E-readers are becoming more popular and the Amazon Kindle is one of the leaders. Amazon also has a large store of e-books. What about rose books?
Roses are at the bottom of a deep pile of menus. Navigating through Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Flowers > Roses one finds a total of 112 books in this latter category. What riches! Well, actually no. Most are duds.
Almost all are aimed at providing the complete beginner with basic rose growing information. However, most of these are of very dubious provenance, churned out by the e-book twilight zone with odd names of publishers and odder author's pseudonyms. An amazing number have titles starting "101 tips…" no doubt because at some time starting with a numeral got them to the top of lists.
In all this dubious abundance where is the rosarian to turn? One of the few e-titles I have no difficulty recommending is "A Year of Roses" by Stephen Scanniello.
The author is a real rosarian of the highest order, he writes with clarity and light prose and the reader has the impression that they are getting the benefit of real hard-won experience. It is an excellent book for the beginner and even the experienced rose-grower can enjoy seeing roses through other eyes.
But Amazon should cleanse the Augean stable of the Kindle store and get some meaty rose titles installed.
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