Today I’m welcoming author JC De La Torre as guest poster on Hey Lady!

Deep in the recesses of time, there is a land that has only been whispered about. In many cultures, vague references elude to the possibility of its existence. It was exposed by a philosopher, who some say was just using it as an allegory to why a country should not challenge the will of the gods. In recent literature and films, it has been portrayed as the home of super heroes, gods, and mer-people.

It is Atlantis, the sunken continent of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias commentaries.
Adapting Atlantis for the mainstream was difficult – at least if you wanted to be true to all that is known about continent and its people.  People have been researching Atlantis for over a hundred years, wondering if maybe…just maybe Plato was speaking of an actual ancient land.

Atlantis enthusiasts have placed the sunken kingdom throughout the world. Sites have been referred to in South America, off the coast of Spain, in the Bahamas and on the tiny Greek island of Santorini.

In fiction, you can invent your own mythology around the lost continent – but if you aren’t true to the source you get scenarios like flying cars and laser beams, while interesting to the story, may not really be plausible in the mind of your reader.

As I wrote the first two installments of the Rise of the Ancients Series, Ancient Rising and Annuna, I wanted to weave the fall of Atlantis with a religion that impacted the world for quite awhile – the mythology that were the Greek gods. Considering how important the deities were not only to Greek culture, but the Romans as well – who took their likenesses and applied their own Roman names to them – I felt that there would be believable substance for a story to actually consider the Greek gods were as real as you or I.

Obviously, they would not be human – as how could a human being live for twelve thousand years (unless he was named Connor MacLeod)? So I had to dig further into antiquity, to the earliest recorded mythology – the Ancient Sumerians and their Annuna deities – gods from heaven.

It came together as a benevolent race of ascended beings planting the seeds of life on our world. It would incorporate the pantheon of religious belief, including Jewish and Christian tradition.

It’s funny, when I began writing my first novel in the summer of ‘04, Ancient Rising – Rise of the Ancients Book I, the gods and Atlantis were a subject that had been ignored for a long time. Sure, comic books had tackled Atlantis and the gods, there were a handful of novels that had Atlantis or the gods as a major theme including Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Avalon series and Clive Cussler’s Atlantis Found but interest in mythology seemed to deaden out in the 90’s. No one was interested in retelling or re-imaging the old myths.

My own personal interest in Atlantis came from my love of ancient history and reading a non-fiction (or semi-fictional, depending on how you view the subject matter) novel by an author named Herbie Brennan called the Atlantis Enigma that introduced me to the mythology of Atlantis and the theory of ancient astronauts. As I researched Atlantis, I grew interested in Greek mythology as a method of distribution for my own ancient astronauts fiction. Similar to the way Stargate used Egyptian deities posing as gods called the Goa’uld, I used our known Greek mythology, combined it with the ancient Sumerian and Babylonian stories of the Annunaki (another Brennan inspiration) and even sprinkled in Jesus Christ. I threw it all in a pot, stirred until I came up with a wild tale about a devastated widower who was greeted by the Greek god Hermes and set on an Indiana Jones-meets-Clash of the Titans type adventure.

I spent a year and half promoting the book, then took some time off. Amazingly, since Ancient Rising was published in 06, there have been sixty-one books dealing with Atlantis and another whopping eight hundred and fifty have something to do with mythology.

While my first novel focused on the Greek gods and the adventure to find Atlantis, the next in the series Rise of the Ancients – Annuna (coming July 31st) focuses on the Annuna (another name for the Sumerian/Babylonian Annunaki), the rise of the gods on Earth, and how Atlantis fell. I was stunned to see the explosion in the subject I had all to myself just three short years ago.

While I’d love to believe I started the trend, I know its more due to the success of Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and Thomas Greanias’ Atlantis saga that have brought mythology back into the mainstream. Video games like God of War introduced Zeus and the other gods to a new audience.While we know Percy Jackson’s movies are coming, I also recently saw an article that said that Dreamworks optioned Scott Mitchell Rosenberg’s comic mini-series Atlantis Rising.

I have a feeling that the gods are going to be with us for awhile.

JC De La Torre is the author of fantasy thriller Rise of the Ancients – Annuna, released on July 31st to retaileres everywhere.

You can buy Rise of the Ancients – Annuna at Powell’s and Amazon.

Last year I read The Year of Fog and absolutely loved it. I was thrilled to see Michelle Richmond on a panel at Book Group Expo in 2008, and her newest book, No One You Know, had recently been released, so I quickly picked it up.

No One You Know is about Ellie, whose sister, Lila, was murdered 20 years ago. The murderer was never caught, though one of Ellie’s teachers, Andrew Thorpe, wrote a true crime book about the murder that suggested the murderer was Lila’s lover, Peter McConnell. This true crime book has haunted Lila for the past 20 years, defining who she was and who she’s become. She’s finally decided to try and figure out why her sister was murdered after she encounters Peter McConnell during a coffee buying trip in Nicaragua. Ellie learns more about her sister while interviewing people who knew her than she ever thought she’d actually know.

Ellie had felt really close to Lila, even though Lila was a mathematician and Ellie wasn’t interested in math. Lila’s murder makes Ellie wonder how well she really did know her sister, and Thorpe’s book only magnifies the sisters’ differences. Lila’s murder changes the family, changes Ellie: “But no matter how well-adjusted a family may be, no matter how hard its individual members try to move on, grief is not a thing that can simply be managed. The shape of our family had changed.”

One of the most heart-wrenching parts of this book is Ellie’s confession that she thinks if she had been the one to die, her family would have bounced back easier than when it was Lila who died: “I wished, at that moment, that I could have traded places with Lila. I imagined a scenario in which my mother’s grief was smaller, more manageable, a scenario in which she had not lost her brilliant eldest daughter. Surely, if she’d only lost me, the recovery would have been quicker, the devastation less complete. Perhaps the family would have inched closer together rather than farther apart.”

The title could arguably refer to many things. In the book, when Ellie asks Lila why she’d gotten a tattoo of two doughnuts, Lila tells Ellie that someone dared her, and when Ellie asks who, Lila responds, “No one you know.” But is the title referring to this mysterious person in Lila’s life, or is it referring to the fact that Lila ultimately was no one Ellie knew? Perhaps the title is referring to Ellie herself, that Ellie doesn’t even know who she herself is. It is after finding out who her sister was that she ultimately comes to peace with herself.

There’s an interesting theme in No One You Know about storytelling. You can see the way that Ellie changes throughout the story just by looking at how she talks about storytelling:

Every story is an invention, subject to the whims of the author. For the audience on the other side of the page, the words march forward with a certain inevitability — as if the story could exist one way only, the way in which it is written. But there is never just one way to tell a story. Someone has chosen the beginning and end. Someone has chosen who will emerge as the hero or heroine, and who will play the villain. Each choice is made at the expense of an infinite number of variations. Who is to say which version of the story is true?

…

Stories aren’t set in stone. It took me the longest time to realize this.

…

Every story is flawed, every story is subject to change. Even after it is set down in print, between the covers of a book, a story is not immune to alteration. People can go on telling it in their own way, remembering it the way they want. And in each telling the ending may change, or even the beginning. Inevitably, in some cases it will be worse, and in others it just might be better. A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.

I was saddened to find that I didn’t like No One You Know near as much as I liked The Year of Fog. For some reason, I never really connected with Ellie, though I certainly felt compassion for her. I do feel compelled to say that I think Richmond’s writing is fantastic! She has one of those easy styles that is at once easy to read yet literary. She definitely knows how to put a story together, but I just didn’t like this story. This story felt meandering and I wasn’t always sure I understood where it was going..

One of the issues I had with the book, other than not connecting with the main character, was that the issue of storytelling was so prevalent (as I mentioned), and one of the things that’s discussed is how Andrew Thorpe wrote his book with the ending in mind, and how that isn’t right, yet it’s my understanding (and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure this is what the author said while on a panel at Book Group Expo) that Michelle Richmond controls her characters, they don’t control the story, so isn’t she doing what Andrew Thorpe was doing: ultimately writing with the end already in place?

I’m totally bummed I didn’t like this book, but I will eagerly await Richmond’s next book and snatch it off the shelves.

Rating: 79 out of 100

Buy No One You Know from Powell’s | Amazon

Michelle Richmond’s website

Other reviews:

The Bluestocking Society

Musings of a Bookish Kitty

A Striped Armchair

she reads and reads

lit*chick

The 3 R’s: Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness

Presenting Lenore

Breaking the Spine

Lenore from Presenting Lenore posted about an interesting topic today. She talked about where her last 20 books came from, partly because Marie of The Boston Bibliophile just posted a follow-up to her Bloggers and Commercialism post where she lists the sources of her last 20 reviewed books, and also because Julia Keller recently said, “The extra story is how that book made its way to you in the first place,” in her article in the Chicago Tribune.

I completely agree with Julia Keller about how the story of how you found a book is similar to “…a courtship story: The chance encounter, the first shy glance, the recognition of a shared sensibility and finally — ah, bliss! — the consummation.” I’m sure my husband wouldn’t appreciate being compared to a book, but isn’t there that feeling with a really good book of not wanting to part for a second, wanting to spend every minute together, and a feeling a pure satisfaction when you close the last page?

I digress…this post was supposed to be about bloggers and commercialism, not me waxing rhapsodic about books I love.

Marie poses these questions: “But no more freebies- no more purely promotional work. What would that mean for our blogs? For our reading? Is the only reason we blog to receive free books?”

While I believe I’ve stated that I don’t blog for free books, I’ll admit they’re nice to receive. What book lover wouldn’t relish receiving books because someone wanted THEIR OPINION on that book? As a peon in the grand scheme of things, I’m now a peon WHOSE OPINION IS SOLICITED. I think I just moved up, however microscopically, in the food chain.

My blog isn’t purely a book blog; I have other interests and other thoughts that I talk about here, so I don’t see how not receiving anything from authors or publishers would change my reading or the purpose/focus of my blog.

I liked that Lenore and Marie took their last 20 books and told you from whence they came, and I think I’ll do the same. However, I’m going to list all the books I’ve read this year and tell you where/how I acquired them, then I will break it down into percentages.

• I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb – This was a re-read of a book I already owned. I bought it years ago.
• Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer - I borrowed this book from a friend.
• The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver - I checked this out from the library because it was an Amazon Significant Seven.
• Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer - Checked out from the library after reading a great review on a blog.
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett - Requested from publisher after reading a glowing review on a blog.
• In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal - Checked out from the library. I checked this book out because it had gotten great reviews in Publisher’s Weekly.
• Blindness by Jose Saramago – Checked out from the library after reading Raych’s review.
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - Checked out from the library after hearing about it on various blogs, then I was going to buy a copy because I loved it so much, but happened to receive it as a gift from a friend.
• Wake by Lisa McMann – Checked out from the library after reading various reviews on blogs.
• Silk by Alessandro Baricco - I got this book from Bookmooch after reading some great reviews.
• The Secret of the Sacred Scarab by Fiona Ingram - Sent to me by the author for me to read for potential book tour.
• Geek Love by Katherine Dunn – I won this book from Jill at Fizzy Thoughts. I was going to pass the book on when I was done but loved it so much that I kept it.
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford - I requested this book from Shelf Awareness (I believe).
• The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan - Checked this book out from the library after reading some great reviews and finding out that the author would be making an appearance at a local bookstore.
• We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Borrowed from a friend.
• Beside a Burning Sea by John Shors - Received this book unsolicited from the author. Another author introduced us and I agreed to read his book(s) (I still have one book from the author that I haven’t read).
• Tea and Other Ayama Na Tales by Eleanor Bluestein - Received from the author, unsolicited, though I did agree to review it.
• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher - Bought this book from a local bookstore because it was selected for my book club.
• My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult - I purchased this book years ago, and this was a re-read.
• Serena by Ron Rash - Checked out from the library after I saw it on the Amazon Significant Seven and friend insisted I read it.
• The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan - Received unsolicited from the publisher, though I had agreed to review books they send me.
• Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton and Erin Torneo – Agreed to review after publicist queried me.
• Rape: A Love Store by Joyce Carol Oates - Checked out from library after a friend mentioned the book.
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri - Got off Bookmooch after reading a review on Lisa’s blog.
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje - Checked out from the library because it was a book club pick.
• Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson – Checked out from library after reading great reviews on various blogs.
• Water Ghosts by Shawna Yang Ryan - Received from publisher after they Twittered about it. I requested the book.
• The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff - Received this book as part of a blog tour.
• No One You Know by Michelle Richmond - I bought this book after seeing the author on a panel.
• The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams - Received this book after being queried by publisher.
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson - I checked this book out from the library after reading great reviews on various blogs.
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - I flew from California to New York, waited in line at 5:30am in order to get a ticket just so I could get the book.
• The Screwed-Up Life of Charlie the Second by Drew Ferguson - I checked this book out from the library in order to be a judge in a bracket competition.
• Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers - I checked this book out from the library in order to be a judge in a bracket competition.
• Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea - Received this book from the publisher for an online book club I participate in.
• The Host by Stephenie Meyer - Received this book as part of a blog tour.
• The Reader by Bernard Schlink – I got this book from Bookmooch after reading great reviews on various blogs.
• The Purloined Boy by Mortimus Clay - Received this book to read before I put together the blog tour.
• Afraid by Jack Hilborn - Purchased this book for my Kindle on Jenn’s recommendation.
• Every Last Cuckoo by Kate Maloy - Received this book unsolicited and probably wouldn’t have read it had it not been chosen for my book club.
• After the Moment by Garret Freymann-Weyr - Received this book from the author to see if it would be appropriate for a blog tour.
• Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta - I checked this book out from the library after reading great reviews on various blogs.
• The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan – I checked this book out from the library after reading great reviews on various blogs.
• Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith - I bought this book when I was at a book signing but already owned the book by the featured author.

This breaks down thusly:

2 – previously owned
16 – library
2 – borrowed
4 – requested
3 – bookmooch
9 – unsolicited
2 – blog tours
2 – won
4 – purchased

So basically I’m getting 29% of my books from publishers/authors, whether solicited or unsolicited. The other 71% are acquired by other means. These stats are very similar to last year, the only difference being that this year I’ve taken advantage of my library, whereas last year I bought a lot more books.

I don’t think that not receiving free books would change my blog AT ALL. I obviously review both older and newer books, from uber popular books to books that have gotten lost in the shuffle. But as far as whether I would still review new releases, there’s a couple of cool things in the book world, one called a library, the other called a bookstore, where I can borrow or buy pretty much any book I want. So I could borrow or buy any new and trendy book I want! *gasp* I know, this is crazy talk! And any blogger who enjoys reading the hot new releases (of which there is NOTHING WRONG WITH), they could do the same!

I say this because I’ve noticed an underlying condescension towards those who review new and trendy books. Perhaps it’s because those who review new and trendy books are considered “cool and popular” (obviously they are cool and popular because, duh, they’re getting the cool new books), and while I don’t want to get back into that whole conversation, I don’t know why it matters what another blogger reviews. In fact, I don’t know where I would be without the bloggers reviewing the new books! How else am I supposed to find the gems among the glut of books being released?

What’s my point? Heck, I don’t even know if I had any one point. I think it’s interesting to see where my books came from, but I don’t think it indicates how ethical I am. How ethical someone is on their blog doesn’t come from how many books they review that they got for free, rather, it comes from how honest they are in their reviews. Honesty is not dependent on whether you paid for a book or not…or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Picking Cotton is a non-fiction memoir told alternately by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton. I’m going to assume the third author, Erin Torneo, is actually the ghost writer, which probably explains the seemingly disjointed writing.

(Normally I tackle writing style at the end of a review, but I’m going to do it here. I’ve read one other book that I know for sure was written by a ghost writer, and while I liked the supposed author, I didn’t like how the ghost writer said everything pretty much verbatim of how the author said things. I mean, I didn’t get anything new out of the book that I didn’t know from just listening to the guy on the radio. I understand on a theoretical level what a ghost writer’s job is, I just have yet to see it done well. While the writing in Picking Cotton wasn’t ideal, it certainly got the story across and I ignored the writing style.)

Here’s the story: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino was just 22 when she was raped at knife point by a black man. While it was happening, she studied his face and told herself that if by some miracle she made it out alive, she would be sure to put this bastard in prison. Her rapist didn’t kill her, so the next day she went to the police station and worked with a sketch artist. When they brought in a lineup so she could identify her attacker, she picked out Ronald Cotton and swore that was the man who raped her.

Ronald Cotton was sure he would beat this accusation, because he hadn’t raped Jennifer, and he was sure he could prove it! Unfortunately, his alibi fell through (he got confused as to the date of the rape and actually didn’t have an alibi for the night Jennifer was raped), and it was based on Jennifer’s testimony that Ronald was convicted to life plus 50 years in prison.

Ronald worked really hard to get his conviction thrown out so he could get a new trial, because he’d met the guy who’d actually raped Jennifer, and so he was hoping that either a) this guy would confess at a new trial or b) Jennifer would remember her real rapist when she saw him, but sadly neither of those happened and Ronald was sentenced to two life terms, which was more time in prison than he was sentenced to at his first trial!

Seriously, this story just kept getting worse and worse. And when Ronald was finally exonerated, Jennifer obviously didn’t get in touch with him right away, because how could you deal with that guilt that you’d stolen 11 years of someone’s life? After a couple of years, they met AND RONALD FORGIVES HER. He forgives the woman who STOLE 11 years of his life. Talk about forgiveness. That is the ultimate forgiveness, the way that we ultimately should lead our lives (but have a hard time doing because let’s face it: anger is easier than forgiveness). Ronald and Jennifer now work together now to educate people on the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and they try to help others who’ve been wrongly convicted based on eyewitness testimony.

If you’ve been reading this blog for longer than, oh, say 30 days, you’ll know I DON’T READ NON-FICTION. I just don’t. It’s not my thing. So a non-fiction book getting MY stamp of approval, is, well, rare. Please, go read this book. Having read my review and watching the videos I’ve posted below doesn’t make up for reading this book. This is an amazing story that everyone should read.

Rating: 90 out of 100

Buy Picking Cotton at Powell’s | Buy Picking Cotton at Amazon

Website for Picking Cotton

Other reviews:

Leafing Through Life

Booking Mama

Here’s the book trailer that will give you a great overview of the book:

Here’s two videos from 60 Minutes when they covered this case:

*Edited to add: Pam pointed me to another e-reader, so I added that e-reader to the list. It’s a beauty, but cost prohibitive for most people.

I know. I was the first person to say I WILL NEVER WANT AN E-READER. But then people I knew started getting them (and raving about them!), and I started to see how an e-reader would come in handy. E-readers will NEVER replace books, but they are doing a damn good job of supplementing physical books for those of us who read a lot.

I was lucky enough to win a Kindle 2, thanks to the folks at Glue.

Does Amazon’s seeming intent to control the publishing world worry me? Absolutely. Do I think the price of e-books are freaking ridiculous? Heck. yes. But I have a secret to tell you…are you ready? I need you to come closer so I can whisper in your ear.

*whispering* I love my Kindle.

But I know that e-readers are far from perfect, and just like MP-3 players, in a few years these original models will look like dinosaurs. But in the meantime, let’s see what options you have for e-readers and the pros and cons of each. I gathered various specs and opinions from others who’ve tested and reviewed the various e-readers. I myself can only speak for the Kindle.

You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned iPhones as an e-reader, and that’s because the whole POINT of an e-reader is that it’s not backlit and doesn’t cause eye strain. So I know people like reading books on their iPhone, but it’s not a true e-reader so I won’t go over the pros and cons. HOWEVER, I like the idea of not having a gagillion gadgets, but in circumstances like this, I think the e-reader serves a very specific, useful, and necessary purpose.

Kindle 2

• Pro: It’s thin (1/3 inch), even with a leather cover on it (3/4 inch)
• Pro: It’s light (10.2 ounces)
• Pro: It’s not backlit, so it really reads like a real book. The downside to this is you need light to read it.
• Pro: You can download a book instantly (less than 60 seconds), which it does over WiFi, but it doesn’t require you to have an Internet connection that you pay for. Using the WiFi to download a book is FREE.
• Pro: It will read to you! And sing you to sleep!
• Pro: There are 16 shades of gray so the text is clearer
• Con: You must buy the Kindle from Amazon and only Amazon. Ditto on the books.
• Con: You can only read e-books.
• Con: Books aren’t cheap! $9.99 for even a new book is no steal.
• Con: The screen takes a second to refresh when you turn the page.
• Con: Price: $359 $299

Sony Reader Digital Book

• Pro: It’s 6.9 inches high by 4.9 inches wide by 0.3 inches deep, and weighs about 9 ounces
• Pro: It’s not backlit
• Pro: THE SCREEN! Check that puppy out! It’s basically the same size as the Kindle screen, but it *looks* bigger, and I like that.
• Pro/Con: This only has 8 shades of gray, which is up from when it only had 4 shades of gray. They haven’t yet gotten to the Kindle’s 16 shades of gray.
• Pro: It’s not owend by Teh Evil Amazon.
• Pro: You can read more than just e-books. You can read .pdfs, Text, RTF, and Word files.
• Con: The screen takes a second to refresh when you turn the page.
• Con: You have to download books from your computer. Sony doesn’t have the wireless capability that the Kindle does, and while some people might not find this to be a problem, I think in this digital age that being able to download books without using your computer is a must.
• Books aren’t cheap!
• Price: $279 for the PRS 505, $349 for the PRS 700 BC

Plastic Logic Touch-Screen E-Reader

• Pro: VERY thin, it’s the size of a standard sheet of paper and as thin as about six credit cards, and weighs less than a pound. The large size (not the thinness) could actually be a con, though, because the advantage of the other e-readers out there is that they fit in your purse (or your murse, if you’re a dude).
• Pro: You can read documents from Adobe and Microsoft Office.
• Pro: IT HAS A TOUCH SCREEN. No more pressing buttons to turn the page, just flick your finger across the screen.
• Pro: You can annotate documents, and when you transfer those documents to another device, your notations remain intact.
• Pro: It will have Wi-Fi, but it’s not clear yet if you will need to pay a service charge for mobile use.  
• Pro: It’s not backlit.
• Con: As this e-reader won’t be released until 2010, there aren’t many reviews, so I don’t know what’s not so great about it at this point.
• Price has not been announced yet.

COOL-ER

• Pro: It’s slim and lightweight. It’s 7.2 inches high by 4.6 inches wide by .4 inches deep.
• Pro: It comes in great colors.
• Pro: It supports ebooks in many languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Dutch, Russian, Korean, Ukrainian, Chinese and Japanese
• Pro: It’s not backlit
• Pro: COOL-ER can read any JPEG, PDF, or TXT document, or any EPUB formatted ebook
• Pro: You can share books with other COOL-ERs.
• Pro: It has a built-in MP-3 player, so you can listen to audiobooks as well.
• Con: You have to get books via a USB cable off of your computer. No Wi-Fi here.
• Con: Navigation is difficult. 
• Con: The buttons are hard to press.
• Price: $249

iRex iLiad Book Edition

• Pro: It’s 8.5 inches high, 6.1 inches wide, and .63 inches deep. It weighs just under a pound at 15.3 ounces.
• Pro: It’s not backlit.
• Pro: It has 16 levels of grey-scale
• Pro: It comes pre-loaded with 50 classics, such as Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Dracula.
• Pro: TOUCH SCREEN. Need I say more?
• Pro: You can use the stylus to write notes.
• Pro: It supports the following formats: PDF / HTML / TXT / JPG / BMP/ PNG / PRC
• Con: You have to download books with a USB cable via your computer.
• Con: It only has 256MB of memory, and while you can upgrade to 8GB, it’s more money for an already expensive product.
• Price: $599

I think if we could wrap all four of these e-readers into one (awesome colors, a touch screen, free wi-fi, and no Evil Amazon), we’d have a perfect e-reader. I think the perfect e-reader is a little ways off, but we’re definitely getting closer.

The iLiad seems like it would be the PERFECT e-reader. Except for that pesky price. People balk at the Kindle’s price, which recently went from $349 to $299. $599 is out of most people’s price range.

Don’t forget, I haven’t had a chance to review all these e-readers. The only one I own is the Kindle. I’d be thrilled to see how they all compare, but…well, I don’t have that kind of money (especially for the iRex, which I’m drooling over!). Jenn, however, has compared her Sony E-Reader with the Kindle, and she may be reviewing the COOL-ER in the near future.

Do you have an e-reader? What would make the e-readers better? Based on the four e-readers we have to choose from, is there an e-reader you’d prefer over another?

Disclaimer: I did my best on this list, but I may have missed something, and for that I apologize. Some things are the same across the board, like the fact that e-books aren’t cheap or that all e-readers aren’t backlit.