First off, I hate audio books, but if you are a crazy knitter like myself and my pal Lanea, there is some charm to the spoken word whilst you knit. Lanea runs a site called Books For Ears. It’s an audio book review site and it’s specific to the recorded genre. There are several reviewers and it’s grown quite a lot. I really trust Lanea’s taste in literature is the kind of person who has a library at the house and it’s filled with stuff I want to read. Go to her site if you want to buy an audio book.
Second, I really, really dig my new Kindle. I’m not just saying that. You have to understand that I am a speed reader. Compared to most people, I appear to be skimming. I took a speed reading class in college and with it comes to light fiction, paced well, with an exciting plot and characters, I turn the pages really fast. In a word, I am impatient.
This being so, I really disliked the first iterations of the Kindle, or any e-reader. So slow on the paging and so unsatisfying with glare that kills my eyes! The newest Kindle really does have faster paging and better contrast so your eyes don’t get quite as tired. This is really important when you’re reading hundreds of pages as week.
In my desperation to have some better in-flight entertainment, I asked for a Kindle this Chirstmas and I was really lucky to get one. I am usually in the vicinity of wi-fi at home or at the hotel, so it made sense to save money and get a wi-fi only version.
It’s currently January 11th as I write this and I’m still on my first charge having read the following books:
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Cryptonomicon (with supplemental Wired Mag article)
Love on a Dime (Free trashy novel. Terrible stuff. Don’t bother)
The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It
Dead Until Dark
I think that is pretty good since I got to open my present early on Christmas Eve two and half weeks ago. (Over three as of this publishing date.) Don’t expect write ups or reviews. Just know that if something is really terrible, I’ll let you know.
Some things I have learned:
1. It’s true the contrast, paging and battery life are all pretty awesome. Just look at how many books/pages I’ve read in 2.5 weeks! I have only turned on the wi-fi two or three times since it’s not needed unless you pull down more books.
2. Kindle just announced book sharing, but sadly I can’t find anyone who wants to share them!
3. Fancy official Kindle leather cover is not needed. Often I pull it out of the cover since that halves the weight. That Jeff Bezos guy* was thoughtful enough to make the page buttons on the side ambidextrous, which is great. I find myself as a rightie using the left-hand buttons to page while I take a sip of water or stir a pot at the stove. *-it’s a private joke amongst some friends calling him that
4. I have found that I am spending TOO MUCH MONEY ON BOOKS. But that the Kindle will elt you read documents and e-books if they are emailed to your Kindle account. This is good since I have friends who are sharing with me. But geez-Louise, I’ve spent easily $50 on books so far and I know that will get worse if I don’t clamp it down.
5. My Kindle needed a reset quite a lot. In the first 48 hours I kind of freaked out because it needed a manual reset 3-5 times after I de-registered it from boyfriend’s Amazon account. Expect this to be normal if you don’t configure it right at first. (I should have done some steps in the prescribed order instead of diving in intuitively.) However, after the first 2 days, I have only reset it once out of need and once because I held the button too long when I got distracted.
6. Reading footnotes/endnotes kind of sucks. I like to read notes as go and that is vitally important in Stephenson’s writing since he has other very funny stuff in his footnotes. But on an academic monograph, it’s an old habit I have and it’s sort of wonky because the e-book does not bookmark the last note you looked at and it repaginates the notes as you flip back. That moves the note you want to the top of the new screen, and if you want to skim back over the previous notes you skipped, you have to page back. It’s just odd and takes some getting used to. It’s going to make me stop reading the end notes. Which I guess is ok if it makes me less nerdy. But not ok if you are a doctor who wants to read a medical journal and those footnotes have actual meaning for you. (I showed it to a pathologist friend of mine because he’s interested in not carrying around tons of medical journals in his backpack.)
Other than my two complaints about resetting and end notes, it’s a pretty awesome gadget.