• Memory - I think this may be my favorite novel of the series. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have nearly the same impact if you started here. This book is a culmination, a real turning point for both the character of Miles and the series as a whole. Up until now, Miles has led a dual life, and for the most part, he's gotten away with it. But the chickens come home to roost in this novel, and Miles has to make some hard choices. Like all the best Vorkosigan novels, seemingly nothing goes right in the first portion of the story. I keep thinking to myself: This is wrong! Or No, you idiot! Fortunately, Bujold knows what she's doing. Miles falters in the beginning, but starts to pick himself back up, and watching him grow, watching him finally accept and acknowledge his identity, his true identity, makes for a wonderful story (this is primarily why new readers might not wholly get it). Oh sure, there's lots of intrigue and conspiracy and of course Miles is in the center of it all, but that's the norm for him. What's new is that he doesn't retreat to his normal crutches (er, not after the beginning anyway), and instead forges a new path for himself.
  
  Also notable here is the setting of Barrayar, which becomes more complex and real to me every time I see it. Sometimes it seems like every science fiction planet has their own monoculture (or monoclimate), but Barrayar is fully realized, with distinct differences between rural and city areas, and multiple political factions, etc... It helps that the planet is populated with a veritable plethora of familiar and likeable side characters (another reason the book probably wouldn't resonate with new readers). In particular, it's fun to see a different side of Illyan, who up until now has been something of an inscrutable spymaster (though we do see him when he's much younger too). There's even a callback to my other favorite Vorkosigan story, The Mountains of Morning - Miles visits Silvy Vale again, to find that things have changed there, in no small part because of his previous efforts. It's a turning point for Miles in this story, and thus a turning point for the whole series.
• Komarr - In this book, Miles and one of the Emperor's other Imperial Auditors visits one of the other two planets in the Barrayaran Imperium to investigate an engineering disaster. It looks pretty straightforward at first, but seeing as though Miles is involved, things get hairy pretty quickly. There are a few things that really set this book apart, and one is that half the book is written from Ekaterin Vorsoisson's perspective. She's the niece of Miles' Imperial Auditor colleague, and she's married to a minor Vor lord and administrator on the planet. This is a relatively new direction for the series, which has often relied on Miles as detective, but this time, it's his official role. I won't say much about the mystery in question, except that it's pretty well plotted and interesting. The real strength of this book is Ekaterin, who's in a pretty rough situation, and things get worse for her as time goes on. Miles and Ekaterin actually develop an interesting relationship here, and there's a moment about halfway through the book where they have a minor adventure when shopping, and it forces Miles to have flashback to his Dendarii days - it's actually a callback to one of the novellas from Borders of Infinity, and it totally explains something that I never quite got when I was reading that story. It's one of those moments when all the pieces unexpectedly come together... for something you never even realized was an issue. It makes me wonder about the degree to which Bujold had planned out the series. In any case, this is an interesting book. I wouldn't say that it's better than Memory, but it's solid in its own right, and it's an interesting direction for the series. Miles is still growing into his new role, and finding that his Impsec habits die hard (and that's a good thing, too, as his many varied experiences serve him well in his new job).
• A Civil Campaign - You wouldn't think a book whose centerpiece is a (disastrous) dinner party would have very high stakes, but, well, here we are. Oh, and the conclusion of the story hinges off of... a democratic vote. Yeah, from the outside, this doesn't seem like much, especially in a series that has previously centered on military action and espionage, but it's actually quite involving because it's a big character piece. The points of view in this book expand from Miles and Ekaterin to also include Mark Vorkosigan, Kareen Koudelka, and even Ivan Vorpatril. Like Memory, we're on Barrayar here, so there's a huge cast of well established side characters making appearances, along with a bevy of new ones, including even some folk of the Vorrutyer clan who have been villains in previous books, but this time around, there are a couple that are, uh, maybe not good guys, but certainly better than the alternatives! It's another change of pace for the series, and the Romantic angle which has been building since Memory seems to have picked up a lot of steam. The books starts a bit on the slow side, but once you get to that ill-fated dinner party, which is hysterically funny by the way, things pick up considerably, making this among my favorite of the books in the series. Actually, the grand majority of the book is funny, probably making this more of a comedy than previous books in the series. Where Memory was all about Miles, this book seems more about Ekaterin. Her character underwent a lot of changes in Komarr too, but she's really the one that is driving everything this time around. This book really does a lot, but Bujold manages to juggle all the various storylines well, and make it all seem natural and balanced. Excellent book.
• Winterfair Gifts - This is a short story that depicts Miles' wedding on Barrayar. The Dendarii mercenaries (sans Elli Quinn, for obvious reasons) have arrived for the wedding, but Lady Ekaterin has mysteriously fallen ill... The story is told entirely from Armsman Roic's POV, which is a neat touch. We've seen him a bit in the previous novel, but he really gets a chance to shine here. Indeed, there's even something of a romantic subplot with him and Taura, the 8 foot tall, genetically modified Dendarii mercenary with fierce, catlike features. Roic, being a Barrayaran, has a prejudice against women soldiers and "mutants", of which Taura certainly qualifies. But he quickly reverses position. It's not really the focus of the story, and it was pretty clear that nothing much would come of this because of Taura's unnaturally short lifespan, but it was a nice touch. The mystery the two of them solve is pretty neato too. All in all, it's a really pleasant story, and it was really nice to get updates on the Dendarii folk, who had been pretty absent from the recent books. If you're reading the series, don't skip this one because it's "just" a short story. It's a lot of fun.
• Diplomatic Immunity - As I tweeted when I was reading this, I tried really hard to resist the "urge to constantly scream the title like the South African guy from Lethal Weapon 2". Of course, I failed miserably, and yes, I just kinda screamed it right now. Anywho, after the previous four books in the series, which were all superb, I think this one probably represents a bit of step backwards. Not bad at all, just not quite at the level of the previous few books. It does take a little while to get started, but once the nature of the conflict starts to become clear, it becomes incredibly tense and thrilling. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the conclusion happens "off screen" as it were, and we find out that Ekaterin saves the day in Miles' stead (I'd like to have seem more from Ekaterin's perspective in this one). On the other hand, we do get to hang out with Bel Thorne again, which is awesome, and Bujold's writing is still wonderful and absurdly funny at times. I don't want to talk much about the plot here, as it is interesting (you'll probably have to have read Cetaganda before this one for the ending to really have a good impact) and despite not being my favorite Vorkosigan book, it's still better than average SF mystery! It's one of those weird things. Miles manages to foil a galaxy-wide conspiracy plot that could have potentially lead to war... yet it seems like there is less at stake here than in A Civil Campaign!
• Cryoburn - Like Diplomatic Immunity, this one suffers a bit from reduced stakes. Bujold manages to work around this by adding the POV of Jin, an 11 year old kid at the heart of the conspiracy that Miles is uncovering. But the book takes place on Kibou-daini, a planet that we've never heard of before (most of the other planets in Bujold's universe are mentioned and foreshadowed in other books before a story gets set there), and the only familiar face we run into is Armsman Roic (who is indeed awesome!) A few others show up later in the story, and we see some communiques from Ekaterin and Gregor and the like, and we hear a little about Miles' kids, but for the most part, it's all new characters. Fortunately, the new folks are pretty great in their own right, and the story here is also rather interesting, which I think elevates this above Diplomatic Immunity, even if it doesn't quite reach the heights of some other installments. Ironically, despite being the latest novel published (and the latest in terms of the chronology), this might make a decent entry into the series, which is rather strange, and of course, everything you'd read after this would be prequel, so I wouldn't recommend it, but I suspect that's why this managed to garner a Hugo nomination... Anyway, I had a ton of fun with this, but there was something about it that felt strange. Not bad, but it's like Miles has become so powerful in his old age. He's done all the growth he's needed to do. It's like he's maxed out his levels in an RPG and so most enemies don't really represent a threat to him... so while I enjoyed the story, I never quite feared that he wouldn't manage to pull it all off in style, which, of course, he does. There's nothing really wrong with that, and again, I really had a lot of fun with the book, it's just another that isn't really top tier stuff (though Bujold's writing is tight as ever). The very end of Cryoburn, after the story proper has been resolved, seems a bit rushed for what it represents. There's a bit of a tragedy there, but not an unexpected one, and indeed, Bujold laid the hints on pretty thickly in the preceding chapters, though I didn't quite recognize that for what it was. It makes for a fitting end to the series, though I'm sure there are plenty other stories that could be told as well (and indeed, Bujold has written a tale centering around Ivan that will be out later this year).

"Sure, we don't have jetpacks, or live on the moon. But you wouldn't *believe* how fast we can infringe copyright."

— Avery Edison (@aedison) April 30, 2012

A Chipotle has opened next to Pink's Hot Dogs in Los Angeles, fulfilling this city's dream of a diarrhea district.

— Gerry Duggan (@GerryDuggan) April 22, 2012

Trackpads are ideal for people with a tendril emerging from the chest, which I kinda wish I had for reasons entirely unrelated to trackpads.

— Dave (@earlypaintbrush) March 4, 2012

Spent yesterday building a giant hamster wheel.

— Neal Stephenson (@nealstephenson) April 22, 2012

A girl once told me that peeling the labels off beer bottles was a sign that I was sexually frustrated. "So is this," I said, then sobbed.

— Zachary Johnson (@Zucherman) April 18, 2012

If I ever run into the kid that plays that prick Joffrey on Game of Thrones, I'm sorry - I'm beating the shit out of him.

— Aziz Ansari (@azizansari) April 7, 2012

I'm sure "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" will be fun, but still seems like a ripoff of my "Grover Cleveland: Mummy Puncher."

— BillCorbett (@BillCorbett) December 16, 2011

→ should produce a totally bitchin' unicode tiger instead of a stupid right arrow.

— Jeff Atwood (@codinghorror) February 19, 2012

"Well sir I'd say my weaknesses are I work too hard sometimes & also I murdered all those teen runaways." --near-miss job interview answer

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) April 29, 2012

• Summer Wars - From the team that brought us The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I had high hopes for this one, and for the most part, it hits the mark (the Otakusphere also seems pretty enamored with it). It certainly inherits the former film's knack for good pacing, and it displays a good balance between simple, heartfelt drama and more fantastical framing elements. In this case, the drama is derived from our math nerd hero Kenji and his schoolboy crush on Natsuki. When Natsuki makes a cryptic request for help during summer vacation, Kenji jumps at the opportunity. It seems Natsuki is from an influential, if not particularly wealthy family, and they're all gathering together to celebrate the matriarch's 90th birthday. Natsuki wants Kenji to pretend to be her fiance in order to please her grandmother. This side of the story makes for a sorta comedy of errors, with a stack of misfortune continually piling up on Kenji, until he starts to fight back.
  
  The more fantastical element of the story is a ridiculously connected social network called Oz. It is very reminiscent of Stephenson's Metaverse from Snow Crash, though I guess you could say that Oz is what Second Life wishes it could be... and it's also an object lesson on why such a centralized system is improbable and foolish. As portrayed in the movie, Oz has over billion users, and the system provides an infrastructure for all aspects of life, from commerce and banking to socializing and gaming to government services. It's a comprehensive network, and it can be accessed from just about anywhere (i.e. computers, phones, televisions, other appliances, etc...). And it's centralized, so when something goes wrong, things get reallly hairy out here in meatspace.
  
  The crux of the story arises when Kenji, who spends his free time as an admin in Oz, gets a mysterious message consisting entirely of a sequence of numbers. Being a math nerd who is clearly in over his head when pretending to be Natsuki's fiance, he relishes the opportunity to solve a more orderly problem, which he does. But then, something bad starts to happen. It seems that the problem he solved has allowed someone to start hacking Oz accounts... using Kenji's avatar (I won't discuss exactly who this is, but I will say that it fits with the Japanese relationship with technology... and in this case, of course, it's all the fault of Americans). This does not improve his reputation with Natsuki's family.
  
  I won't get into more details after that, but it's a really fun story. If, that is, you can get past the absurdity of Oz's overly-connected monopoly on life. I have to admit that the premise of Oz bothered me at first, but once I got past that, things proceeded well from there. We're treated to a very nice family dynamic, including the wonderful grandmother character, who utilizes her own low-tech social network to bring her family (and perhaps the country) together during a crisis. The romance at the heart of the story is well done, as is the conflict in Oz. Visually, it's a gorgeous and inventive movie, and that certainly helps with the pacing. Overall, it totally won me over, despite some misgivings at the heart of the premise. ***
• Sword of the Stranger - This is a movie that I don't really remember adding to my queue (nor where I saw the recommendation, as it's not typical Otakusphere material, and thus I can't find any real references to it there), but I'm glad I did, as it ended up being a very entertaining, if a bit harrowing, experience. The story is rather simplistic: a young Japanese boy named Kotaro is being hunted by a group of Chinese swordsmen for mysterious reasons. While fleeing, Kotaro and his dog run across a nameless Ronin, and a... fatherly? brotherly? relationship develops between them. The Ronin is quite talented, but is haunted by a life of violence, and does not want to fight. As the villains close in on our heroes, he has to make a choice: flee or fight?
  
  So it's a premise that isn't expanding any horizons, but the visual style of the film and the way the action sequences are constructed certainly make up for any shortcomings on the story front. That being said, I did find the villains interesting, as well as the nationalities of various characters. There are Chinese in the film, and I believe they're speaking in both Mandarin and Japanese at times (not really that familiar with either language, but that's the impression I got), and then there's the "Western" swordsman who travels with the villains. He's a force of nature, taking on all comers, but often bored by their paltry resistance. His goal seems less focused on hunting down the child than on finding a worthy opponent (which he does, in the form of the aforementioned Ronin). Again, not sure what the significance of all these nationalities means, but I feel like there's probably something there. It is quite a graphically violent movie, bloody and grim at times, especially towards the end of the film, but the movie does an excellent job establishing stakes and putting our heroes through their paces. ***
• Paprika - Another movie that doesn't seem to appear much in the Otakusphere, and again, I don't remember where I found the recommendation. I have mixed feelings about the movie, and I have to admit that I may not have given it an entirely fair shake. I watched it in two sittings, with the first one being late at night when I probably wasn't in any condition to give the film the level of attention it warrants. It's basically about how a new psychological device allows people to enter into one another's dreams, and then how that technology starts to break down. Paprika is one of the characters avatars, a redheaded superhero in the world of dreams, but a straightlaced psychologist out here in the real world. The film is visually spectacular, but the blurry line between dreams and reality gets to be a bit bewildering. You can almost never tell where you are or what's really going on. Again, I feel like this is a movie that demands multiple viewings (or at least, a more attentive viewing than I gave it) in order to break down what's really happening. My initial reaction was one of interest that was ultimately not very well fulfilled. I enjoyed my time with the movie and was never bored, but I wasn't particularly blown away by the story, which seemed fragmented and unclear.
  
  The film was apparently a big influence on Christopher Nolan's Inception, and there may be some common DNA between the two films, but Paprika's dreams are decidedly more dreamlike (i.e. uncanny and shifting and strange). There are some visual motifs that probably demand some sort of symbolic analysis, but again, I wasn't really up to that task upon first viewing. Again, we've got a story that explores Japan's uncomfortable relationship with technology, a theme that seems to run across a lot of postwar Japanese films and television (for obvious reasons, though this movie doesn't resort to direct mushroom cloud symbolism or anything). Ultimately, I'm not entirely sure the film worked for me, but even if it didn't, I'm still impressed by the ambition here. Call it an interesting failure at worst, and it may be even better than I'm making it out to be. It's certainly a movie I'd like to check out again sometime... At the very least, they tried to do a lot of interesting things!

• The Display - The electronic ink display that the basic Kindles use is fantastic... for reading text. Once you get beyond simple text, things are a little less fantastic. Things like diagrams, artwork, and photography aren't well represented in e-ink, and even in color readers (like the iPad or Kindle Fire), there are issues with resolution and formatting that often show up in eBooks. Much of this comes down to technology and cost, both of which are improving quickly. Once stuff like IMOD displays start to deliver on their promise (low power consumption, full color, readable in sunlight, easy on the eyes, capable of supporting video, etc...), we should see a new breed of reader.
  
  I'm not entirely sure how well this type of display will work, at least initially. For instance, how will it compare to the iPad 3's display? What's the resolution like? How much will it cost? And so on. Current implementations aren't full color, and I suspect that future iterations will go through a phase where the tech isn't quite there yet... but I think it will be good enough to move forward. I think Amazon will most certainly jump on this technology when it becomes feasible (both from a technical and cost perspective). I'm not sure if Apple would switch though. I feel like they'd want a much more robust and established display before they committed.
• General Metrics and Metadata - While everyone would appreciate improvements in device displays, I'm not sure how important this would be. Maybe it's just me, but I'd love to see a lot more in the way of metadata and flexibility, both about the book and about device usage. With respect to the book itself, this gets to the whole page number issue I was whinging about in my previous post, but it's more than that. I'd love to see a statistical analysis of what I'm reading, on both individual and collective levels.
  
  I'm not entirely sure what this looks like, but it doesn't need to be rocket science. Simple Flesch-Kincaid grades seems like an easy enough place to start, and it would be pretty simple to implement. Calculating such things for my entire library (or a subset of my library), or ranking my library by grade (or similar sorting methods) would be interesting. I don't know that this would provide a huge amount of value, but I would personally find it very illuminating and fun to play around with... and it would be very easy to implement. Individual works wouldn't even require any processing power on the reader, it could be part of the download. Doing calculations of your collective library might be a little more complicated, but even that could probably be done in the cloud.
  
  Other metadata would also be interesting to view. For example, Goodreads will graph your recently read books by year of publication - a lot of analysis could be done about your collection (or a sub-grouping of your collection) of books along those lines. Groupings by decade or genre or reading level, all would be very interesting to know.
• Personal Metrics and Metadata - Basically, I'd like to have a way to track my reading speed. For whatever reason, this is something I'm always trying to figure out for myself. I've never gone through the process of actually recording my reading habits and speeds because it would be tedious and manual and maybe not even all that accurate. But now that I'm reading books in an electronic format, there's no reason why the reader couldn't keep track of what I'm reading, when I'm reading, and how fast I'm reading. My anecdotal experience suggests that I read anywhere from 20-50 pages an hour, depending mostly on the book. As mentioned in the previous post, a lot of this has to do with the arbitrary nature of page numbers, so perhaps standardizing to a better metric (words per minute or something like that) would normalize my reading speed.
  
  Knowing my reading speed and graphing changes over time could be illuminating. I've played around a bit with speed reading software, and the results are interesting, but not drastic. In any case, one thing that would be really interesting to know when reading a book would be how much time you have left before you finish. Instead of having 200 pages, maybe you have 8 hours of reading time left.
  
  Combining my personal data with the general data could also yield some interesting results. Maybe I read trashy SF written before 1970 much faster than more contemporary literary fiction. Maybe I read long books faster than short books. There are a lot of possibilities here.
  
  There are a few catches to this whole personal metrics thing though. You'd need a way to account for breaks and interruptions. I might spend three hours reading tonight, but I'm sure I'll take a break to get a glass of water or answer a phone call, etc... There's not really an easy way around this, though there could be mitigating factors like when the reader goes to sleep mode or something like that. Another problem is that one device can be used by multiple people, which would require some sort of profile system. That might be fine, but it also adds a layer of complexity to the interface that I'm sure most companies would like to avoid. The biggest and most concerning potential issue is that of privacy. I'd love to see this information about myself, but would I want Amazon to have access to it? On the other hand, being able to aggregate data from all Kindles might prove interesting in its own right. Things like average reading speed, number of books read in a year, and so on. All interesting and useful info.
  
  This would require an openness and flexibility that Amazon has not yet demonstrated. It's encouraging that the Kindle Fire runs a flavor of Android (an open source OS), but on the other hand, it's a forked version that I'm sure isn't as free (as in speech) as I'd like (and from what I know, the Fire is partially limited by its hardware). Expecting comprehensive privacy controls from Amazon seems naive.
  
  I'd like to think that these metrics would be desirable to a large audience of readers, but I really have no inclination what the mass market appeal would be. It's something I'd actually like to see in a lot of other places too. Video games, for instance, provide a lot of opportunity for statistics, and some games provide a huge amount of data on your gaming habits (be it online or in a single player mode). Heck, half the fun of sports games (or sports in general) is tracking the progress of your players (particularly prospects). Other games provide a lack of depth that is most baffling. People should be playing meta-games like Fantasy Baseball, but with MLB The Show providing the data instead of real life.
• The Gamification of Reading - Much of the above wanking about metrics could probably be summarized as a way to make reading a game. The metrics mentioned above readily lend themselves to point scores, social-app-like badges, and leaderboards. I don't know that this would necessarily be a good thing, but it could make for an intriguing system. There's an interesting psychology at work in systems like this, and I'd be curious to see if someone like Amazon could make reading more addictive. Assuming most people don't try to abuse the system (though there will always be a cohort that will attempt to exploit stuff like this), it could ultimately lead to beneficial effects for individuals who "play" the game competitively with their friends. Again, this isn't necessarily a good thing. Perhaps the gamification of reading will lead to a sacrifice of comprehension in the name of speed, or other mitigating effects. Still, it would be nice to see the "gamification of everything" used for something other than a way for companies to trick customers into buying their products.

Watching Zone Troopers, you get the feeling that it's accidentally ten times better than it's meant to be. The plot and dialogue seem like they were written on a comic shop toilet stall: Four likeable WWII soldiers named things like "Sarge" and "Mittens" stumble across enemy lines and the Reich's most carefully guarded discovery: a massive interplanetary spacecraft. One of its pilots has escaped unharmed, and joins our boys in a full-metal lazer-battle against Hitler's lil' shits. We even get to see Eva Braun's boyfriend get smacked straight in the kisser!

• The hardware is reasonably nice. The electronic ink display is perfect for reading. It's a little heavy, but not much more than a typical mass-market paperback, and about on part with a medium sized trade paperback. That being said, it's much less awkward to hold, as you don't have to fight the binding to keep the book open. On the other hand, the touch interface isn't quite as responsive as I'd like. Not sure if this is due to the E Ink or processor power (or perhaps a bit of both). It takes some getting used to, but it works well enough. On rare occasions I'll accidentally flip past too many pages quickly, but that doesn't really happen enough to call it a real issue. All in all, it's a quality device, and I'm pretty happy with it from a hardware standpoint.
• The interface is sparing and easy to intuitively use, with the only real exception being the aforementioned lack of responsiveness on the touchscreen, which takes some getting used to. But I do love the ability to search, highlight, and annotate my books (especially non-fiction). For years I've wanted to do a "CTRL F" on a book, and now I can do so easily (in the past, Google books was often helpful, though not consistent in this respect).
• The lack of page numbers. Hoo boy, the lack of page numbers. This is the one that makes me feel like a bit of a curmudgeonly dweeb, but I reallly miss page numbers. Oh sure, half the time I'm converting page numbers to the percentage complete and the concept of one "page" is elastic and arbitrary in the extreme (for example, compare 1 page in Gravity's Rainbow to 1 page in Harry Potter - ostensibly the same measurement, but thanks to font size, line spacing, and margins, you'd probably have to read 3-4 pages of Harry Potter to equal 1 page of Gravity's Rainbow, and that's just from a words on the page perspective, not a literary value or density of ideas perspective), but I like page numbers. I don't think this really qualifies me as a luddite, but perhaps I am a bit of a crackpot. Still, I really miss page numbers, and the worst part is that on many occasions, the book will have page numbers available, they just aren't displayed by default. What you get by default is just the percentage complete and the mystical "Location" number which kinda/sorta makes sense, but is still inferior to page numbers. Maybe this is all just a frame of reference thing and I'll get used to it, but it's been a few months, and neither Location or Percentage really strike the right cord with me. This is completely a perception thing. I want to feel like I'm making progress and percentage doesn't increment often enough for that... On the other hand, the location increments too much as you read, making it hard to wrap my head around. All of this would be a moot point if Amazon would just let us modify the interface (for all I know, they do, but it's not obvious where). I know this is an old argument and I don't want to start a holy war here, but for crying out loud, it's obvious that there is a segment of Kindle consumers who fucking hate location and percentage and just want page numbers, why can't Amazon just let us choose what we want displayed?
• Amazon sure does make it easy to purchase new books and send them to your Kindle. The issue, of course, is that I'm not locked into Amazon's proprietary format/store. Other stores are hit and miss as to whether or not they work with the Kindle. Baen books works, and will even email the file to your Kindle for you (which is nice). But Baen books is awesome like that (leave it to the hardcore SF publisher to embrace open formats and systems - the grand majority of Bujold's library is available for free online, but I bought from their store anyway, because I want to support them and Bujold). Google's new bookstore doesn't work with Kindle, nor does Barnes & Noble. So far, this hasn't been a disaster, I just hate the notion of DRM systems and being locked down. At least Amazon seems to have made kindle readers for almost every conceivable device, so there is that. I haven't played around enough to see how well all these different readers work, etc...
• For the most part, I don't really miss having a hard copy of most books. There are definitely books I plan to purchase a physical copy of in the near future (*ahem* at least a couple of these) and I suppose there is a benefit to the physical copy that you don't get out of a digital copy, but I'm generally a pragmatic guy, and the pros seem to outweigh the cons. Steven Ray Orr makes a pretty good case for physical books, but also seems to be embracing digital copies, like me:

  Each book and every bookshelf is a biography of the owner. If you were to explore mine, a great deal would be revealed. The obvious: science fiction, Stephen King, and political theory dominate my history; and the aesthetic of a collection is more important than strict organization.1 The odd: Twilight sits upon a stack of feminist thought; at least four Bibles line the shelves, amidsts athiest manifestos and Christian scholarship; and there is an Atari 2600 gathering dust and taking up precious space.
  
  And then the books themselves, holding more than the author’s intended words with stories added by each reader: God Emperor of Dune is dog-earred on every third page; Twilight has been defaced, all red pen and hate; and numerous novels are bookmarked with old receipts or gum wrappers, indications of unsuccessful attempts.

  And it's true, though I think at least half of my books are squirreled away in boxes in my basement. Still, I really love that my copy of LotR is a box set bought from the Scholastic catalog in gradeschool (and that the paper is yellowing and becoming brittle with age - Jesus, those things are going on 20-25 years old now...) and I like having some reference books and whatnot available, not to mention books from my favorite authors. Like Steven says, your books say a lot about you... and we all know it. I don't think I consciously rearrange my shelves to make me seem like someone I'm not, but if I don't like a book, chances are I'm not going to want to see it often and it will thus be banished to the boxes in the basement. But if I do like it, I'll probably keep it visible.
  
  I haven't gotten to a point where I've started buying physical books that I've read digitally, but apparently this happens somewhat frequently. It's what Eric S. Raymond calls an Identity Good:

  An identity good is something people buy to express their tie to a group or category they belong to or would like to belong to. People buy The New Hacker's Dictionary because they are, or want to be, the kind of person they think should own a copy of it.

  Interestingly, Eric is writing about how posting free copies of his books online has helped his physical book sales... in part because he tends to write books that people want to be identified with.

  I would go so far as to predict that any book (or movie, or CD) that functions as an identity good will tend to sell more rather than less after Web exposure. All three of my in-print books happen to be identity goods rather strongly, for slightly different but overlapping populations.

  Now, I do find this interesting, because I'm probably more willing to try something out that goes against my grain in a digital version. Is that because it's then not sitting on my shelf? Maybe, and maybe the lack of physicality makes it seem like less of an investment. I'll have to pay attention to this going forward...
• The selection of books available on Kindle seems reasonable until you start to get obscure... and unfortunately, the obscure stuff is what I really want to get after. Some classics in various specialized fields have made their way to Kindle versions (The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware are two great, long out-of-print examples), and that's wonderful. But there are tons of things I want to read that are out of print but unavailable on Kindle. I know that there is some work involved in digitizing books, but it's not a huge effort - tons of folks have undertaken projects like this will plenty of success. And this is before you even get to the dumb slap-fights that Amazon is constantly getting into with the publishers. This isn't meant to come down on one side of the issue, because everyone is to blame here, and at this point, I feel like the publishers are being a little too cagey for their own good. Especially now that you get all these rather odd situations in which the ebook costs more than the actual book itself. How does that work? It's a naked money grab, and everyone knows it. Of course, publishers should be able to set their prices to what they want, but it's patently absurd to claim that the exact same content somehow possesses more value when it's published with little to no overhead (i.e. no materials, printing, etc... neeeded). Publishers make a lot more money on an ebook version, even when it's cheaper than a paperback (and notably, most of the time, that extra profit is not making its way to the author). Most of the time, the books are priced reasonably (or at least cheaper than the print versions), but maybe publishers should be a little less money-grubbing. Again, it's not like readers are entitled to cheaper prices on everything all the time, but that is part of the promise of digital books in the first place. It just makes no sense that an ebook would ever cost more than a physical copy (unless we're talking about a used copy or something)... This is one issue in which I tend to agree with Nicholas Carr on, and he has some interesting ideas about the ideal consumer need:

  Buy the atoms, get the bits free. That just feels right - in tune with the universe, somehow.
  
  There's a lesson here, I think, for book publishers. Readers today are forced to choose between buying a physical book or an ebook, but a lot of them would really like to have both on hand - so they'd be able, for instance, to curl up with the print edition while at home (and keep it on their shelves) but also be able to load the ebook onto their e-reader when they go on a trip.

  It's a well thought out argument and I'd love it if that was ever implemented, but I'm not holding my breath either. It's too much of a cash cow for publishers, who are probably struggling these days (another reason to perhaps not be too upset at ebook pricing) and won't see the consumer delight in getting booth a physical and electronic book in a single purchase as being enough of a benefit for them...

• The Wind Through the Keyhole: A Dark Tower Novel by Stephen King (4/24/12)- I just found out about this one... Apparently Stephen King is returning to his Dark Tower series and doing another quasi-prequel... actually ,it's a sorta sequel to the oddly placed yet strangely compelling Wizard and Glass, a novel I now consider one of my favorites in the series. That book sorta told the origin story of Roland the Gunslinger, and this one sorta continues his early adventures. Stephen King has never been one of my favorite authors, but I'm on board for this one...
• The Mongoliad: Book One (The Foreworld Saga) by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and others (4/24/12) - I've written about this experiment before, and to be sure, most of this content is already available, as it was serialized via custom apps on various mobile devices, but they're now collecting the first completed story in a paperback... I played around with the iPhone app, but never purchased a "subscription" as the concept of serialized books does not really appeal to me (heck, I'm the guy that doesn't catch up with TV series until the season is over), but I'd like to check out a completed story.
• Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi (6/5/12) - I have to admit that I find the title of this sorta kitschy, but I always find myself entertained by Scalzi, and it's not like this is an actual Star Trek novel or anything. I'm holding out hope that he'll be able to bring something unique to the tired old red-shirt cliche.
• Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing by Neal Stephenson (8/7/12) - I have no idea what these "Remarks" are going to be, but I'm guessing this will end up being a collection of previously published writing (like his awesome, long, rambling essays in Wired). I'm hoping that it will contain at least some new stuff though. Of course, I'd love another epic essay like In the Beginning...was the Command Line, but I'm not actually expecting that...
• Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (11/6/12) - I've only got one book left in Bujold's Vorkosigan saga and was prepping for withdrawal pains, so this book will be perfectly timed to keep me addicted... Still, I'm very much looking forward to this novel, a spin-off featuring Ivan Vorpatril, one of the long-running side-characters of the series. I'm actually pretty excited about this book and I'm hoping Bujold will continue to play in the SF space in the future...