Yesterday, Amazon.com revealed their latest Kindle e-reader, scheduled to be released on August 27. It's smaller, lighter and, perhaps most significantly, cheaper than both its predecessors and competitors. $139.

Wow. That's cheap. Yes, to get to the $139 price point you have to opt for the WiFi-only version of the Kindle, but these days most consumers considering such a device can certainly access WiFi for the short time it takes to download an e-book (The 3G model is also still available at $189). The other significant aspect of Amazon's new Kindle e-reader is their plan to release a version in the UK along with a UK e-bookstore.

There are a number of other improvements over the current Kindles, all of which you can read about in great detail at Amazon.com. For more objective critical insight, visit Engadget or blogger Mike Cane, who has devoted himself to rigorous deconstruction of such devices.

Me? I'm waiting for the $99 version, and I don't think it's far off.

You know how in high school you could skip a class and get the notes from a friend? I just learned how Twitter makes that possible in real life! I learned this last week from Johanna Harness (@johannaharness / @johannalive) who, in attendance at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Summer Conference, live-tweeted the sessions to the benefit of any non-attendees paying attention.

Of particular interest to me was Bob Mayer's (@Bob_Mayer) talk, "The Original Idea - The Heart of Your Story and Key to selling Your Book," in which Bob discussed (and Johanna tweeted about) the nuts and bolts of novel writing and selling. Great stuff - and with both Johanna and Bob's permission, I've republished the tweets for you here.

David Mitchell is known for writing brilliant concept novels, but The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet doesn't fit that bill. Here, the author forgoes the stylistic wizardry of Cloud Atlas in writing a straightforward work of literature set in early nineteenth century Japan.

_{Photo credit: Random House}

The Burning Wire, Jeffrey Deaver's eighth Lincoln Rhyme novel, grabs the reader like an electric fence that will not let go. Lincoln Rhyme, a quadriplegic, world-class forensic criminologist, and his partner, Amelia Sachs, New York Police Department detective, work against time and with little forensic evidence to track a kille whose weapon is New York's own power grid.

_{Photo credit: Simon & Schuster}