Book News
E-readers like books, too.
According to a new study by Marketing and Research Resources Inc., which interviewed 1,200 owners of e-readers, 40 percent of these people said they now read more than they did with print books. The survey also found that 58 percent of e-reader owners read about the same as before, while 2 percent said they read less. In addition, 55 percent of people said they thought that they would use the device to read even more books in the future.
It may be leading to an increase in book sales. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Among early adopters, e-books aren’t replacing their old book habits but adding to them. Amazon, the biggest seller of e-books, says its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle, a figure that has accelerated in the past year as prices for the device fell.”
First Lines
Judgment and Wrath by Matt Hilton
Sometimes you make rash decisions that you instantly regret. Then you just have to take the consequences and go with the flow.
Like when I walked into Shuggie’s Shack — a roadhouse north of Tampa, Florida — and parked myself on a stool at the corner of the warped and stained bar.
Shuggie’s was the kind of place that self-respecting souls avoid unless they are dragged inside by the hair. The tables were planks nailed to barrels, seats 1970s retro vinyl from the first time around. The atmosphere was redolent of beer fumes, cigarette smoke, and the stench of unwashed bodies. Tattoos seemed to be the order of the day. Muscles and hair, too. And that was just the women.
You finish your meal of grease over easy, and the kind of gratuity you offer the staff is thanks that you get out with your face still intact.
I was made as a cop by every man, woman, and beast in the place within the time it took me to catch the bartender’s eye and nod him over. Every last one of them was wrong, but I wasn’t averse to letting them wonder.
“Beer,” I said. There didn’t seem to be any other choice. It was that or chance the brown liquid masquerading as liquor in the dusty bottles arranged on a shelf behind the cash register.
The bartender moved toward me reluctantly. He glanced around his clientele, as if by serving me he was betraying the creed. Not that he looked the type to worry about people’s feelings. He was a massive man in one of those cutoff leather vests designed to show the size of his biceps. He had a black star inked into the rough skin beneath his right eye, and a scar that parted his bottom lip and ended somewhere in the braided beard on his chin.
Hardcover Best Sellers
Fiction
1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson
2. Tough Customer, by Sandra Brown
3. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
4. Star Island by Carl Hiaasen
5. Veil of Night, by Linda Howard
Nonfiction
1. Women Food and God, by Geneen Roth
2. Sh–t My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern
3. Bury My Heart at Conference Room B, by Stan Slap
4. It’s Not Just Who You Know, by Tommy Spaulding
5. The Obama Diaries, by Laura Ingraham
Publishers Weekly
