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I’m in love, and it’s not adulterous — I’m head over heels for my new Amazon Kindle.

In case there are any of you out there who aren’t sure what the Kindle is, it’s an “e-reader,” meaning an electronic device that allows a user to download and read books on its screen. There are other e-readers, notably the Sony E-Reader (which is quite elegant), but many of them have been clunky, hard to hold, and even harder to read.

While the much-vaunted Kindle (it made the cover of Newsweek, held by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) has its drawbacks, it also has many advantages and innovations. First, the Kindle uses e-ink technology that makes its screen much closer to a traditional print page reading experience. Second, the device has wireless capability based on proprietary Amazon “WhisperNet” technology, so you can be sitting virtually anywhere and click over to the Kindle Store on Amazon and have a new book downloaded in a matter of seconds. Third, the Kindle is a reader for newspapers and magazines as well as books; rather than carrying around a bulging tote bag with a folded New York Times, a clutch of glossy mags, and a couple of hardcover books (my usual travel stash), you can carry the trade-paperback-sized Kindle.

More advantages: the Kindle holds a few dozen books, so long trips no longer mean scrambling for a decent read in an airport or train station bookstore. You can easily read while eating (a boon for those of us with day jobs who long to get a quiet half hour’s reading done during lunch). And — this is wonderful for me — you can read while lying on your side in bed with contorting your neck and shoulders.

Yes, there are disadvantages, too. The Kindle, as I said, isn’t very pretty. It’s white (why white? I’m going to stain it with mustard one of these days…), boxy, and seems to have too many controls (to be fair, its QWERTY keyboard is there so readers can annotate, which is very cool in theory. I haven’t given it a try in practice.).

But enough of this blogging. I want to get back to my new companion. I’m reading Anne Enright’s Booker Prize-winning novel “The Gathering,” and it’s terrific. I’m turning pages, erm, clicking pages, as fast as I can.

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In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a major television event going on right now for biblioholics everywhere: The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece from PBS.

Every Sunday night at nine p.m. (it started on January 13 and will continue through April 6), there will be a Jane Austen adaptation on your small screens. Some of them are new (Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility.) and some are already favorites (Emma, starring Kate Beckinsale and the Emmy Award-winning Pride and Prejudice). There’s even a brand-new biopic, Miss Austen Regrets, based on the author’s letters and diaries.

You should also check out the PBS.org site for this event, because it’s got some fun extras. My favorite? The “Men of Austen” gallery, where you can vote for your favorite hero.

C’mon, guess who my favorite is. Hint: it’s NOT Mr. Darcy…

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When I asked Richard Peabody how he found writers to contribute to his anthologies, one of the things he brought up (as you’ll see in our interview) is the fact that he and his co-editor Lucinda Ebersole allow the women to write anything and any way they want to — which is not necessarily what working authors are allowed to do for publication in our culture. Peabody is speaking specifically about the divide between realistic and experimental fiction, but his observations hold true for other fictional divides as well.

While talking to authors over the past years, I’ve heard this again and again — that an author would like to write something new or significantly different from her previous work, but her publisher wants the same thing as last time.

That’s not surprising; publishing is a business, and books are products, much as we dislike admitting it at times. The quandary is that books often contain art, too. It’s good to know that people like Peabody and Ebersole remember that and honor it.

I hope you’ll enjoy this interview, and that it will make you consider what gives the Washington area a literary identity and community.

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This week, we’ve got something a little different on Author, Author!: Instead of a novel or memoir by a single author, we’re featuring Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington-Area Women edited by Richard Peabody and published by Peabody’s own Paycock Press.

Peabody is best known as one of the founding editors of Gargoyle magazine — and he’s also the sole surviving editor, since he still puts out the publication, now with co-editor Lucinda Ebersole. You may not know Gargoyle, but its influence and Peabody’s tireless work have been two factors keeping Washington, DC literary life vibrant for the past 30-odd years.

Electric Grace is packed full of stories of every genre, length, and voice, including works by Michelle Brafman, Merle Collins, T. Greenwood, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Faye Moskowitz, Barbara Mujica, Jessica Neely, Amy Stolls, Hananah Zaheer, and Christy J. Zink.

We’ve got ten copies of Peabody’s collection to give away on this winter Monday, and hope you’ll claim yours (after reading our guidelines, naturally) by telling us something about your favorite female writer — DC-based, or not!

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Full disclosure: As I confessed in another blog entry, Kelly DiNardo is my homegirl. We grew up in the same part of New York’s Hudson Valley, and it’s a real thrill for me to be able to showcase DiNardo’s debut book on Author, Author!

DiNardo brings her skills as an established freelance writer to bear on “Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique“, providing excellent research but using it in the service of showcasing St. Cyr, rather than allowing the background to overwhelm her subject. The result is a substantive book with a frothy whip of showmanship on top.

I’m pretty sure Lili St. Cyr would approve of this new biography, and I’m absolutely sure you’ll approve of this interview with DiNardo. Let us know what you think!

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Who’s your favorite ecdysiast? (Guess who’s been spending too much time on FreeRice.com?) Kelly DiNardo’s is Lili St. Cyr, and DiNardo’s first book is thus “Gilded Lili: Lili St. Cyr and the Striptease Mystique.”

You’ll definitely enjoy my interview (posted on Wednesday) with DiNardo, who explains the differences between burlesque, striptease, and stripping (bet you never thought you’d be reading about that here). If you want to learn more, you’ll have to read Kelly’s blog, The Candy Pitch — but even better, read her book!

I’ll make the latter easy for you: we’ve got ten copies of “Gilded Lili” to give away, and all you have to do is tell us who your favorite sex symbol is — doesn’t matter if it’s Marilyn Monroe, Brad Pitt, or Olive Oyl (of course, if it’s Ms. Oyl, you might want to use a nom de post). Don’t forget to check out our Guidelines for giveaways before you post, too.

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Happy New Year, Author, Author! viewers. Thanks for your patience over the past couple of weeks as we’ve dealt with various holiday crises (OK, all of them were mine), but we have scientifically chosen the winners of our gift certificates to Politics & Prose and to Olsson’s, and they are…

(Drumroll, natch!)

$50 Gift Certificate to Politics & Prose: Famin

$50 Gift Certificate to Olsson’s: Teresa Preston

Congrats to Famin and Teresa! I rarely win anything, and I know that even when I manage to get a free Egg McMuffin from a McDonald’s Monopoly game piece, I’m thrilled — so I hope that a $50 gift certificate to spend freely (if not wildly… hey, we are non-profit-based here, after all) at a bookstore will be a big thrill for both of you.

Thanks to everyone who posted, and I hope we’ll do this again sometime in 2008.

Meanwhile, back to business as usual, and that means my next post will contain a book giveaway. If you didn’t win a gift certificate, you still have a chance for a brand-spanking-new free book, so come back soon!

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