Then, in November, Amazon announced the Kindle Lending Library. This system allows one free “borrow” a month, with no necessary return date, just the condition that you return the book before you borrow again.

Since I’ve already written a detailed tutorial on borrowing library books on your Nook, I thought I’d look into the differences and details of these two new Kindle programs and put together information to help borrowers understand them and understand the fundamental difference between Kindle borrowing and all other eReader library borrowing (Amazon as intermediary).

I’m writing based on information available in mid-November 2011, so programs may change and I’ll try to keep the post updated. This is specific to OverDrive library lending and Amazon’s Kindle Library, not any other library ebook services. OverDrive is the primary player in the market today and the only one which has Kindle lending.

Brief Comparison of Each Method of Borrowing

This is a simplified breakdown of 1) borrowing EPUBs and PDFs from OverDrive for your Nook/Sony Reader/Kobo/EPUB device/OverDrive app, 2) from OverDrive for your Kindle/Kindle app, and 3) from the new Kindle library. It covers a) how many books you can borrow at a time, b) whether you can return a borrowed ebook, c) when you can borrow books, and d) who gets what information about what you borrow.

EPUB/PFD (Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, etc.) Lending Through OverDrive

This info is the same for Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, etc. It also covers any EPUBs or PDFs you check out to read on Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) itself or on the OverDrive applications (for iPad and such).

1. As many books at a time as your library system allows.
2. Will expire after your borrowing term ends.
3. Can be returned before the borrowing term ends, allowing you to borrow more.
4. OverDrive and your library only save your information as stats. (See OverDrive’s privacy statement below.
5. Selection based on what EPUBs and PDFs your library licenses from OverDrive.
6. May need to put ebook on hold if popular and library doesn’t lease enough copies.

Kindle Lending Through OverDrive

1. As many books at a time as your library system allows.
2. Will expire after your borrowing term ends.
3. Can be returned before the borrowing term ends, allowing you to borrow more.
4. OverDrive and your library only save your information as stats. (See OverDrive’s privacy statement below.
5. But Amazon does get your borrowing information and ties it to your email, name, and buying habits.
6. Selection based on what Kindle books your library licenses from OverDrive.
7. May need to put ebook on hold if popular and library doesn’t lease enough copies.

Kindle Lending Library

1. One book per month.
2. No due date.
3. Because there’s no due date, you can keep it over a month but you have to return before you can borrow another and you can’t borrow again if you return early.
4. Amazon, obviously, gets your borrowing information and ties it to your user account.
5. Selection based on what Amazon enables.
6. Should be instantly available whether or not it’s popular—assuming Amazon puts popular books in the lending library.

So What Does That Mean?

If you’re not using a Kindle or a Kindle app, no one should be storing your reading data. This is in line with basic library ethics. If we don’t save your data, we can’t be forced to give anyone your data. If we don’t save it, we won’t accidentally release it online. If we don’t save it, hackers shouldn’t be able to get it. What we don’t have, we can’t lose or release in any way shape or form.

Sure, if we don’t save it, we won’t put up helpful recommendations about what you might like—but if you’re a closeted gay teen reading a book on how to cope, you can also rely on us not to start suggesting that you might like other resources for gay teens. Or if the government decides to start tracking people with any particular reading history (and it happens) libraries have a record (for the most part) of fighting this. We will keep your secret because we forget about it entirely. You might feel completely comfortable sharing all your reading data with libraries or with OverDrive, or with Barnes &Noble, or with the government, but we don’t want to force you to.

As for Amazon…

You can use a fake email to check out books from OverDrive and read them privately on a Kindle app. Unless you somehow run your entire Kindle-tied Amazon account anonymously, however, you can’t read them on your actual Kindle (at least without deauthorizing, reauthorizing the Kindle and at least temporarily losing your library, needing to resynch later).

Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library, of course, is just that—for regular Kindles and the Kindle Fire.

What will they do with your data? One hopes for the best. But it’s entirely out of libraries’ hands now…because OverDrive agreed and we agreed that we’d let Amazon handle it. Librarian in Black has a few choice thoughts on the subject:

Should you be worried? Not more than you would be about regular ebooks you might buy from Amazon. But do libraries and librarians owe you better? I think we do.

Appendix: OverDrive’s statement on privacy

After the Kindle lending announcement and resulting privacy concerns, Overdrive issued a statement on how they handle the information they get (or may get) from patrons during the checkout (and possibly reserve) process:

When a visitor borrows an eBook or other digital item from a library or school catalog, OverDrive does not collect or maintain any personal information. In order to check out or place a hold on a title in the library’s or school’s digital catalog, we validate the status of a visitor’s library card (active or inactive), but do not obtain any information regarding their identity from this process. Library and school website visitors have an option to supply an email address to notify them if a title on hold becomes available. This email address is not shared, is protected from unauthorized disclosure and is used only to notify the patron about the title availability. [Read the entire statement.]

Of course, that’s just OverDrive, that’s not Amazon.

The first is a picture of me and my husband, then-boyfriend, (was he ever just my boyfriend?) dancing at a friend’s wedding where he’d been a groomsman. I can honestly say that I was happy at the moment that photo was taken. The second is a scanned copy of a painting I did that same year. It caught my eye because I’m wearing the same clothes in both. The painting shows all the things I saw when I looked out at the world. You can click on the painting to see a larger copy.

(To answer a question – I’m not tiny, I’m 5’7″, my husband’s just over 6’2″.)

In 2005, I was coming out of a very deep and at one point suicidal depression. Though the initial depression had been cause by my mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis, it spread to encompass all the huge and horrible things I saw in the world that I knew I had no power over: vulnerable children with no parents, families unable to buy food, inmates in a society where rehabilitation is extremely difficult, famine victims, sweat-shop workers, people mourning the loss of homes and loved ones in countries that my country was bombing. Those were just a few of the things I saw. Other paintings and crayon drawings I’ve done show more.

At twenty, painting was how I tried to sort these things out and to express the hopelessness I felt about…everything. I’d leave it there, but since I’ve come through the depression, I decided to share another scanned crayoning I did during the same period. Again, click to see a larger one.

The drawing is a rough kind of iconography. The woman depicted is Tabitha (also called Dorcas), who is remembered for doing good, helping the poor, and specifically for garment-making. As a sewer-crafter, I identified with her gifts and drew a number of pictures, quasi-icons, of her. One is still hanging in my bedroom, but I don’t have a scan of it. I also have an icon of her which I commissioned from a monastery.

During this period, I was a heavy quilter and one way I felt that I could show love of many kinds was by making quilts for nearly all the girls I lived with and one guy who was my closest friend at college (and several for ProfX). I also made quilts which I donated to the local homeless shelters when they asked for blankets and smaller quilts which I donated to Quilts for Comfort, a group in my hometown which provides quilts to children (and now adults) dealing with long-term illnesses. I used to piece and quilt them all by hand, which was a meditiative process and let me work anywhere.

I haven’t talked about this period of my life in much detail in a long time. I hardly ever paint or draw now. That’s not a proper ending, but there you have it.

Last week, I got to fulfill an old dream of mine—attending San Diego Comic-Con. While it’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, timing and finances had prevented me until now. Perhaps that was a good thing. The friends I’ve made online in the last year made the experience extra-fun for me, and the timing was good since because of my library school transfer, I can’t take summer classes.

The whole trip was wonderful, even though I wasn’t able to do everything I wanted to do. I’m especially grateful to @RevancheGS, her fiancé, and a friend of theirs for letting me stay with them and taking me under their wings. They’re all Con vets and great people to boot. Also, a friend of Revanche’s in San Diego and his mother adopted the lot of us (apparently a tradition) and fed us good meals every night, helped us pack lunches, and brought breakfast sandwiches. It was so much more than I expected and I’m very grateful for it. Every night except w00tstock ended in their home having dinner and decompressing with a little tv/chatting.

Preview Night

I arrived in on Wednesday for the preview night. Rather than attend the other events, we wanted to take in the whole exhibit floor. The initial badging process was incredibly smooth. Getting in line for the floor, on the other hand, wasn’t. We got sent to 4 or 5 locations all around the convention center and pretty much spent the 2 hours from 4 until 6 just wandering and looking for a mythical line. Finally we just sat in a corner. But it really wasn’t too bad, since once the doors opened at 6 we got in immediately. We happened to be close to doors that were somewhere other than where the line was, and because we had badges we got right in.

It was…impossible to describe. It was like walking into some kind of geek fairy land. A magical kingdom. A gingerbread house. A gingerbread house that wants my money but is so freaking awesome.

Highlights of preview night included:

1) discovering the Cthuliana Corner…*melt* there was so much I wanted but didn’t buy until later;

2) meeting Michael Alan Nelson, author of Fall of Cthulhu, at the Boom Studios booth, getting his autograph, and telling him what a huge fan I am of the series;

3) winning a ticket to the Dark Horse signing that included Tom Morello (not someone I’d expected to meet, but he’s doing a comic with them) and PC Cast. I really wish Guillermo del Toro had been able to make it, but he was having a rough Con due to an injury and wasn’t able to come.

Thursday, Day 1

During lunch (the bags behind and to the left), we saw a pair of stormtroopers taking pics with people. So I got one too, because it’s Con:

Since the Thursday panel line-up didn’t really have anything I wanted to see, I spent most of the day going over the exhibit floor. I had really wanted to see the Lovecraft panel that night, but it conflicted with w00tstock. Our group had bought tickets well in advance and a number of people I knew on Twitter were going to be there as well. It was a frustrating choice, but when it came to a one-hour panel I could find recapped online or 4 hours of geeky vaudeville…I went with the latter.

It did not disappoint. At times I laughed until I cried. My throat got so sore from cheering that I had to stop cheering and went through 4 cough drops during the second half of the show. It was such a long show that it’s hard to pick highlights, but Paul and Storm were fantastic, Amy Berg’s sketch about writers was hilarious, and Wil Wheaton’s story “William Fucking Shatner” made me put the book it came from on my must-read list.

I also had a personal reason for going to w00tstock. When I discovered someone was selling the free Lovecraft eBook and posted about it on my Cthulhu Chick blog, Wil Wheaton helped get the word out using his Twitter, Tumblr, and blog. I am very grateful for his support, which I think helped get the thief’s work taken down faster and which brought in support from so many quarters. I’ve seen the internet help people out before, but being on the receiving end was more moving than I could’ve expected.

Wil is an integral part of w00tstock and would be performing and signing at this one. After the show, I got to introduce myself and briefly thank him in person. I also gave him a yellow “sunshine” Cthulhu I had brought. He was as warm, friendly, and encouraging in the flesh as he had been online. As a bonus, I discovered that Adam Savage of Mythbusters has the free Lovecraft eBook and likes it too. (Yes, I did a happy dance.)

Because I went to the signing afterward, I didn’t get home until after 1am PDT (4am on my internal clock) but it was completely worth it! Grateful to the roommates for being willing to stay out that late.

Friday, Day 2

On Friday morning, I got to Con bright and early (8am) because Locke & Key, one of my favorite new graphic novels/comics, had two panels running from 10:30-12:30. Despite having been up so late last night, my roommates were up insanely early because one of them had camped out to get tickets for next year and another was joining him. So I managed to pull myself together in plenty of time to take the shuttle over and camp out with my Nook before the panel.

It was the first thing in the room, so we didn’t have to wait in line. I’m glad I got there early, because by 9:30 the room was nearly full and they made people queue, then filled it at 10:15.

The first hour of the panel consisted of watching the Fox pilot for a tv show based on Locke & Key. In my opinion, it was a great adaptation of the first few chapters of the first volume. I can also see why it wasn’t picked up. The story is incredibly graphic. Even though most of the violence happens in just those first few chapters, I don’t know if Fox is ready to have a show with so much violence involving primarily teens and a child.

I think the show might’ve done well as an HBO mini-series, like Game of Thrones. It had a cinematic quality—more like a film than a tv show, which would work well on HBO. And HBO seems more suited to that kind of violence. Again, it’s not something that would’ve carried on down the line, but since it had to be in the first episode, it had to be in the pilot and be what the potential-producers saw.

The second hour consisted of a panel discussion with Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (the author and illustrator), the episode’s director/writer/etc, and two of the young actors from the pilot (playing Ty and Sam). I’d loved to have heard more about the future of the comic, but I still enjoyed hearing about the process that went into the episode and learning some things about the future.

The worst moment of the Con came just after the panel when I was getting lunch. I looked in my bag for my wallet and realized that I no longer had my Nook. This was not just like losing a good book or a piece of electronics, it was like losing portable access to thousands of books. I dashed (as fast as one can dash at Con) back to Room 8, and they let me quietly come in the back of the next panel to look at the floor. It was sparsely-attended and I didn’t see it anywhere in the row I’d been in. The room director said that he hadn’t gotten it but he’d turn it in to lost & found if someone gave it to him.

I then went to the lost & found, who assured me that they’d call the number inside its cover if it were turned in. An hour after the end of the Locke & Key panel, I got a call from the man who’d found my Nook. He’d waited until the panel he was in was over to call, and agreed to just stay there while I got back. I wish I could’ve thanked him better, but I gave him my heartfelt thanks for getting it back to me.

Despite everything, I made it to the Locke & Key signing, where both creators signed my 3rd & 4th volumes of the series. Score! Joe Hill also bought a Cthulhu he’d asked about on Twitter. It was odd, selling something at a signing, but it went fairly quickly. I didn’t want to be that person who holds up the line.

Near the end of the day, I went to the “Comics in Libraries” panel. I think it’d be more accurately termed “Comics and Graphic Novels in Libraries.” The panel talked about everything from what role they play to how to “sell” them to patrons to how to build a collection from scratch/a poor collection.

The last topic particularly interested me, since I watched the graphic novels and comics at the library where I worked as a teen grow from a few pieces shelved in the 740s (adult) to a proper (but YA only) collection. As one of the senior pages, I helped the teen librarian get the collection in place. But I was only on the implementation side, not making the decisions or influencing collection development.

It felt rather odd being at the panel, since most of the people there were librarians or library-types. It felt like I’d stepped out of Con and into a library conference or a special library school class/lecture. At the end, I stepped back out and BAM! I was in the middle of it all again.

Saturday, Day 3

Saturday was my Cosplaying day. I went as a BSG Viper Pilot “Squid.” In the morning, I met up with more people from the internet and spent even more time roaming the exhibit hall. At some point on Saturday morning, I’d truly seen the whole place. Two of the highlights of the morning were meeting @Joi_the_Artist, owner of the only Nasathulhu, and @LateNightHunter, another Cthulhu-enthusiast, who’s got 2 or 3 of his own.

Joi and me:

@LateNightHunter and me:

Since he was dressed in BSG cosplay as well, we walked around together for about an hour. That was a lot of fun, since it’s the kind of cosplay that’s even better in a pair or a group.

I took the opportunity to hit up the Cthulhu corner booth and get some books and items I’d been wanting for a while:

The books are What to Do When You Meet Cthulhu and The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia. They’re both handbooks/guides to Lovecraft’s world (and other people’s constructions on that world). While I know a good deal about the world, it’s nice to have a reference around. After flipping through, I decided to get them both.

I also got a set of Cthulhu figurines which are intended for a game….but which I want just as statues of Cthulhu, a Cthulhu bandana, an Elder Sign pin, a Yellow Sign sticker, & a Cthulhu fish.

In the late afternoon, I went with a group of friends to the Webcomics Weekly Live podcast & the Penny Arcade session after that. Both interesting, since I’ve read webcomics (including PA) daily for at least the last 7 or 8 years.

Sunday, Day 4

I had to leave the convention center by 12:30 on Sunday, so I spent the morning doing a last go-over of the Exhibit hall with @PhysicistLisa. Thanks to her, I ended up at the booth for the American Physical Society and got three free short physics comics from them. Also, we went to the QMx booth and I got to hold a real prototype of the 11th Doctor’s screwdriver (and make a weird face):

The elbow on the left belongs to the man who makes these, Nick Robatto. He was keeping an eye on me so that I didn’t just run off and sonic everything.

The roomies very helpfully walked me to the airport bus and then…it was over. Almost. My trip home was actually quite pleasant. During my layover, I had dinner with a guy from Pittsburgh who was coming home from Con.

And on the second leg of the trip, I was fortunate enough to have a seatmate who was very into horror and had all four issues of Alan Moore’s Neonomicon, something I’d been waiting to read until it hit trade paperback. I was even more fortunate that he let me read all of them! Alan Moore is sick & twisted, but he writes amazing stories and this was one of them. We both read our comics for a while, then spent the second half of the flight talking about horror, art, whatnot.

The entire experience was amazing and exhausting. It’s taken me a week just to get all this written. I had not expected to have nearly as good a time as I did. I feel so happy just thinking about it. I have a few regrets, not meeting a couple people, not seeing some friends more, and not getting to go to some panels (only serious regret on panels would be the Lovecraft panel). But I wouldn’t trade the experience and I don’t want to sit around thinking how it could’ve been better.

I met so many awesome people there, but I am happiest about and most grateful to all three of my roommates who took me under their wings, showed me around, and played the combined roles of friends and sherpas. Even though the guys didn’t know me before Con, they still treated me like a friend. And while going to the parties might’ve been fun, I think the reason I had such a good time and survived was because we all decompressed in the evenings. I’d post a pic of them, but one’s an anonymous blogger, so I’ll post a link to her recap instead.

Mom was only 65 when she died and had been facing terminal cancer for more than 5 years. Yet up until the last 6 months or so, when she started truly dying, she did her best to live as full a life as she could. Between bouts of chemo and downward spirals, she taught, she traveled, she gardened, and she read. She chased down new treatments, since her type of cancer was rare and had never been cured, and went to conferences on her specific kind of cancer so that she could help her doctors treat her better. She got into countless trials, some of which temporarily helped. But she didn’t make that her life.

My grandmother says that when Mom was 21, she wrote home from college a letter to the effect of “Hope you are all well. I’ve decided to join the Peace Corps and teach school in the Philippines. Love.” (of course, half their letters to her included change of address cards.) She spent 2 years there and loved the country. We have some pictures of her as a bridesmaid in a Philippine wedding, though I’ve never heard the story behind that.

From there, she went to Maryland and got a job measuring air pollutants. It was hard for her at the time (early 70s), as she first got sent to interview for the office’s typing pool because she was a woman. Funny enough, that would’ve been a terrible fit, since she was great with math but horribly dyslexic.

In the mid 70s, she got her PhD in linguistics at MIT. Once, when we were driving by Yale, Mom told me her reasoning for choosing MIT. She’d gotten accepted into Yale’s program as well, but she said the departments were entirely different. Yale, she said, was full of brilliant people who weren’t happy. MIT’s professors, on the other hand, seemed to have fun with their work. That story really fit her as a person. She was incredibly smart and also loved to play with shiny objects just because they were shiny.

Or bears, because they were silly…

When I came around in the mid-80s, she retired from teaching to be a stay-at-home mother. What that translated to was a SAHM who also taught reading through literacy volunteers. Then when I got older she started teaching languages. After a point, she homeschooled my sister & me…which was a step that made her nervous. Her first choice had been private school, but a series of problems in local ones led my parents to take us out of ours and not put us in another.

I felt as much pressure to get As and succeed in college to prove that she’d done a good job as I did to keep my scholarships, etc. Before she died, she saw both her daughters graduate summa cum laude and ace their GREs. We were also reasonably happy and well-adjusted. I think that made her feel like a success. I know she was also glad to live long enough to see me get married, as she’d thought of ProfX as a son for years.

After we graduated from high school, she kept up her Latin teaching in a local private school and even took on a few private students over the years. She finally had to quit the semester before she died. She’d started losing vast amounts of weight, starving, and she and the principal agreed at the beginning of that semester, that it was probably time for her to leave. She would go on to grow distressingly skeletal and only weighed about 70lbs when she died. As it was I think her death was hard on those students anyway, since they were only in 5th and 6th grade and she was a popular teacher. We received cards and flowers from a number of them.

There’s so much more that she did, so many more places she went—Soviet Russia, because Russian was one of the languages in which she specialized; or the interior of British Columbia to help transcribe the Shuswap language, as spoken by the Secwepemc (hard to say as you’d think)—that it’d take a series of long posts or even a short book to do it justice. I think that means she succeeded.

***

One of my biggest regrets, for me and my sister, is that we didn’t know her as adults without the specter of cancer and the roller coaster ride that brought. I was 18 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and 19 when she was diagnosed with the terminal carcinoid. This means my little sister was 16 and 17 respectively.

Most of the time, she was perfectly mentally sound, but she would go through periods of chemo brain, or be taking heavy meds, or just be too sick to think straight. And even when she was clear-headed, it was still hard to have an adult child-parent relationship. She was such a smart woman that I wish I could have talked with her about so much more than I was only beginning to be aware of or interested in after I got out of college.

This past year, I’ve been reading her Bujold collection. She loved the books, especially the Vorkosigan novels, and wanted me to read them too. She wanted me to be in college and somehow after she was sick it just got put off and we were never able to talk about them. As I fell in love with that ‘verse, I kept wishing that I could share it with her.

So many times this year, I’ve wished I could ask her about stories—like whose wedding she was in in the Philippines, or whether the man she was dancing with there was the one she turned down before Dad. I’ve wanted to ask her linguistics questions or for details of childhood things I can barely remember. And I’ve wanted to share parts of my own life with her.

We won’t get to talk about grad school with her, or middle age, or children if we end up having them. She also never saw ProfX get his PhD, which is something she’d looked forward to very much. This is what happens to many people, of course, but it doesn’t feel fair.

***

Oddly, this last year has been another thing too, something I didn’t expect. I’ve felt freer. I feel like a terrible person writing that. But it’s not Mom I feel free of, it’s this weight of the cancer and of knowing she was going to die.

Even when I wasn’t actively thinking about it, it was always in my head. I wouldn’t move more than half a day’s drive away, I prioritized trips home and felt incredibly guilty when my schedule kept me down here. I was much less social offline because so much of my emotional energy was wrapped up in this.

I would take back on the weight to have her back, but I’m glad that while the grief has persisted (as it should), the drain hasn’t.

Squid and Banshee are not that kind of pilot.

Those who are more goofball than hero never get enough attention, and so, as a corrective measure, we are going off duty with Squid and Banshee, two pilots with delusions of competency and a wealth of silliness, as they wander around the Battlestar Galactica wearing their fancy double tanks.

Gee, Banshee, how do you think we’re supposed to fly these tiny things?

Drink more. That’s how. Or… wait, no, those can’t be right. are you sure this is the hangar deck?

Oh wait, this is one of those models for the tourists. I knew we shouldn’t have left the gift store in the hangar deck.

But LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

What’s a girl gotta do to get one of those?

Normally I’d say ‘bend over,’ but that doesn’t seem either very nice or very practical. So really, you steal from the fridge behind the counter.

Didn’t find any beer. Did find this weird sonic-y thing. I wonder what happens if I point it at stuff.

…my pants just unbuttoned. What the frak?

Oh excellent.

HEY!

Hang on, more important matters. I think I just saw something.

You have found something that trumps beer and undone pants? This I gotta see.

Waiiit for it.

OMG. I found this tiny octo-monster thing. But it’s also a Cylon. Do you think I could keep it as a pet or a mascot or something?

It’s a frakking toaster. We kill frakking toasters.

The little frakker took my shades!

I will hurt you, you little punk-ass cylapus or whatever you are.

Give. Them. BACK.

Solid. How you like being upside-down? Huh? Huh? You DON’T.

Next time, Squid, I say we handle them this way. I’m keeping my frakking shades.

So now…about those pants.

Right on.

—

A quick note on where we got the double-tanks and sizing. We got them from ANOVOS. Mine’s (Ruth/Squid) a Small, which fits well but hangs a bit baggy on my 36″ chest, 27″ waist (which I’m fine with, because I was worried it’d be painted on). Jess is very slightly bigger (37.5″ chest in a sports bra), and her Medium is bigger than she was hoping for. It does, however, fit across the shoulders, and may fit better through the trunk with a little tailoring. So if you’re planning to order, keep in mind they run a bit larger than you might expect for a woman. The sizing chart told me that I was a Small, and while I wasn’t sure whether to believe it, it was right.

If you want the straight download, you can grab it at the these two links: EPUB (for the Nook and a few others) and MOBI (for the Kindle).

There are two elements to Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels that make it hard to figure out a reading order. First, there are actually two Vorkosigan sagas. Almost all the books are about Miles, but there are two books about his mother Cordelia. Sometimes they’re called the Cordelia Naismith novels (Naismith being her maiden name).

Second, Bujold would occasionally backtrack in the series as she wrote. After Mirror Dance, which has Miles in his very late 20s or early 30s, she wrote Cetaganda which has Miles in his early 20s. So do you read them in the order in which they were written or in an order which fits the chronology of that universe? Some series numbering puts them in the ‘verse’s chronological order, but I really don’t think that’s the best way to read them.

The list below is of the books in the order in which I read them, after some consideration for where I should insert Cordelia’s books. I did it this way because I remembered my mother reading them as they came out and I wanted to experience them the same way. It was a wonderful reading experience.

One doesn’t miss any plot or references because the chronologically subsequent books had been written before the later insertions. And I’m not sure the reverse is true…it’s possible that one would miss elements in, say, Cetaganda if one hadn’t read the books that come after it chronologically but were written before it was written. Not big things, but cultural elements.

This is my suggested reading order with notes on where to find certain stories in omnibuses. It’s mostly the order in which they were written, but I think Shards of Honor should go after the short stories and not directly before or after the first Miles book. I think the series works better if we meet Miles first. I actually put down Shards after Apprentice and picked it up again after reading the short stories. But one needs to read it before Brothers in Arms.

Suggested Reading Order for Miles and Cordelia Vorkosigan Saga

1. Warrior’s Apprentice
2. Borders of Infinity (Series of short stories “Mountains of Morning,” “Labyrinth, and “Borders of Infinity.” Collected in Vorkosigan’s Game omnibus, which fit into different times in Miles’s life, but read really well as a set at this point in the series)
3. Shards of Honor (in Cordelia’s Honor omnibus)
4. Brothers in Arms
5. The Vor Game (in Vorkosigan’s Game omnibus)
6. Barrayar (in Cordelia’s Honor omnibus)
7. Mirror Dance
8. Cetaganda
9. Memory
10. Komarr
11. A Civil Campaign
12. Diplomatic Immunity
13. Winterfair Gifts (in Miles in Love omnibus)
14. Cryoburn

(All the books in omnibuses are available outside of omnibuses as well, and I know there are other omnibuses. I noted these ones because I either inherited the omnibus and not the book or I could only find the omnibus in our library.)

I highly-recommend the audiobook versions. Even though I inherited the series from my mother (except Cryoburn, which came out after she died), I found that my library had audiobook recordings available through OverDrive and I really enjoyed listening to everything from Mirror Dance onward. Very good reader (though for some reason Mirror Dance didn’t have proper editing in a few spots, so you heard him slip up and reread a sentence). The only book I’d recommend not listening to as an audiobook is A Civil Campaign. It’s much longer than the rest and I found myself getting very nervous. Switching to the physical book made it more fun to finish.

Bujold has written a few other novels set in this ‘verse which I haven’t yet read but am looking forward to. They’re not about Vorkosigans, but they’re about other interesting people or places. The first is Falling Free, sometimes referred to as Vorkosigan Series #0 (which I think is a mistake) and which is about the Quaddies, bio-engineered humanoids with 4 arms instead of 2 arms and 2 legs. The second is Ethan of Athos, about uterine replicators and Elli Quinn (Miles’s longtime companion in arms and bed).

On Friday, I noticed that one of them seemed to be watching me crochet. Sure enough, as he got off the train he dropped this in my lap and told me to have a good weekend. So this is me, in my Jayne hat, working on a new swamp green Tiny Cthulhu for the store:

As you can see from the picture, it looks like a real TARDIS. The color was perfect and the detail impressive, but what I found most amazing was the “TARDIS Rose” scent. When I first bought it, I saw that she’d said the scent was “Rose” and thought “Oh, that’s nice and apt.” And I expected it to smell like the sort of rose-scent one gets in soaps & candles. Kind of sweet and floral, but nothing special.

Instead, it smelled like an actual rose. I’d sniffed it when I first got it, but hadn’t been nearly as interested in smelling it further as I’d been in looking at it and poking it, so I didn’t notice it. But when I started getting ready to use it, I smelled it again and realized how incredibly rose-like it smelled. ProfX agreed, and after I finished showering he noted that the bathroom smelled like there was a bouquet of flowers in it.

Kylee’s scents tend to be spot-on, but I think this is the most impressive of the ones I’ve come across. She also offers it as a scent for her hemp bath beauty bar and hemp oil soap, called “TARDIS Rose” (so you can find it in the alphabetical list). I think when I’m done with the TARDIS I’m going to get one of those two. I love her geeky soaps, but they look so pretty that I have a very hard time bringing myself to use them.

Over dinner, I asked Kylee about how she creates scents…it was like listening to a musician or a painter talking about how they can see music or colors coming together. When I confessed that I couldn’t visualize scents from descriptions, she mentioned having followed up on a recent suggestions to create 75 cent fragrance samplers which you can use to preview a fragrance before you buy a soap. There are several others I’m interested in besides TARDIS Rose, so I think I’m going to order previews next time I get a soap.

This isn’t the only TARDIS soap out there, but the other one I’ve seen is the wrong shade of blue and not as detailed. It also comes from a soapmaker whose products I’ve ordered before and whose soap I wanted to like but have found to be of much lower quality than the bars I’ve bought from Luxury Lane and from Geek Soap, so I don’t plan to buy another for comparison. Besides, when the detail is all gone from the TARDIS, I’ll still have a bar of delicious rose-scented soap.

I’ve decided that rereads are fair game, at least ones that I haven’t read in years. The books I’ve read so far are (linked to my reviews) Bujold’s Memory (5 stars), Pratchett’s The Fifth Elephant (4 stars), Austen’s Northanger Abbey (4 stars), Heyer’s The Reluctant Widow (2 stars), and Herbert’s Dune (5 stars, 4.5 for the audiobook). [Edit, and since writing this post, I finished Bujold's Komarr, making 6 books and 6% done.]

If you want to join me, you can friend me (or don’t friend me, you can just join the challenge).

GoodReads also has a page where you can see all of your friends doing the challenge and either feel superior or know who to sympathize with.