If you love animals, then you’ve probably got a soft spot for dogs. Dogs and cats are the easiest domesticated animals for us humans to care for – they’re not exotic and expensive, nor do they require constant testing of pH levels, strange habitats, or to be caged or in a glass tank. Between the two, dogs are more friendly to human eyes. They’re pack animals, so they like to have a buddy. Cats just sort of…share a space with you. (Except for mine, but that’s another story.)
So when I first watched “The Dog Whisperer” I was interested just for the simple fact that I love dogs. I was raised by my grandparents and they had gotten a chihuahua-dachshund puppy about a year before they got me. Eventually I had two dogs of my own and somewhere in there we had a few cats, too.
Since I live in an apartment with no yard keep a schedule that doesn’t allow for walkies, I keep a cat. I love my cat. I miss my dogs. I just can’t justify having a dog when I can’t care for it properly. So this show gives me my puppy fix…but what amazed me, and keeps me watching this show is that Cesar Millan – the dog whisperer – is not what I expected.
When you hear a phrase like “the dog whisperer” you think “crazy person with a weird talent for communing with animals” (or at least I do). What you get is a perfectly sane guy with a knack for understanding dog psychology.
That’s right, dog psychology. It makes sense when you think about it. Dogs can be trained to do amazing things and they’ve managed to get along with us despite how confusing and illogical we are as a species. So, the idea of psychology for pooches isn’t so far off.
And Cesar Millan proves that it works.
One of the first shows I watched showcased a business that encouraged people to bring their dogs to work (AWESOME, btw), but had discovered that their pets could add stress to the workplace with antisocial or aggressive behavior.
The moment for me – the big epiphany – was watching this stereotypical yappy chihuahua embarrassing his owner by barking hysterically in front of a crowd. She hands the leash to the dog whisperer.
Total silence. Laughter from the humans and devoted “What would you like me to do next?” eyes from the dog. There was no “process” or set number of steps, it was just the simple act of Cesar Millan taking the leash and mentally projecting that “I’m in charge” attitude which he calls calm assertive energy.
He explains that humans need to be the pack leader, that dogs have it ingrained in them to follow, so when a dog is misbehaving…well…my fiance and I sit in front of the tv now and say “Yeah, it’s totally not the dog.”
So, if you have, had, or want a dog I would recommend watching this show. There are also some books out there, two that I know of and plan to read and review here, to help you understand the mysterious (but not at all subtle) nature of dogs.
My point: Sometimes tv won’t rot your brain. Watch this show. It’s informative, it’s real, and it can warm your heart.

We have previously asked for readers to submit any kind of additional reviews, feedback, and input in our comments, but now if you would prefer to have your feedback sent directly to us you can contact us at neolibarium[at]gmail.com
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Happy reading, folks.

G.H.P

So, I’m not dead or floating off in space somewhere, but thanks to my amazing lifestyle (that is, busy and preoccupied) I’ve been incredibly lax on posting. You can thank Gambit, my faithful sidekick, for the classic posts – ’cause frankly, if I’ve reviewed a book once, it’s worth seeing again, right?

One thing I will say is: look forward to some updates in the next few weeks. They may not be prolific, but they should be interesting. For one, I plan to continue my eReader reviews, and I want to include some basic info about a new touchpad, color screen eReader that should be coming onto the market soon. I also want to give a review for a couple of new books I read lately, and honorable mentions to some of my favorite books, which I’ve been re-reading lately when I need to wind down.

In the meantime, be patient, friends. The posts will come again!

NOTE: This review was originally written by Grand High Poobah on July 27, 2007. Enjoy.

Yes, I know, I keep posting on these, but hey, it’s a series! As the books move along, we are fortunate enough to find out more and more information on Ash and it’s making me insanely happy. What information we find out, I can’t tell you, though this book and the one that follows go more into detail about Ash and his relationships with everyone in the series in more detail than the previous books combined. That, however, isn’t the main part of the story. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Classic Review, Seize the night, Sherrilyn Kenyon, sins of the night, Vampires

NOTE: This review was originally published by Grand High Poobah on June 5, 2008. Enjoy.

For these books, vampires aren’t quite vampires…except they totally are. Let me explain. The traditional idea is that vampires are cursed, soulless, and drink blood. That’s true. With me so far? The addendum that we don’t realize is that they have an out-clause. They are cursed, not by God or some benevolent high power, but by a demon. They are not evil, and they have a chance to get their soul back. An out-clause, or in all truth, an out-person.
All vampires( who prefer, by the way, to be called Dark Ones) have a Beloved. A woman who, through a series of steps, can save his soul. Someone who he is destined to spend his life with. Until he finds her, his existence is something daunting and prospects are bleak.
If, that is, he can find her.
Enter Christian Dante, a Dark One in search of his soulmate…aka Beloved. Read the rest of this entry »

This review was originally published by Grand High Poobah in april, 2007. Enjoy.

This book was a great read. The main character of this story puts a new spin on ancient mythology. Hopefully the world is familiar with the story of Cupid and Psyche. That is the story told in this book, but in a way completely different from what we know as the “truth”. This book was interesting, but the tone was pretty melancholy, at least to me. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested, or familiar with, mythology, and also to anyone who is willing to read something a little more “heavy”. It’s not a huge book, but it’s a lot to digest mentally and seems to run along the lines of the things one is assigned to read in school – only much more interesting. (I know that there are people who would like to set me on fire for this, but I hated The Great Gatsby.) Read the rest of this entry »

A thing of the past?

As digital books continue to gain market share, one of the country’s oldest mass paperback publishers is abandoning its traditional print books and making its titles available in digital format and print-on-demand only.

Dorchester Publishing Inc., a closely held book and magazine house with 40 years in the business, said it is making the switch after its book unit sales fell 25% last year, in part because of declining orders from some of its key retail accounts, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart declined comment.

The decision to go digital could be a sign of things to come for other small publishers facing declining sales in their traditional print business. Dorchester’s switch will likely result in significant savings at a time when it expects its digital sales to double in 2011.

Tags: Dorchester, e-book, ebook, paperback, Wal-Mart

Barnes & Noble Inc., put itself up for sale Tuesday, succumbing to pressure from shareholder activists as digital books erode the traditional business of the nation’s largest bookstore chain.

The news surprised analysts and alarmed publishers, who have watched as the book business has increasingly shifted to online retailers and e-book sales, leaving both chains and independent sellers struggling.

Barnes & Noble, the country’s largest book chain with 720 stores, said that its board believed the stock was “significantly undervalued” and that it had set up a special committee to review its options.  It sells approximately 300 million books annually.

A few years ago, such figures represented a fearsome retailing force, attracting ire of rivals and publishers who fretted that one company controlled the country’s book-reading tastes. Since then, it has been hobbled by larger technological forces, with books becoming mere digital files, peddled by anyone with an Internet connection.

“Anybody with their eyes open knows that the retail book market is increasingly challenged,” said Mike Shatzkin, chief executive of Idea Logical Co., a New York consulting firm. Each new report that shows e-book sales are growing more rapidly than expected only intensifies the problems facing the bookstore chains, he said.

Today, Barnes & Noble has a market capitalization of just under $950 million—even after a 25% run-up in after-hours trading Tuesday in the wake of the announcement. In comparison, chief competitor Amazon.com Inc. has a market cap of around $55 billion. In 2001, Barnes & Noble was worth $2.2 billion and Amazon $3.6 billion.

Sources: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal

Tags: Barnes & Noble, Barnes and Noble, Barnes and Noble sale

A few days ago I made a post singing the praises of the Barnes & Noble Nook. I should be getting mine in the mail tomorrow, and I stand by my decision to get one, but I thought it only fair to give some of the other eReaders on the market some time and attention here on NeoLibrarium. After all, I’m not here to sell you anything, but to review books, discuss books, and take a long hard look at anything new, different, or just interesting in the world of books.
Today we’ll take a look at the Sony Reader Touch Edition (Model # PRS600SC). The Touch has apparently been through a few other incarnations, including models 505 and 700, but where each of those were flawed the 600 seems to have made progress to the point where most owners are satisfied.
For starters, and as apparent in its name, the Touch has a 6″ touchscreen display. This allows for easy navigation, page turning, and it comes with a stylus for highlighting, note taking, and drawing. A double-tap can look a word up for you in the device’s included New Oxford American Dictionary and there are five font sizes.
While the 6″ screen is pretty standard among eReaders the part where it is a touchscreen is fairly unique. The downside to the touchscreen is, from what I understand, a potential for sluggish reaction time and less contrast on screen. The Sony Pocket, for example, has a crisply white screen just like a page in a book where the Touch has a light gray screen – probably not noticeable to users, but apparent when the devices are placed side-by-side. This I know not just from reviews, but because by going to Borders bookstores and playing with the display models I noticed the difference for myself. Reviews confirmed this so now I know that it isn’t just the specific device I toyed with, but a flaw noticeable in all such units.
Now, the display technology is still quite good. It features an E Ink display – again, fairly common, but consistently good – and works with 8-level grayscale. Some devices feature 16-level grayscale, but hey, it’s all shades of gray to me!
The memory onboard the device is only 512MB, enough for about 750 books according to the sonystyle.com website. However, there is the option to expand storage with up to 300MB Dual Memory, or with an SD Card (up to 16 GB, if you’re hardcore).
Two big advantages for users who are tech-savvy are: the number of supported file formats, and the fact that the Sony eReaders are not proprietary. The Touch supports Adobe PDF, MS Word, BBeB Book, EPUB/ACS4, MP3/AAC, TXT, RTF, JPEG, BMP, and PNG files. The fact that audio files are supported means that yes, folks, this eReader falls into the listen-while-you-read category, which is a big plus in my book. In fact, but for price and the dim screen, I may have gone for this over the Nook! As for the fact that this is not a  proprietary device, that means you don’t have to go through Sony for your ebooks. The not-so-great part is that B&N and some other readers are proprietary and they encrypt their ebooks, making those files incompatible ( in theory ) with other devices. Bummer.

The Sony Touch does fall behind a few other eReaders in that it does not have wireless access. To download books, you must have a “wired” connection to your PC. This makes the Sony Touch a little less than desirable to those whose lives have them constantly on-the-go and away from their home computers. Business travelers, for example, may want to nix this reader simply because you have to be able to sit down and plug in any time you want new content.  On the other hand, with expandable storage, you could just download whatever you want before you get going so that potential downside may not be devastating.

Reviews online have also revealed to me the downside of the Sony Touch’s enclosed battery. I did notice when purchasing the Nook that there was an option to buy a separate battery – a chargeable backup that I could switch out with the battery that will come with the Nook. The enclosed battery on the Sony Touch means that it can’t be switched out like that. This would not be deal breaker for me, but it is a little inconvenient if you use your eReader with enough frequency that charging it is annoyingly time-consuming. (I still haven’t seen how long it takes for a full charge…)

For carrying, the Sony Touch weighs in at about 10 ounces. (For reference, 1 lb. = 16 oz.) This is about the same weight as the Kindle and lighter than the Nook by about two ounces. I’m not sure how much the average mass-market paperback weighs, but I doubt that these eReaders are cumbersome enough to snap our wrists or cause tendonitis. Heartlessly I say to you: get a wrist brace if you’re worried about it.

The Sony Touch – like the Nook – also supports library ebooks! I have not had the chance to explore how exactly this works on any device, but there’s a library just a few blocks North of where I live so I’ll let you know once I’ve got my Nook operational!

(As a sidenote, I thank God for the libraries here and the fact that they are offering ebooks for geeks like me is a wonderful thing, so support your local library, will you?)

For navigation, almost everything is done through the touchscreen on the Sony Reader Touch, but there are actual buttons on the device for navigation and page turning so if your touchscreen is slow to respond (and the display models are devastatingly slow) you can always punch the hard key to get things done.

There is also an option for landscape vs. portrait orientation on screen. Personally, I think that it is a pro for any device, but I also can’t decide exactly how this is advantageous. Surely it is. Somehow it must be – and if not, well it’s still really neat!

So, pros of the Sony Touch are:

1) 6″ touch screen E Ink display with 5 font sizes, with options to highlight, take notes, and look up words

2) Battery life is, like most devices, about two weeks.

3) The Sony Touch supports several file formats, including MS Word, TXT, RTF and others. It is not proprietary, so you can add what you like, though some files from some vendors may be encrypted to prevent this.

4) The Touch supports two audio formats, which means you can listen to music while you read. (For extra fun, format an audiobook to an mp3 and read along while you listen.)

5) The Touch allows for tons of extra storage so you can download as many books as you feel necessary, though if you’re really hardcore you may need to switch SD Cards to access it all.

6) For the aesthete, this reader comes in three colors: red, silver, and black. So, it can be pretty. This is comparable with some features in other devices ( for example interchangeable back covers on the Nook) but it remains pretty unique to Sony.

The Cons:

1) Users have griped about slow response times, and the touchscreen could be more of a nuisance on that front than a blessing of technology.

2) The battery is enclosed. No switcheroonies if you lose charge on your device.

3) Display is only 8-level grayscale vs 16 on other devices, and the contrast is not as good as it is on other devices.

4) It is not a wireless device. You must have a PC connection to download your ebooks. Also, some users have said that USB charging only works with a PC – so that handy device that plugs into your car lighter or wall outlet may not work.

5) The cost for the Touch is $199. This doesn’t make it the most expensive models of eReader on the market, but it does price it evenly with the Nook Wi-Fi + 3G which (obviously) has Wi-Fi and 3G connections…and other similarly priced devices have more features.

All in all, the Sony Touch is not a bad value, though I can’t say it’s the best value on the market and believe myself. It is a good value for what it is and what it does, but its limitations (as listed above) make it a question for consumers of what they find personally necessary in their eReader. As I mentioned before, if not for the price (and the cons I listed) I may have gotten a Sony Touch rather than the Nook.

Tags: eReader, eReaders, review of Sony Touch Edition, Sony 600, Sony eReader, Sony PRS600, Sony PRS600SC, Sony Reader pros and cons, Sony Reader Touch Edition