I "picked up" a new book on Friday titled, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Despite going on a campout this weekend, I still found time to read it, and I'm about half way thorugh it. With the exception of a couple of places where the language is a bit much for me, I've enjoyed the book.

I say "picked up" because I acutally downloaded the book and I'm reading it on my palm. Doctorow is experimenting with this book by releasing it into the public not only as a phyiscal book, but also as an electronic book for anybody to read. Here's what he's said about this approach:

"Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" is my first novel. It's an actual, no-foolin' words-on-paper book, published by the good people at Tor Books in New York City. You can buy this book in stores or online, by following links like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765304368/downandoutint-20

So, what's with this file? Good question.

I'm releasing the entire text of this book as a free, freely redistributable e-book. You can download it, put it on a P2P net, put it on your site, email it to a friend, and, if you're addicted to dead trees, you can even print it.

Why am I doing this thing? Well, it's a long story, but to shorten it up: first-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don't have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth. I'm not bad at word-of-mouth. I have a blog, Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net), where I do a lot of word-of-mouthing. I compulsively tell friends and strangers about things that I like.

And telling people about stuff I like is way, way easier if I can just send it to 'em. Way easier.

So, with that, let me tell you a bit about the book itself.

Set in a future where there is no death, and people make backups of themselves in the event that they die for whatever reason, this book find the main character trying to track down the people that kill him towards the beginning of the book.

Personally, while I'm half way through the book, and don't know the ending (and don't spoil it for me!), I don't believe that the people that he thinks killed him actually did. Too convienent. Who do I think killed him....I don't want to spoil it for others...but there seems to be a really likely suspect in one of the people close to him.

The book itself is a good read. The plot flows easily from one scene to another, and everytime I put it down, I get the itch to pick it up again. The telltale sign of a good book is that it nags you to finish it when you have other things to do. Using just this criteria, Down and Out is a really good book. I want to sluff work and go sit down somewhere and read it.

Overall I'd give the whole thing (so far) an 8 on a 10 point scale.

I've changed the look of my Work Blog....in anticipation I may change the look of all my others as well.

David Cline and I were talking about a cool way to organize emails just last week, and then this blog entry goes and talks about it more. If they are going to be one the stake, then I'll be there too.

The only problem that I saw with the utilities that he talks about is that they are focused on the Mac.

I figured out how to subscribe to a password protected feed using news reader.

     http://username:password@hostname-url