What I've read lately:

Fire, by Kristin Cashore. The sequel to Graceling, on the iPad (thank you, Hennepin County Library). I did not like this one anywhere near as well as the first. It has major structural problems, and there's an awful lot of confused (and confusing) but essentially tedious military stuff. I like several of the characters, and I like the fact that one character who was initially shown as quite skeevy demonstrates the ability to grow into a decent human being, but mostly I was glad when I was done.

Silver Birch, by Dorothy Lyon. The prequel to Midnight Moon, and the author's first book, IIRC. Enjoyable.

Rook, by Daniel O'Malley. By the end, it fell somewhat off the peak of appreciation I referred to last week, but still worth reading. Notable for major Bechdel pass by a male author. A sequel is apparently forthcoming, and I look forward to reading it.

Retreat, Hell!, by W.E.B. Griffin, as an audiobook. The 10th and last (so far) of the Corps series. Ends a couple of ongoing plot threads, but leaves a bunch of others dangling. Apparently the author's son has taken up writing (or co-writing) in the existing series, so maybe a future book will wrap things up somewhat.

Seattle Sleuth, by Alex MacKenzie, on the iPhone. A detective novel set (obviously) in Seattle shortly after the end of WWI. This took me several tries to get started on -- I didn't so much bounce off of it as put it down and just pick up something else instead. (And it is no fault of the book or author that I don't like reading books on the Kindle for iPhone app as well as I do various ePub readers, but it was a factor.) This time I passed the hump and finished it. I liked the characters (including a couple of subsidiary ones), and the mystery plot was woven through nicely. Recommended, with the caveat that I found it a slow start.

Arrow, by R.J. Anderson. The third of the Faery Rebels books. Rather a sad book about a war waged by a megalomaniac faery and the havoc she wreaks. The eventual victory isn't quite pyrrhic, but much is lost in the process.

What I'm currently reading:

carried over from last week:
Battle Cry, by Leon Uris, as a kitchen book
The Silver Stallion, by James Branch Cabell, as a bathroom book. The sequel to Figures of Earth, and I definitely don't like it as well, at least so far (50 pages in).

Danse de la Folie, by Sherwood Smith, as an iPhone book. Who knew that Sherwood Smith (sartorias) wrote Regency romances? I hadn't, anyway. I bought it a couple of weeks ago when someone else recommended it, and am about a third of the way through. So far, at least, it's enjoyable but not at all transgressive -- it follows the mode of the genre rather than playing with it. But there's a lot of book left to read. (As long as I'm talking about book format, I'll mention that I purchased this one as an unlocked Kindle book, and I quite like the format of this one much better than the standard Kindle format.)

Tortall and Other Lands, by Tamora Pierce, on the iPad. Short stories set in the land of Tortall. I hadn't meant to start this one, but last night I couldn't sleep, and after finishing Fire, needed something else to read on the iPad -- and this was handy. I think I'll be virtuous and save the rest of the stories for later.

What I plan to read:

The Unknown Ajax, by Georgette Heyer. The next Heyer romance (alphabetically), for the iPhone. This one was delayed a week because I had file problems, but I now have a version that has all the missing italics.

Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy. It's next in the bedside queue. Really. No more library books. Well, maybe one.

Bitterblue, by Kristin Cashore. The third of the Graceling books, I've requested it from the library, but it hasn't come in yet. This one is only available in hard copy, whereas I read the other two as ebooks.

Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell, once I finish The Silver Stallion. And then I think I'll be done with Cabell.

What I've read lately:

Bluegrass Champion, by Dorothy Lyons. (Also published as Harlequin Hullabaloo; the cover the second title in parentheses, but that's the title that appears at the top of each verso. Weird.) A first read. I learned quite a bit about five-gaited horses from this book. Also that paint horses don't do well in horse shows. Unless they're special snowflakes like this one was.

The Sirens Sang of Murder, by Sarah Caudwell. The third of the Hilary Tamar books. Borrowed from Pat WINOLJ I don't know how long ago. Much more of a curate's egg than the first two books were. I remember the fourth as having some very unpleasant people, but a more enjoyable mystery, but it's been quite a while since I've read that one also.

Wayfarer, by R.J. Anderson. The sequel to Faery Rebels. I'm not sure I entirely like the way the worldbuilding went, but I enjoyed it enough to request the third from the library.

The Complete Spinning Book, by Candace Crockett. I've owned this book from long before I actually started spinning. Evidence would suggest that I bought it as a remainder (published in 1977). It's coffee-table size, and I noticed it in my oversized bookshelf this week and read it. Not a whole lot was new after five years of spinning experience, but there were some useful tidbits, and it was a generally enjoyable read. Interestingly, the only of the Usual Spinning Suspects mentioned in the book was Alden Amos (misspelled in the index as Allen Amos); I guess the publication date was too early for many of the other familiar names. The most interesting tidbit was the description and pictures of how a distaff can be used for spinning flax with a drop spindle.

Sylvester, Or The Wicked Uncle, by Georgette Heyer, read on the iPhone. Fluffy romance between a first-book author who parodies the ton in her novel and the man who is portrayed in said book as the villain -- and not surprisingly, takes it amiss.

What I'm currently reading:

carried over from last week:
Retreat, Hell!, as an audiobook
Figures of Earth, by James Branch Cabell, as a bathroom book (almost done)
Battle Cry, by Leon Uris, as a kitchen book

The Talisman Ring, by Georgette Heyer, as an iPhone book (almost done)

The Rook, by Daniel O'Malley. Someone in my spinning group recommended it to me, and the library had it in hard copy. I've only read the first couple of pages so far.

What I plan to read:

The Toll-Gate, by Georgette Heyer. The next Heyer romance (alphabetically), for the iPhone.

Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy. Still languishing. I really wish there were e-book versions of these.

Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son, by Lois Lowry. The first two came available as library e-books, so I should read them before they expire.

Backroom Boys, by Francis Spufford. On the iPad, so it'll only get read if I'm where the light is poor.

I really am trying to make a hole in the pile of physical books. So far, it's more like the Red Queen's Race. And I'll be at Escapade over a long weekend, so it'll mostly be e-books while I'm traveling.

Okay, I keep trying to keep track on LJ of what I've read, and I keep failing. So here's another try. Maybe other people doing it will remind me to keep it up.

What I've read lately:

Rivers of London (aka Midnight Riot), Moon Over Soho, and Whispers Under Ground by Ben Aaronovitch. Really enjoyed these urban fantasies in a modern-day London where the magic is hidden but starting to become more visible. I'm looking forward to the fourth one (which is due out sometime this year, I think).

Storm Front by Jim Butcher (the first of the Harry Dresden novels) because I wanted more of the same sort of thing. I enjoyed it enough to start the second one.

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, on Jo Walton's recommendation. The iPhone book for when I have a few minutes to read, especially waiting in line or waiting for the computer to stop crunching away. I did not enjoy it as much as she did, though I do see the charm. But too much of it felt like a town populated by people like Miss Bates, even though they're treated with affection.

Becoming a Tiger, by Susan McCarthy. A potato chip book, about how animals learn the things they need to be animals in the wild -- and how they can be taught entirely irrelevant things that researchers are interested in. From guppiecat.

The Xenogenesis trilogy (aka Lilith's Brood) -- Dawn, Imago, and Adulthood Rites. My previous bathroom books, in the read-through-the-unread paperbacks project. I only owned the first one, but the Hennepin County Library system had the other two in ebook format, and I read them on my old unconnected iPhone 3.

Hellspark, by Janet Kagan. The kitchen book that I recently finished. The nth reread of a book I love.

Sprig Muslin, by Georgette Heyer. Also an iPhone book. I bought all of Heyer's historical romances as ebooks when they were on sale for $2 each a couple of years ago, and have been rereading my way through them alphabetically by title. As you can see, I'm getting close to the end. This was frothy fluff, enjoyable but with a remarkably silly plot.

What I'm reading:

Retreat, Hell! as an audiobook. This is my current automobile and exercise book. It's the tenth and last of the Corps books by WEB Griffin (yes, I already listened to the previous nine). I've enjoyed these (I have the occasional low taste for military fiction), but I don't really approve the jump from mid-WWII to the Korean War.

Figures of Earth, by James Branch Cabell. My current bathroom book, in the read-through-the-unread paperbacks project. I hadn't read any Cabell before, and I'm enjoying it mildly. It's written in a heroic fairy tale mode. I don't know if I'll keep on with the other Cabell books I own; at the moment I'm about a quarter of the way through the book.

Battle Cry, by Leon Uris. My current kitchen book, which means I'll be at it for a long time. Pat WINOLJ recently returned it just as I finished Hellspark, and I had forgotten that, and thought I lost it somehow. The kitchen book really only gets read while I'm waiting for the microwave or the espresso maker or the toaster to finish its thing, so it's almost always a reread.

Sylvester, Or The Wicked Uncle, by Georgette Heyer. The current iPhone book. The female protagonist is an author, and is thoroughly cowed by her (admittedly awful)stepmother, both of which are unusual in Heyer heroines.

The Winter Prince, by Elizabeth Wein. When I was in Uncle Hugo's, I had some credit to spend, and having just read Code Name Verity, I picked up a couple of her older novels. This one is from 1993, and is Arthurian, with Mordred as the viewpoint character. I'm only a few pages in.

Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher. The second Harry Dresden book, which I started on my iPad when the restaurant I was at turned out to be too dark to read a conventional book comfortably.

What I plan to read:

Red Embers, by Dorothy Lyons. I loved her horse books when I was young, and discovered that there were a few I'd never read, and requested them from interlibrary loan. This one just arrived, so it gets to jump the queue, but I haven't actually started it yet, because of the aforementioned dark restaurant.

Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy. I got the three-novel omnibus from the library via interlibrary loan, and only made it through the first two books before I had to return the book -- ILL books aren't renewable. I found an affordable used copy for sale online, and it recently arrived, so that's probably next in the queue. It's thick enough that it doesn't travel well, though. It'd be a great candidate for an ebook version.

I have an iPhone 3. It's running iOS 4.2.1. When I tried to update it to iOS 5 several months ago, I got an error message saying that iOS 5 isn't compatible with this model of iPhone. Okay, I can live with that.

But yesterday, I did something stupid. I had been refraining from updating apps on my iPhone because I was afraid the newer versions of apps wouldn't work on the older OS. Then I tried to install the brand-new Living Social app, and got an error message saying that I needed at least iOS 4.3. Okay, I said to myself, these apps are smart enough to know whether they're compatible or not, so I can update things after all.

And after I did that, Stanza (my e-book reader of choice) didn't work anymore. When I select it, it appears to open, but then it bounces back to the main screen. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, and that didn't help. I have to assume that the later version isn't compatible with my iPhone.

So -- is there some way to install an earlier version of an iPhone app? Or is only the latest and greatest (which seems to be incompatible with my iPhone 3) available out there in the cloud?

And approach two: While erikvolson provided the good news that Stanza still works in iOS 6, I do realize that its days are numbered, and I need to prepare for the evil day. The thing I like the most about Stanza is that I can control the way paragraphs appear -- I want them to be ragged right, no space between paragraphs, and indented. With Stanza, I can do that in the formatting options. It occurs to me, however, that ePub documents are editable. I've fiddled a bit with Sigil, which is a free ePub editor, but I don't really have a handle on how to do anything other than minor text editing. I suspect what I want is a basic style sheet that says plain text appears this way and not that way. Because I have certainly seen e-books with the kind of formatting I want, even if BlueNote and iBooks don't display that way by default.

1. Is this a reasonable approach?

2. Is there someone who would be willing to walk me through things, point me to a tutorial, or knock up a style sheet for me? I'm familar with them from Word (even if dd_b insist that they aren't real style sheets), but my HTML skills are pretty rudimentary -- and my CSS skills are nonexistent.

Help or advice appreciated.

This book is subtitled "A Practical Guide by Miss Edythe McFate," as told to Lesley M.M. Blume. And Miss Edythe is the voice of the book, which is written as a nonfiction guide to the nature of fairy folk, plus eight short tales of children who encountered various fairies, mostly to their detriment. The reading level is more middle-grade than YA, I think.

It's a quick read that I finished in an evening, and I think both children and adults would enjoy it. I also suspect that this would hold up well to being read aloud. It's creepy and charming, at the same time. It's illustrated by David Foote, and the illustrations complement the content very well.

All in all, an impressive thing that doesn't fit into any standard category.

The second of my random YA ARCs from The Gathering at Wiscon.

Flight of the Outcast by Brad Strickland is supposed to be the first of The Academy series, but so far it's the only one. Unlike most of the ARCs, this one is straight SF space opera. Thirteen-year-old Asteria is the only daughter of a Spacefleet veteran who lives alone on his farm -- on a planet otherwise peopled by religious zealots -- except for his daughter and a male cousin. The male cousin has an appointment to Spacefleet Academy, until a Raider attack takes out the father and the cousin. With nowhere else to go and revenge in mind, Asteria manages to use her cousin's appointment for herself.

That's the first quarter of the book. The rest of the book details the first year at the Academy, with much emphasis on the stratification of society between the Aristocrats and the Commoners.

This isn't a bad book, though it's awfully ploddy, with lots of poorly disguised infodumps. I did look to see if the second book was out yet, even. The main problem is that this book is not about 13-year-olds, even if that's their alleged age. It's written as if the characters are all in their late teens, except without the complications of sex that would normally arise if that were the case. The characters are all too skilled, too athletic, and too damned mature for their ages.

Another one that I don't plan to keep, though the one reading was enjoyable enough.