Tuesday, December 4, 2012

e-Books On iPhones...Just Say No

It's like reading a novel written on a pad of Post-It notes.  


I signed up for a GoodReads giveaway for Freedom Club.  I didn't win the drawing, but was pleased and surprised to receive an email from the author Saul Garnell, who offered me an e-book download with his compliments.

Freedom Club takes its name from the writings of the PhD, madman, and domestic terrorist Theodore Kaczynski, who killed three people and maimed dozens more during his malignant reign of terror as the UnabomberGarnell does an interesting job of folding Kaczynski's madness into the plot.  In fact he makes frequent digressions into the history of a variety of deep (and - in the case of Kaczynski - evil) thinkers.

Cleverly plotted, Freedom Club features a variety of engaging characters and a story that is a plausible extrapolation of current social and technological trends.  Along the way we are treated to some moral ambiguity and and several very effective action scenes.  Garnell's writing reminds more than a little of early Neal Stephenson.

I did Saul's novel a serious disservice by reading it on my iPhone where this science fiction novel's 416 densely written pages were magically expanded to 1985 virtual snippets, each only a paragraph or two in length.  The format leaves much to be desired.

My next Garnell e-book is Eat Fish and Die, for which I must find a method to read in a full-size or at least paperback-sized format.

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