Books, iPhone 
No Comments Butcher and Kindles and Hobbits, oh my
Perusing some blogs dedicated to Lord of the Rings Online, I came across mention of "The Hobbit" available as an iPhone app. I'm not a fan of reading books electronically, but have been dismayed at my slow down in book consumption the last few years and bought the inexpensive app. The translation from print to electronic format was horrible. Lots of strange characters, garbled text, missing sentences. Clearly this wasn't an authorized edition.
About this time I heard there was a free Kindle iPhone app. Armed with an Amazon gift card and staring down the long barrel of boredom inducing impending jury service, I downloaded "The Hobbit" and Jim Butcher's "Furies of Calderon" novel. Butcher's Dresden detective series has been the only books I've been reading more or less the last few years and I was hoping for the same level of adrenaline-inducing writing in his fantasy series. I was not disappointed.
I've already downloaded the next book in the Codex Alera series and am looking forward to chewing through all six in short order. But better than that, I have found a way to indulge in book reading again in a way that I haven't been able to pull off in many years. I would never have thought I would enjoy the book reading experience on a screen as small as my iPhone, but the convenience of having a book in my pocket is something I have forgotten about until now. And I'm thrilled I have rediscovered it again. The type was large on the Kindle app and I was able to change the look of the "page" to be a warmer sepia tone.
For anyone interested in how Jim Butcher weaves his particular brand of fiction writing magic, he has written a series of blog posts on how he approaches novel writing.
