"Membership in the family of God is neither inconsequential or something to be casually ignored. The church is God's agenda for the world. Jesus said, "I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it." The church is indestructable and will exist for eternity. It will outlive this universe, and so will your role in it."
- Rick Warren
Saturday, January 8, 2011
My kids gave me a pocket watch for Christmas. Color me old-fashioned, but I've wanted one for years now. There's something almost pleasurable about checking the time on an analog timepiece, taking in the entire hour in one glance -- the exact opposite of the cold precision of a digital clock. I'll probably carry it in my pocket forever.
Speaking of forever, I also got a Kindle for Christmas. When I first heard about e-readers, I thought, No thanks. Years ago I owned a PDA, and I tried to use it as a reader. I successfully read the yet-to-be-published debut Jared C. Wilson novel, Otherworld, on the PDA, but, despite that, I found doing extensive reading on backlit devices to be too cumbersome.
The Kindle is completely different. After getting used to it for a couple of days, I revised my e-reader position: I'll own one forever now. Till death do us part.
The Kindle's biggest asset is what your average e-reader dilettante would consider to be a liability: the lack of a backlit screen. Without getting into all the geek stuff about electronic ink technology (stuff I don't understand anyway), I can simply say that the Kindle doesn't have a backlit screen because books don't have backlit screens, and the Kindle is not supposed to be an iPad, it's supposed to be a book reader. I spend enough of my life looking at backlit screens, so it's refreshing to pick up the Kindle and feel like I'm reading a book. The machine doesn't get hot. Your eyes don't get strained. A full battery charge lasts for weeks. And it's easy to "get lost" in the material that you're reading, because you're not thinking about the e-reader, you're thinking about the book you're reading.
I'm sure Amazon will one day succumb to the critics' cacophony and come out with a backlit Kindle one day (in the same way that Barnes & Noble recently released a backlit, full-color Nook), but it won't be the same. In my mind now, an e-reader needs to reflect light, not emit it.
I highly recommend one.
Trackbacks:
Trackback URL: http://thinklings.org/bloo.trackback.php/6329.
Comments on "I Love You, My Beautiful Kindle":
2. tony
- 01/09/2011 8:13 am CST
Being a gen X'er I'm on the fence with having a book shelf in my house, or succumbing to "the Cloud". Do I digitize all my books (and music CD's with iTunes) with all "my" books located on either Amazon's server and "my" kindle? What happens if Amazon decides that e-books are not their strategic direction and sell off that division or worse shut their doors. Don't tell me that can't happen either. Yahoo is hanging by a thread sort of speak and they used to be "the Internet" (Google is now). What happens when the digitized format changes? I can't help but think the industry would jump through hoops of fire for the new format to be backward compatible, but you never know. I know, I know, what happens if you get food poisoning from a product at the grocery store - highly unlikely but...
But then again is it worth the risk to purchase $1k worth of digital books and then you don't have to box your books up every time you move?
Well, as you can tell, I don't own a kindle or any e-reader (except my company forced an iPhone upon me and I guess I can squint and scroll my way through an e-book on that device) and perhaps I'm too ignorant to the numerous benefits that would outweigh my concerns above. Ah, if only I were a gen Y and just except what the world is today ;)
3. Bird
- 01/09/2011 9:49 am CST
I should have clarified, for me a Kindle will always be a supplement to my tangible library.
I have about 40 books on my Kindle, and the only one I've had to pay for is George W. Bush's Decision Points. I want to own a physical copy of that book some day, but I know I'll be able to buy it for store credit at my local used book store in about a year (I keep about $200 in book credit at that store by periodically "cashing in" boxes of garage sale books that we pick up for a song.)
So my strategery for my Kindle will be to basically use it to build up my free library, and only occasionally pony up for a book I really want right away.
4. tony
- 01/09/2011 1:59 pm CST
Bird,
use it to build up my free library
Got it. That helps. I didn't mean to get all philosophical on "the cloud" :)
There are some people I work with who are ready to take the digitized "flying leap" off the deep end and try to put their entire lives into an iPad or smart phone. And I've been thinking about that topic lately - your post "struck a nerve" :)
5. Bill
- 01/09/2011 2:04 pm CST
Bird,
The idea of building up a free library with ebooks is very intriguing to me. I could spend the rest of my life reading the public domain stuff and be just fine :-) - I've built up a modest ebook library of free stuff, but can only read on my laptop since I gave my droid to Jill.
Maybe I need (well, want :-) a Kindle!
6. salguod
- 01/09/2011 4:16 pm CST
I love the idea of the Kindle hardware, but don't like the way the books are tied to Amazon. If they want to revoke your license for a book, they can and have. In a rather ironic move, a certain version of the book 1984 disappeared from many Kindles because Amazon pulled it for some reason. I don't like the idea that the book I bought can be yanked from my digital library.
I also don't like that even though ebooks don't require manufacturing (in the traditional sense) or shipping or warehousing, they are still close in price to physical books. I expected a bigger price break.
On the other hand, the digital paper stuff is real cool and the idea of a small lightweight device that holds many books is pretty neat.
I'm curious, where do you get the free books? I thought that everything had to come through Amazon. Can you borrow ebooks from the public library (another negative since many of the books we read are from the library). Can you back up your books to your local PC?
7. Deacontrek
- 01/09/2011 6:18 pm CST
One of the issues of price is due entirely to the publishing houses who didn't like the fact that Amazon was selling ebooks for much less than the cost of real books. Two of the biggest publishers csncelled their contracts with Amazon and made contracts with Apple and Barnes and Noble to sell ebooks for what they wanted them to. So now it is expected that Amazon will (perhaps already did) make the same deal with those two publishers and will no longer be selling books for $9.99 and less. I got a 50 item anthology of G.K. Chesterton writings for .99 and a version of the Bible for free and several other books for free. Can't beat free. Another thing I love about Kindle/Amazon is that it syncs last page read on all my computers and the reader so that I know where I left off no matter on what device I am reading it. It syncs bookmarks and comments too. I don't fear losing access at all, though it might be possible I am sure, it just doesn't worry me. I have a large real library as well but there is nothing like having access to several books no matter where I am. I am even considering/searching for ways to move my magazine subscriptions to my Kindle. So far the ones I have don't have an eversion or at least not one compatible with the Kindle. May try converting them somehow. We'll see.
8. Bird
- 01/09/2011 8:45 pm CST
I'm curious, where do you get the free books? I thought that everything had to come through Amazon.
Salguod,
A lot of classics are available directly in the Kindle Store as a free download. That's where I've picked up most of my free stuff.
The Kindle is also a fully functioning PDF reader, so anything you can get on PDF, you can read on your Kindle. In fact, you can email a Word document to your unique Kindle email address, and Amazon will automatically format it for Kindle and load it wirelessly on to your Kindle. Not bad, eh?
I got a 50 item anthology of G.K. Chesterton writings for .99 and a version of the Bible for free and several other books for free.
Deacon, that's great. Actually, I did pay for one more "book," the complete works of Jonathan Edwards for 95 cents.
I could spend the rest of my life reading the public domain stuff and be just fine :-)
Bill, I know exactly what you're talking about. :-)
10. Lars Walker
- 01/10/2011 10:30 am CST
Aside from the fact that I'm cheap and poor, my main resistance to electronic reading devices is that (as far as I know) you can't drop them on a tile floor and pick them up again with no harm done.
12. Lars Walker
- 01/10/2011 12:00 pm CST
Bird, I don't generally carry my laptop around with me (I know some people do). I carry books wherever I go. And I drop them often.
14. Scott Roche
- 01/12/2011 9:52 am CST
I too love my Kindle and Doug, I understand your trepidation, but Amazon was well within their rights to do what they did. Still, if it bothers you, as Bird said you don't have to get your e-books through Amazon. If you buy an ebook in any format you can quickly and easily convert it and send it to your Kindle where it will be safe and sound.
I recommend having a look at Smashwords.com as a source for free/inexpensive stories as Project Guttenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page). I'm also an editor for a SF/F magazine the publishes exclusively electronically (http://flyingislandpress.com/flagship/) and our prices are very reasonable.
Leave a Comment:
I love my Kindle as well. What bugs me though is the Space Trilogy is unavailable for Kindle and the prices for the Narnia series are higher than I would like to pay (I am cheap, but I already own all the books in both the Narnia series and the Space Trilogy so I find it hard to justify paying for them again). The only thing about the Kindle itself that bugs me is the counterintuitive cursor joystick rather than a touch screen, but that is it. Everything else is elegant.