Longwalkhome

What is it:

Amazon Kindle.  An eBook reader that comes with wireless connectivity (”Whispernet”) and a huge catalogue of books.  With built in storage to hold about 200 books (expandable to thousands of books) and form factor that feels good in the hand.

Thoughts:

On a recent trip to Virginia, K8 surprised me with an Amazon Kindle, which she had secretly shipped to our destination.  What a treat!  Although it eroded my trust in her and has since left me suspecting her every move, I really appreciate the thought and the gift.

After playing around with this for a few weeks and reading 6 or 7 books on it, I think I can now pass judgment.

In short, this is a keeper. 

After the initial honeymoon period wore off, with Kindle and I getting down to the day-to-day grind of my reading habit, my appreciation of the device increased.  The text looks great, it fits in my hand perfectly, and it opens  the flood gates to my ADD reading style.

After some soul searching, I realized I could pretty much dump most of my paper books.  Which I started to do, first taking the books I could get for free, then the books I mostly likely won’t read again to the Half Price Books. Guess who got $12.50 and about 34 inches of shelf space back.  The next step is seeing about reducing cookbook head count.

Readability: No eye strain after a whole day of reading on the plane. Boss.  Resizable text is great, though I only use when I am sharing it (ie: Kate and are sharing it reading a passage).

Fit and Finish:  Solidly built and well thought out  For me, it seems to read best in my left hand.  My meaty, manly right hand can sometimes bump the BACK button taking me to homepage.  How about a Forward button or something, Amazon?

Spastic Reader:  The first thing I loaded on Kindle was a copy of Manybooks.org’s downloadable catalogue.  If a book is public domain, there is a good chance you can grab it right from this directory and pull it down using the Whispernet to read right away.  For me, this means that I am reading a stack of books at once, never losing my spot (since it remembers were I left off), and finally being able to fulfill my desire to change books instantly without all that messy moving around and what not.  Glory.

Buying Advice:

If you find yourself doing any of the following, it might fill a need:

·      Traveling often and bringing multiple books

·      Book Hoarding

·      Reading multiple books

·      Needing to fill time on long transit commutes (buses, metro, rickshaw) and wanting easy access to material

Sure there are a bunch more reasons why you should get one. For example, there is a slim chance that having this device at the right place and time will endear you to a book loving, gadget responsive member of the opposite sex (if that’s what you are looking for.  Not me.  Ladies, please! I’m taken) or something like that.

Having said that, it costs about $350.  New books bought through Amazon seem to be about $9.99 to $5.49 with some quite a bit less pricey (but perhaps infinitely more sucky?).

Update:

This thing has no replaced a large portion of my bookshelves and actually improved my already better than average life. Go figure.