We blog what we blog. Cope, or, you know, don't. No one's dragooning you into reading the site, or forcing you to comment if you haven't anything interesting or constructive to say.

I like a chance to support my friends and fellows as dearly as I hate a spam for attention from somebody who has nothing to do with me, and I consider such posts a grace and not a bother.

Guess that means I should buy up the e-books in the hope of the sales bump meaning I get more books.

And excellent series. I do have to ask why Starpilot's Grave ended up being the one slowest to come out? I really wouldn't want to try to jump from The Price of the Stars into By Honor* Betray'd without it. In some ways, I'd think that a harder prospect as a reader than trying to read it cold.

* Do you know how hard it is for a Canuck to spell it that way? But it is the correct title.

*To be clear, this is still high praise.

But the gentleman who posted the review to the RomLand site gave the book a glowing review. And I am excited. If I can glom on all of Jim and Deb's backlist, I've got Christmas, Valentine's Day, anniversary and Father's Day covered.

So I don't care that the first I heard of a well written set of space opera books was during a discussion of pirate romances. I take my book reviews where I can find 'em.

And finding the backlist here, will be very, very helpful.

Mercedes Lackey is another example here -- as I've noted before, Arrows of The Queen was her first published novel, and you really can see the seams. The next book is noticeably smoother, and by the third she's clearly hit her stride. Her later books get progressively more polished and textured, but in that first trilogy, you can watch her growing as a writer.

Gracefully done. We all have days like that, but not everyone recovers so well.

My Nook is indeed the plain e-ink b&w kind. I wanted the longest battery life possible, and I have a smartphone for the fancy internet stuff. (The first author portrait that came up was of the Brontë sisters. I think we'll get along quite well, my doodad and I.)

It will be my constant companion on trains; when we manage to match our schedules, I'll be happy to let you try it out.

B&N has been flooding my inbox with Black Friday $79 Nook prices for the past two days.

Get thee behind me, Satan!

*My second choice, the Pocketbook Pro 902 (with a 9+" screen), is three times as expensive as the Simple Touch. That one would wait until my tax refund comes through.

If you're feeling daring, there are ways to turn it into something resembling an Android tablet. The e-ink display and general lack of OS memory make it a rather poor semblance, though. It will run some stuff, but nothing large, and some OS libraries are missing than a full Android installation would have. Full Android is pretty much out of the question anyway: it doesn't have enough memory.

It may still useful to do so just for the ability to rebind buttons so you get hardware "menu" and "back", or install Button Saver which provides a popup with those and some other missing keys. You can also install a replacement soft keyboard, but the one provided with the system works better with e-ink than most Android keyboards.

I seem to remember Janet Brennan Croft saying to me that the temptation is even worse for Librarians.