from wsj: How to set up an iPad, Kindle or Android tablet to corral long articles and blog posts

Conquer Your E-Reads

How to set up an iPad, Kindle or Android tablet to corral long articles and blog posts

Nov. 22, 2013 11:38 a.m. ET

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

ONE DAY, HUNCHING in front of a computer screen or squinting at a smartphone to read anything longer than a tweet will seem barbaric. To engage with text thoughtfully and comfortably, e-readers and tablets are still the most evolved gadgets, especially when they're outfitted with the right apps and Web services.

Implement our simple system below, and you'll be able to peruse, on your own terms, all of the long reads that you never quite get around to. Plow through a week's worth of Web links during a flight. While you're at the salon, sift through those in-depth stories everyone was talking about on social media. Help yourself to the tools below, and you won't feel out of the loop at your next dinner party.

—Erik Sofge

1. Corral Long Web Articles

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

What's the best way to beam documents from your computer to a more reader-friendly device? Erik Sofge joins Lunch Break with a look at the latest services for e-readers on the go. Photo: Getty Images.

You can beam them to a tablet or e-reader and they'll all be waiting for you when you're ready to dive in. Amazon offers a range of options for sending Web articles to a Kindle. The easiest to use is the Send to Kindle plug-in for the Chrome and Firefox browsers, which lets you beam an entire Web page, stripped of ads, to a Kindle or the Kindle app for Android and iOS devices.

Another handy solution is the free Web service Pocket ( getpocket.com ). Like Send to Kindle, you can use Pocket to save articles to a range of devices. What sets it apart, though, is the ability to send stories by simply emailing a link to a Web page. (Kindle has a similar feature, but it requires you to email the article in the body of the message or as an attachment.) Pocket works with Android tablets and iPads, as well as standard e-readers from Kobo, including the terrific Aura HD (see below).

2. Tame Social-Media Mayhem

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

If, like many people, you find your social-media feeds to be impenetrable lists of links that you dread having to click through, download Flipboard (free, flipboard.com ). This popular tablet app for aggregating Web articles into a magazine-like format is also genius at making a dense Twitter feed easier and more enjoyable to scan. Instead of presenting a list of links, the app elegantly displays previews of each story, complete with images and snippets of text. Tapping one of the teasers expands it to a full-screen version of the article in a clean, three-column layout. Tweets without links appear as a list along the side of the page.

Flipboard works with Facebook feeds, too, pulling together photos, videos and status updates into a somewhat more organized-looking scrapbook. Best of all, the app works on just about every major tablet: It's compatible with Android, BlackBerry, iOS and Windows 8 devices.

3. Wrangle Unwieldy PDFs

Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

PDFs were designed to be printed on paper, not viewed on computer screens, but the format is still popular for sharing documents digitally (especially product manuals, brochures and anything that was once a booklet). Unfortunately, trying to read a PDF on a computer, e-reader or tablet can require scrolling to various sections of the page or zooming in on minuscule text.

Although the Scribd app (free, scribd.com ) is intended for accessing the company's e-book service, it also happens to be the least frustrating way to read PDFs on an Android tablet or iPad. Compared with other PDF-compatible apps, Scribd's interface is the most intuitive: You can swipe across the screen to flip through pages, and when you hold your tablet in a landscape orientation, the app displays two facing pages at once, like an open book. As with competing readers, Scribd lets you search text and zoom out to view all of the pages as thumbnails. Biggest difference? Scribd does it all more gracefully.

Which Gadget Is Best for Lots of Text?

From left: Kobo Aura HD, Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and Apple iPad Air Illustration by Al Murphy for The Wall Street Journal

The Contender: Kobo Aura HD

Text and images look stellar on the Aura HD's black-and-white, hi-res screen—better than on any other e-ink reader out there. Plus, the device has a slightly larger display—6.8 inches diagonal to a typical Kindle's 6 inches—resulting in a "page" that's closer in size to a paperback. $170, kobo.com

Plus: A broad selection of font and formatting options that typography nerds will love.

Minus: A premium price—$31 more than the ad-free Paperwhite.

The Reigning Champ: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite

Compared to the first Paperwhite, the latest iteration has a crisper display and a more evenly distributed built-in light. Battery life is impressive: an estimated 28 hours with the light turned on. Starting at $119, amazon.com

Plus: The ability to get recommendations from the Goodreads community of bookworms (who tend to be a lot more knowledgeable than the typical Amazon reviewer).

Minus: The least-expensive version of the Kindle displays ads when the device is asleep.

The Featherweight: Apple

Although an e-ink screen is easier on the eyes than a tablet's backlit display, the iPad Air is by far the slickest way to access dedicated reading apps, like those for newspapers and magazines. Starting at $499, apple.com

Plus: Weighing only 1 pound, this is the first full-size tablet that can be comfortably held in one hand for long stretches.

Minus: The iPad Air's battery life (rated at 10 hours) is impressive for a tablet but trails e-ink readers like the Aura HD and Paperwhite.

Buffets for E-Bookworms: All-You-Can-Read Subscriptions

Think of the latest crop of e-book subscription services as Netflix for bibliophiles. For a low monthly fee—usually less than the cost of a single e-book—you can read as many titles as you like.

Oyster ($10 per month, oysterbooks.com ) offers a solid selection and pleasing interface. Although many of its 100,000-plus e-books are obscure, you'll find over 1,000 New York Times best-sellers in the mix, according to the company. The Oyster app is currently only compatible with iPad (and iPhone), but an Android version is in the works for release next year.

Scribd ($9 a month, scribd.com ) is similar to Oyster in price and selection, but its app isn't quite as polished. Still, if you own an Android tablet, this is your best option.

Finally, there's the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, which is included in an Amazon Prime membership ($79 per year, amazon.com ). The fee includes access to one book per month from a list of some 400,000 titles. The collection is large but includes only about 100 New York Times best-sellers, according to Amazon. Access to this feature requires a Kindle device (the apps for Android and iOS are not compatible). At $6.58 per month, it's not worth signing up for Amazon Prime just for the books alone, but if you're already a member for the unlimited video and free shipping that are included with the subscription, the lending library is a modest perk.

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Tatiana (Martin Cruz Smith)

Arkady Renko is a little older and a little more cynical. When an investigative report is found dead, Arkady is reluctant to accept that this death is  a suicide. Inspector Renko's investigation gives of tour of modern Russia, police corruption, and a secret cold war city which officially does not exist. 

The fast pace and intelligent plotting makes this a strong new book in the Renko series.

Tip And the Gipper (Chris Matthews)

This a very light readable book about  a point in time when two polar opposites worked together to craft legislation that worked. Tip O'Neil and Ronald Regan fought hard in the political arena. They had opposite political philosophies. The conservative republicans wanted to rein in liberal social programs, reform welfare and lower taxes. The establishment liberals were committed to the status quo and deeply believed in the rightness of their cause. Despite the obvious differences, Regan and O'Neil made time to socialize across party lines. Together they crafted working solutions to their conflicts. A stark contrast to the modern stalemates.

Chris Matthews makes this a light read, easy to recommend to casual non fiction readers. Complete index and many footnotes.

Bellman & Black: a Ghost Story(Diane Setterfeld)

Setterfelds' previous book stood as classically styled gothic novel with subtle connection to Jane Eyre.

Bellman & Black is another expertly written tale written with a very Henry James flare. The book begins with the death of a rook.  One boy brags he can hit a Rook with  a stone from his slingshot, then surprises them all by doing just that. the young rook dies and the boy is upset, but soon recovers and forgets. But the Rooks don't forget. Artfully interspersed in the story of William's life and successful career are short chapters about Rooks. Just as William has reached the most successful and happiness the Rooks return and they have not forgotten the death.

Good Fortune turns bad. Family and friends die. Business becomes an obsession for William as the story eerily builds to it's dramatic last scene.

Well Done!!!

from Wall Street Journal Re: Jane Austin Project

Bookshelf

Fiction Chronicle: Reloading the Canon

New takes on Austen, Dickens and Emily Brontë.

By

Sam Sacks

Nov. 15, 2013 4:32 p.m. ET

No book series could be both so unnecessary and yet so inevitable as the "Austen Project," which, beginning with Joanna Trollope's "Sense & Sensibility" (Harper, 362 pages, $25.99), will bring out "reimaginings" of Jane Austen's six canonical novels. Why does Ms. Trollope need such a fancy imprimatur? Writers have been exhaustively reimagining Austen's fictional worlds for years in an unstoppered gush of adaptations, prequels, sequels, modernizations and alternate narratives. Her characters have starred in board books for babies and fan-fiction erotica. Her settings have been the site of zombie invasions and murder mysteries (including by eminences like P.D. James). And this doesn't even take into account the cottage industry of Austen-themed self-help books, dating manuals, travelogues, recipe collections and social-science monographs—or the critical studies that try vainly to explicate the international infatuation.

Amid such a flourishing garden, Ms. Trollope's "contemporary retelling" is a rather drab shoot. Just as the title is unchanged (save for the ampersand—some kind of nod to modern times?), the characters keep the original names and play out an identical drama: Thoughtful and guarded Elinor Dashwood and her impulsive sister, Marianne, fall in love with compromised men, console each other when their hearts are broken and are finally rewarded with happy endings.

MIchael Witte

Ms. Trollope's present-day updating offers novelties like text-messaging and YouTube scandals, as well as the frisson of seeing Elinor utter mild profanities. But the writing isn't so much modernized as simplified, like those Shakespeare editions for grade-schoolers that provide colloquial "translations" on facing pages. Egged on by her rakish suitor, John Willoughby, Marianne in Austen's original cruelly gibes at her principled but unglamorous admirer, Col. Brandon, saying: "Add to which, that he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression." In Ms. Trollope's version this becomes: "He's not a fruitcake. He's just very, very dull."

The book's halfhearted rendering seems ominous for the series as a whole. However absurd the profusion of Austen homages may have become, most of the adapters have been genuine Janeites, whose zeal infused even the silliest spinoffs with charm and personality. With the Austen Project, a spontaneous movement looks to have become officially franchised. This puts it in league with recent cynical estate-commissioned sequels such as William Boyd's 007 novel, "Solo," or Sebastian Faulks's Wodehouse pastiche, "Jeeves and the Wedding Bells," about which the best you can usually say is that they don't manage to spoil your enjoyment of the original.

It would be a pity if the taint of commercialization stopped readers from picking up Jo Baker's intelligent and elegantly written "Pride and Prejudice" adaptation, "Longbourn" (Knopf, 331 pages, $25.95). Ms. Baker's novel is about the Bennet family's household staff—Longbourn is the family home—particularly a housemaid named Sarah, whose love affair with a newly arrived servant takes place simultaneously against Elizabeth's courtship and marriage.

Through the brief quotations from "Pride and Prejudice" that open each chapter, Ms. Baker makes it clear that maids, cooks and footmen are omnipresent in the classic and yet are taken for granted not only by the Bennets but by Austen herself. From the point of view of their overworked help, even Austen's most lovable heroines cannot escape appearing cosseted and self-regarding (more heretically, "Mr. B." is implicated in a paternity scandal). Ms. Baker at times belabors the quotidian unpleasantness whitewashed in Regency romances—we regularly find Sarah rinsing soiled linens or emptying chamber pots. But the emotional imbalance between upstairs and downstairs is affecting. Darcy, in his famous declaration to Elizabeth, called love a force that left him "properly humbled." But to Sarah, who has had humbling enough for a lifetime, it's the distant promise of fulfillment and self-worth.

Her elusive interest, an enigmatic ex-soldier named James Smith, widens the perspective of the story even further. Although the visiting militia in "Pride and Prejudice" exists purely to tantalize the foolish younger Bennet daughters, Ms. Baker reminds us that they were veterans of ugly battles in the era of Napoleon. To James, the cozy world of the Bennet family is marked by an "innocence as deep and dangerous as a quarry-pit." "Longbourn" reveals these messy backdrops while still, in fitting tribute, inventing a touching love story of its own.

Ronald Frame's "Havisham" (Picador, 357 pages, $26) is the kind of adaptation that expands on the story of one of a classic's peripheral characters, an immensely popular form that includes books like Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" (about the first marriage of Mr. Rochester from "Jane Eyre") from 1966 and Geraldine Brooks's "March" (about the father of Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women"), which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. Here Mr. Frame fills the gaps in the life of Catherine Havisham, the duplicitous benefactress who first appeared in "Great Expectations" as an old crone wearing a wedding dress and grimly bragging of a broken heart.

In Dickens's novel, Abel Magwitch explains most of Miss Havisham's circumstances, so there aren't many gaps that need filling. Raised the stuck-up daughter of a wealthy brewer, she fell in love with the roguish Charles Compeyson. But after Compeyson scams and jilts her, she becomes a half-mad shut-in, keeping company only with her ward, Estella, the abandoned child of a felon.

Mr. Frame adds a few curlicues to the tale, having Miss Havisham constantly quote from Virgil's "Aeneid," especially the verses about the spurned queen, Dido. Allusions to Dickens are similarly cute. Late in the novel, when Pip begins to visit, she remarks on his humility: "This boy had no such expectations." The breathless, operatic nature of the writing ("Anything. He might ask anything of me and I'd do it. All for love.") is a reminder that much of Dickens's brilliance was in caricature. His side characters don't fare well when given center stage.

Minae Mizumura's "A True Novel" (Other Press, 854 pages, $29.95) is a fascinating example of a cross-cultural adaptation. In one of the sizable passages of meta-commentary that frame the narrative, the author explains that the rewriting of Western novels has been "a central project in the modern literary history of Japan." Here she tells a story that is a mix of "Wuthering Heights" and "The Great Gatsby."

It centers on the magnetic Taro Azuma, recounting his bumpy rise in postwar Japan. In the highlands of Karuizawa (since converted to a popular resort town), the orphan Taro is taken in by a family of servants and supported by the aristocratic Saegusa clan. A perpetual outsider because of his low rank and half-Manchurian bloodline, he has no friends except Yoko, the sickly daughter of his employers. But though the two are in love, Yoko rejects Taro for a husband with better prospects. The spurned youth moves to Long Island and works his way up from chauffeur to "the most successful Japanese businessman in America." Despite his wealth, he moves back to the decaying cottage of his childhood, intent on reclaiming Yoko.

Ms. Mizumura's writing, smoothly translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, doesn't have anything close to the pitched intensity of Emily Brontë's, though her depiction of Taro contains elements of Heathcliff's consuming resentment: "His youth was no longer fresh and vigorous," she writes of Taro when Yoko throws him over, "but had settled like a thick sediment, with a stale smell to it." When, years later, Taro tries to lure a married Yoko to live with him in a mansion on Long Island's north shore built early in the 20th century by an "American nouveau riche," he summons the restless apparition of Jay Gatsby. Still, in many ways Taro seems more representative than specific, a means of tracing the changing fortunes in Japan after World War II, particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the chaotic ascendance of new money.

Adding to the broad-canvas effect is the book's peculiar nested format. The narrator is Ms. Mizumura (or a character by that name), who has heard the story from a traveler to Karuizawa who heard it from Taro's housekeeper. This convoluted structure allows the author to present the events that unfold as though they were a real-life chronicle of obsession and tragedy that marvelously takes the shape of great literature. "A True Novel" suggests that it isn't only writers who are influenced by timeless novels but also the forces of history itself.