Shelf Space

 
    Why God gave us Kindles.

The Golden Compass

    Today only, for just $1.99 you can read The Golden Compass, Book 1 of Philip Pullman's fantastic His Dark Materials trilogy on your Kindle.

American Gods

    A fantastic book that I read years ago.  American Gods is my favorite Neil Gaiman novel, although I say that same thing about a couple other of his books.  And today you can get it for your Kindle for the low price of $2.99.

Kindle Deals

    Both of these books are available for only $1.99 for the Kindle at Amazon today, and both are fantastic reads.

Kindle vs. "Real" Books

    For the record, my reading is about evenly split between my Kindle and "real" books.

About the Library.

    I understand the joke - books are free at the library.  But the fact of the matter is, our local library also allows you to check out free Kindle downloads.  If you're wanting a recent and popular release, you may have to get on a waiting list.  But that's true of "book" books too.

    And for the record, the library also has a deal where you can download free MP3 music.  Three tracks per week.  It's called Freegal.  Check to see if your library takes part in this resource.

It's the 2% that are scary.

mobi. files

    Hah!  I was wondering how my Kindle reader did its thing.  Via something called a mobi. file.  I'm sure Amazon keeps the books I download from them copy-protected, but it's nice to know if I write something, I can convert it to a mobi format, and e-mail it to others who then can read it on their Kindles.

Kindle

     I've taken another step into 21st Century technology.  I am in the process of reading a book on the Kindle that I got for Christmas.

    I downloaded the book during the holidays, but didn't read a word of it in January, due mostly to the fact that I was working my way through 600 pages of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.

    The book I downloaded is New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon.  Are you impressed?  Actually, I chose it because it was free (public domain), and extremely short (48 pages long in a real-world book).  I'm OCD; I am compelled to finish almost any book I start.  So I figured if I didn't take to the Kindle, at least my ordeal would be over rather quickly.

     But not to worry; I'm adapting to the Kindle faster than I expected.  The screen is easy to read, and I've figured out how to underline (digitally) excerpts.  I'm not sure how to quickly get to a given note or page yet.  If I'm on, say page 50 (actually, the units are in "percentages", not page numbers), and want to go back to, say, page 10, all I can do is hit the page-back button 40 times.  I have a feeling there's a quicker way to do this, but since the Kindle is not a touch-screen, the shortcut isn't intuitive.  Yeah I know, I can always RTFM, but where's the challenge in that?

    I still prefer to be holding an actual book in my hands.  And despite the fact that Kindle downloads are now (for the most part) cheaper than the real-world book, I'd rather pay a bit more, then put the book on my TBR shelf, read it whenever I bloody well want, and get a couple pennies for it when I take it to the used-book store.

    But no trees are killed when making an e-book, and when the download is *free*, I can be talked into going the digital route.  And there are hundreds of free e-books.  They are all "classics" whose copyrights have expired (New Atlantis was first published in 1627).  But that means if I want to read a Sherlock Holmes book, or something by Mark Twain, or even something by - gulp - Fyodor Dostoevsky, I can probably download it for free.

    So I'm sure I'll be using my Kindle more in the future.  I am told it can hold about 3600 e-books, so space will not be a problem.  And Lord knows, when I go to the used-book store, the Classic Lit section is not a place I spend any appreciable time in.