doing it, and she returns again and again to this issue.

Recommended despite my reservations.

I received this ebook as a free download from the University of Chicago Press.

Escape Artist: An Edna Ferber Mystery, by Ed Ifkovic--A Review

Poisoned Pen Press, ISBN 9781590588475, June 2011

It's 1904, and nineteen-year-old Edna Ferber is working as a "girl reporter" for the Appleton Daily Crescent, in the small Wisconsin town of Appleton. She's frustrated by the trivial nature of the stories she gets to report, and indulges her imagination and creativity in making the stories she can report as vivid as possible. While the publisher, aging Civil War veteran Sam Ryan, likes Edna, the new City Room editor, Matthias Boon, does not, and believes that females have no place in the newsroom.

Then Appleton's homegrown international celebrity, Ehrich Weiss, better known as Harry Houdini, comes home for a visit. Through a combination of luck and initiative, Edna scores the interview that Houdini originally didn't intend to give to either local paper. Boon's hostility is ratcheted up even further. Meanwhile, Edna can't escape from the stresses at work by going home, because she's in near-constant constant conflict with her sister Fannie, and her mother Julia is resentful and angry over husband and father Jacob's blindness which has forced Julia to take over running the family store, My Store.

When a beautiful young German-American girl, Frana Lempke, disappears from the high school and is found dead two days later, Edna finds herself drawn into the investigation. She knows the school, she knows Frana and her friends, she knows everyone involved. And of course, she is filled with imagination and curiosity that won't let her let go of it. And the deeper she goes in her investigating, the more the tensions at home and at work increase and threaten to come to a crisis that will force her to make major life decisions--if she doesn't become the next victim.

The characters are all compellingly drawn, not least Edna Ferber herself. Ifkovic set himself a risky task, making his viewpoint character and protagonist a young woman who will herself be the most famous and successful woman novelist of the first half of the 20th century, and he's pulled it off. I believe in Edna, her family, co-workers, and friends, and the little midwestern town they live in. Escape Artist works both as mystery and as historical novel, and is a delight to read.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

The Goddess Test, by Aimee Carter--Review

HarlequinTEEN, ISBN 9780373210268, April 2011

Kate Winters' mother is dying, and wants to return from New York City, where Kate has lived her whole life, to her tiny home town of Eden. Kate, completely dedicated to her mother's welfare and having as much time with her as possible, takes her back.

Immediately, odd things start to happen. Some of them are "normal odd"; it's a small town, Kate's Mom is remembered, and surrounded by strangers, she finds everyone asking about her mother. She enrolls in the local high school for her senior year, and is quickly befriended by James, the local nerd, and earns the enmity of one of the very popular girls, Ava, by attracting the interest of her boyfriend Dylan, the school's football star.

Other oddities aren't quite so normal. On the way into town, Kate nearly hits a cow who simply appears in the road, and then has to swerve again to avoid a young man standing in the road--and then they are both gone. And then Ava tricks Kate into coming with her to an isolated estate, Eden Manor, and tries to abandon her there. When Ava jumps into the stream to swim out through a small gap in the hedge. she hits her head on a rock, and Kate, who is terrified of the water, nevertheless goes in and thankfully finds the stream shallow enough that she can reach her and pull her out. Unfortunately, Ava's skull has been crushed, and she's dead.

The young man that Kate thought she saw on road coming to Eden turns up while she's still dealing with the shock. His name is Henry, he owns Eden Manor, and he offers to save Ava's life, if Kate will give him what he wants. She hastily agrees to do whatever he wants, if Ava lives--and suddenly Ava is reviving. astonished and grateful that despite her nasty trick, Kate braved the water to save her.

What does Henry want? He tells Kate to read the story of Demeter, and she'll understand. She has until the fall equinox to decide.

Henry is Hades, God of the Dead, and his Queen, Persephone, chose to give up her immortality for a mortal lover, and has died. He can't rule alone, and needs a new Queen, or his fellow Olympians will replace him and he will fade.

But it's not as simple as Kate merely saying yes. There are seven tests, and she has to pass all of them. Henry has been looking for a new queen for a century, and every girl chosen has either failed one of the seven tests very quickly, or has been dead by Christmas. When Kate agrees, she's taking her life in her hands. Henry promises her more time with her dying mother, though, and she decides it's worth it.

And so Kate embarks on a very challenging and confusing experience, living in a not-this-world version of Eden Manor, surrounded by the Dead who are Hades' staff and servants, studying, not knowing when tests are coming or what they'll be like, and not knowing who is friend or foe. She enjoys dream-time with her mother in Central Park, and struggles in her waking hours with inexplicable hostility and suspect friendship, as well as mastering all the knowledge she'll need and the uncomfortable idea of, at the age of eighteen, becoming the wife of Hades for eternity. There are layers of deception she hasn't guessed at, and she has to peel them all back to pass the tests, survive attempts on her life, and have a chance of building a future.

This is a good, solid story, with interesting characters who are more complex than they appear at first, and all in all this book should please not only its intended young adult audience, but adults who don't require "adult" content in a story. Fair warning, though, it's the first of at least a trilogy, and while there's a complete story here, there's also a larger story arc to be continued in later books.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, by Tyler Cowen--Review

Penguin Group/Dutton, ISBN 9781101502242, February 2011

This is a long essay about what Tyler Cowen considers to be the real roots of our current economic and political frustrations: a stagnation in technological advances that started around 1970. This sounds counter-intuitive, but Cowen makes a good case for his approach.

Up until that point, America always had a great deal of what Cowen refers to as "low-hanging fruit": first, and for a very long time, land so abundant it was practically free. Europeans could come to America, stake their claim, work hard, and be substantially better off than they'd been in Europe. Next, the enormous technological advances of the 19th and first half of the 20th century--steam engines, trains, the telegraph, electricity, the telephone, the car, the airplane. Thirdly, large numbers of smart, uneducated people who could be educated and add tremendously to productivity. Technological advances and the expansion of education continued to make huge differences in the lives of nearly everyone, raising the standard of living and the available wealth dramatically in each generation.

But by the late sixties, there were fewer opportunities to continue making those dramatic advances. Most Americans are now being educated, and the gains to be made are incremental gains amongst the most challenged learners--students with language barriers, or learning disabilities, or who are from families that are economically disadvantaged, or broken or disrupted in ways that make the parents less available or less able to give the students a stable basis. Overcoming those obstacles and educating these students is important  and will benefit the economy as a whole as well as the individuals affected--but not nearly as dramatically as previous, more general advances in education. Technology also has had mostly incremental gains--better cars or better planes, medical gains now concentrated in care for the elderly and other marginal-gain areas. We'll all be glad for those advances when we are old, and they're important, but, again, not making dramatic changes in most people's everyday lives. There's no room for the dramatic advances in medicine and hygiene that took place through the first half of the 20th century.

Moreover, the largest parts of our economy now are government expenditures, medicine, and education, and two of the three should be very dynamic parts of our modern economy. They are, unfortunately, areas where real value, quality, and productivity are hard to measure effectively, and the market forces that control food prices or electronics prices simply aren't effective because of this.

As a result of all these trends, we have slow or stagnant growth, and a political system hampered by the frustrations of a population that is barely keeping even rather than experiencing the steadily rising standard of living of their parents and grandparents.

The one exception to this general picture of technological stagnation is the internet. Cowen discusses with great enthusiasm the advances connected to the internet, the ways in which they have dramatically changed and enhanced the lives of much of the population. By way of the internet, for the cost of a connection and the minor cost of electricity, we have access to information, education, entertainment, and contacts and friendships all over the world. It gives us access to opportunities to be happier, smarter, more fulfilled, without expenses we can't afford in the midst of our Great Stagnation.

And that in turn means that, while easing the pain of the economic slowdown, the internet also paradoxically makes it worse, because we're not spending the money to generate the more externally productive economic activity that's a vital part of reviving the economy.

All this sounds pretty grim, but in fact Cowen sees real prospects for a path out of our stagnation, for the creation of new "low-hanging fruit" that will make possible a return to dynamic growth, development, and human progress. If you have political opinions at all, whatever they are, you will disagree with some of what he says, but this is an essay grounded in fact and reality. Even if you don't in the end agree with Cowen's approach to a solution, you'll find yourself challenged to think by his discussion and analysis.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

A Turn in the Road, by Debbie Macomber--Review

Harlequin/Mira Books, ISBN 9780778329831, April 2011

It's been six years since Bethanne Hamlin's husband Grant divorced her to marry the younger, prettier, very ambitious Tiffany. To support herself and keep her two children in the house they'd grown up in, Bethanne started a party-planning business called Parties, and is now a successful businesswoman in her own right. When she learns that Grant, with his brief marriage to Tiffany long over, wants a reconciliation, she's thrown into turmoil.

Bethanne is still close to her ex-mother-in-law, Ruth, and when she learns Ruth is planning to drive cross-country from Seattle to Florida to attend her high school reunion, and is facing opposition from Grant and his sister Robin, she decides to join Ruth, and use the three weeks away from home (they will rent a car and fly back from Florida) to think over her relationship with Grant and what she wants for the future. When Bethanne's daughter Annie has a painful breakup with her boyfriend and decides to join them, the three women set off to see America.

Along the way, we learn that Ruth, also, has "man trouble." She's been a widow for several years, and has been thinking more and more about her high school sweetheart, whom she dumped in a painful manner almost fifty years ago. He's widowed too, and will be at the reunion...

The three women quickly abandon Ruth's carefully planned route with easy stages in favor of side trips and adventure. They work for a day in a diner run by an old friend of Ruth's, have their car break down, are rescued by a group of bikers, and spend a few days in Vegas--where Annie meets a cute new guy, and Bethanne finds herself attracted to Max, one of the bikers who rescued them. It's a development Ruth finds shocking and outrageous until she spends a lovely day with Max's friend, Rooster.

They all have a lot to learn about each other and themselves, Americana to see, and big decisions to make about their lives. This is a fun, warm, emotionally satisfying read.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Unearthed: A Blackpool Mystery, by Jordan Gray--Review

Harlequin/Mystery Case Files, ISBN 9780373837540, April 2011

This is apparently the fourth of four books, the adventures of Michael Graham, an English videogame designer, and his American wife Molly, in the small English coastal town of Blackpool. The backstory includes Molly having successfully campaigned to get redevelopment funds for Blackpool, and she's managing the project much more closely than she'd hoped to. They've also, unintentionally and not entirely happily, gotten involved in investigating some crime related to a local mystery, the missing treasure supposedly hidden somewhere in the area by Charles Crowe, a local businessman and illegal slave trader of the early 19th century. This has involved them with the local head of the police, Chief Inspector Paddington--and also, unfortunately, brought them to the attention of a very rough and violent gypsy clan currently in the area, the Draghicis, as well as Aleister Crowe, descendant of Charles, current owner of the Crowe estate, the Crowe's Nest, and quite a formidable and dangerous character in his own right.

As Unearthed opens, Michael is standing watch over the hospital bedside of his friend Rohan Wallace, who broke into the Crowe's Nest for unknown reasons, and was shot by Aleister. Molly has gone to pick up Rohan's grandmother, Nanny Myrie, who is coming in by float plane.

This is a moment of peace and reflection compared to what will happen over the next few days.

A stranger turns up and tries to talk to the unconscious Rohan, and when Michael pursues him through the hospital parking lot to try to question him, a sniper shoots the stranger dead. The gypsy Dragheci clan, convinced that Charles Crowe stole their ancestors' gold, threaten Molly and Michael in an attempt to force them to help recover it. Nanny Myrie has brought with her the journal of one of her ancestors, with a trove of information about Charles Crowe and his slave trading and smuggling, as well as sketches of West African artifacts stolen by Crowe. As Michael puzzles over the model of Blackpool that folds into a secret map of the tunnels under the town and scours Youtube for more information on the dead stranger, and Paddington pursues a more conventional investigation, Molly and Aleister's sister are kidnapped by the Draghicis, and tension ramps up to the breaking point.

This is an exciting mystery with engaging characters, and enough background detail included that the longer story arc encompassing the three previous books is not an obstacle to enjoying this one.

Recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Here on Earth: A Natural History of the Planet, by Tim Flannery

Grove/Atlantic, ISBN 9780802119766, April 2011

Flannery gives us an overview of life on our planet and of our species, with an eye to making us see the importance of being a cooperative part of our planet's ecosystem (the Gaia hypothesis) rather than the rulers and exploiters of the ecosystem (the Medea hypothesis.) There's a useful and interesting review of the different paths and perspectives of the two creators of the theory of evolution--Charles Darwin and the less-remembered Alfred Russel Wallace. Darwin held off on publishing for years, in part because he was disturbed by some of the moral implications of his theory. Wallace, in contrast, saw in evolution the beginnings of something like the Gaia hypothesis--that Earth's ecosystem is ultimately an interdependent whole, and the picture of nature as "red in tooth and claw" is at best half the picture.

Over the intervening century and a half these competing visions have played out, with the harsher Medean viewpoint more often prevailing. Now, though, we have reached a point where we potentially endanger the survival of the ecosystem we depend on for our own survival. Flannery makes the case that we both must, and can, become in effect the brain and nervous system of a Gaia that will nurture us along with all the other diversity of life on Earth.

Along the way, he tells some fascinating and illuminating stories. I was enthralled by the account of how mammoths made the Russian steppes more productive and life-diverse by acting as an ecological "banker," controlling vegetation, returning nutrients to the soil, and making it possible for the steppes to be far more productive than they are today--and how their extinction, at least in part due to human over-hunting, ecologically impoverished the steppes. Even more fascinating is his account of how the Australian aborigines first eliminated much of the diversity they found on arriving in Australia, hunting to extinction most of the megafauna of the continent, and then, struggling to survive in the impoverished landscape, effectively took their place as "ecological bankers." Carefully controlled firestick farming took the place of the large grazers; strict cultural rules on when, where, and how to hunt, along with restriction of hunting rights to the clans resident in particular areas, allowed Australia to be preserve much of the productivity the elimination of the megafauna would otherwise have eliminated. European colonists, on their arrival, began pushing the aborigines off their lands and exploiting the land in  ways based on their experiences in Europe, and once again severely damaged the productivity of the land. Now, Australians are once again attempting to modify their behavior to preserve their environment and unique fauna, and restore the productivity of the land.

All of this is in support of a discussion of how humans worldwide are now, on the one hand, exploiting the world in ways dangerous to our survival, and groping towards more sustainable practices. Some of the discussion is specifically about political systems: it's easier for democracies to start to lessen their environmental impact, because everyone has some degree of a say in what happens, and everyone has something to lose, making a "take the money and run" approach less attractive. Likewise, modern views of equality of rights and opportunity means that women, who bear most of the biological burden of reproduction, can and do choose to limit their child-bearing in favor of devoting more of their lives to professional, artistic, and volunteer activities. The spread of these rights and opportunities creates the possibility of escaping the Malthusian trap of outrunning our resources by limiting our reproduction to a sustainable level and even reducing the total human population a bit without resorting to China's harsh and oppressive measures.

Unfortunately, while I like the information and the viewpoint of the book, and learned some useful and interesting things from it, I do think that too much of it is preaching to the choir. In some of the chapters where I would most like him to be making a convincing case, Flannery is in fact offering arguments and examples that  I fear will convince no one who does not already agree with him. And the final, summary chapter waivers between hope and gloom in a repetitive and uncompelling manner.

An interesting book, but I can't recommend it if you're not already sympathetic to the Gaia hypothesis.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

The new "Kindle with Special Offers" is a terrible "bargain"

Amazon is offering a Wonderful New Bargain in Kindle e-readers: the lower-end, $139 wi-fi-enabled Kindle for  $114, a $25 price break, in exchange for ads and special offers popping up while you're reading, as well as "sponsored" screensavers--more ads.

Until now, the promise of e-ink e-readers has been a reading experience as close as possible to the experience of reading a print book, with some "improvements" only possible with digital technology: adjustable font size, the ability to carry dozens of books as easily as one (or more easily than one good-sized hardcover), and the ability to download a new book in moments. The "Kindle with Special Offers" is a departure from that: treating the e-reader like the net, where we have long accepted ads as the price of reading sites for "free." Except, of course, that the "Kindle with Special Offers" isn't "free" in any sense. There's a $25 saving on the purchase of the device itself. Books purchased from Amazon will cost the same--except perhaps where some of those "special offers" apply.

There might be an argument for this if it were truly making the Kindle more accessible to a much wider audience. But realistically, for how many people will a $25 savings on a device that will still cost over $100 really be the difference in affordability? Some, surely, but many? I'm skeptical. And in exchange, the reading experience itself is compromised. Whether you're reading the latest light romance or the latest literary masterpiece, a rousing adventure, an intriguing mystery, or an enlightening work of popular science, ads will be popping up, intruding on your immersion in the world of the book. And unlike the ads that used to be bound into the middle of cheaper paperbacks in my younger days, you won't even be able to rip them out and dump them in the trash.

This is not a good development.