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On Christmas Day I was surprised with a present wrapped in gold paper which contained a Kindle 2 ereader. This thin device, once charged and tied into the Pod’s wifi, soon provided me with regular issues of USA Today along with a number of other bits and pieces of reading pleasure. My use of the device has been a bit sporadic though, namely due to the fact that I do not always have the money to purchase ebooks for consumption.
Still, I’ve warmed up to the device. I read World War Z by Max Brooks on the device and enjoyed the experience. With the cover, the device almost fit my hand, something I can not say for most books, which are a notch too big and awkward. I wish the page turning buttons were a bit bigger but aside from that, I have no real complaints about the actual reading experience on the device.
The problem?
Well, my Kindle isn’t always available for duty. Sometimes it freezes up. Sometimes it seems like the battery, which is supposed to last for a month even in sleep mode, dies on me. I suffered through a week of frustration as I tried to resurrect the device in order to continue reading Paul McAuley’s The Quiet War.
Never fear, I have a third gen iPod iTouch with a kindle app onboard. I had recently hooked the device into my account, downloaded the info I needed and moved forward from there. When my Kindle pulled a Rip Van Winkle on me, I drew out my Touch and brought up The Quiet War.
Reading on a small screen? How did that work out, you ask? Better than you’d think, believe it or not. The device syncs up with your last read page if it has access to wifi, which the Touch did during lunch. Tapping one side of the screen or the other advanced the text effortlessly.
Which do I enjoy reading off of more?
Well, I gotta say that I think I like reading on the smaller Touch more than I like reading on the Kindle 2. The Touch has farted out on me one time and that was months back. If only you could combine the touch screen ease of the Touch with the read it in the daylight screen of the Kindle 2, I’d be a happy man.
My general thoughts?
First, I wouldn’t have a Kindle app if I hadn’t received a Kindle 2 in the first place. Without the Kindle 2, I wouldn’t have an Amazon account.
Second, I suspect that if I could afford one, I’d purchase an iPad 2 and phase out the Kindle, or perhaps use it as a reserve device. It might be handy to have it open to a page in one book while I’m working on something on another device. Or if I wanted to show someone something, I could sync two devices up and show them the page I was referring to.
Third, I find I do more and more reading off of a screen and less off of an actual printed piece of material.
Finally, I think things are going to change big time. Perhaps not an original assessment of the situation. The key is trying to figure out how to make money out of this change. Those that do so will hold the keys to the printing universe for the next generation.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
For Christmas my client purchased an Amazon Kindle ereader for me. There was a bit of a conspiracy to keep this purchase a secret from me that involved the enlistment of the Woman I Love and my own mother. Needless to say, I was in the dark until Christmas Day when I opened the box to find it sitting there staring at me.
It is a strange thing, this relationship I have with John. Previously we traveled to New York City to meet him in person and do research for After America. New York City had not been high on my list of places to travel to but it meshed up with my schedule better than San Francisco did and since it was February, how could any warm blooded male resist the urge to give the Big Apple to the Woman they Love?
Turns out that New York City took most of my Midwestern notions and flushed them down the toilet. A friendly city, active, exciting and far different from the usual, mean spirited impression we are left with.
Staring at the Kindle, I wondered if I wasn’t on the verge of a similar eye opening experience. I was at best lukewarm to it. Reading off a computer screen has never been a favorite chore of mine. I tend to prefer passages shorter than 2000 words and I find I do not process the information in the same manner as text printed on paper.
So I charged the device, registered it and started to noodle around with it. No, like most men, I didn’t read the instructions. You don’t really need to. The Kindle seems to be an intuitive device for the most part, easily sorted out. It helps that we have wifi in the apartment now so I was able to purchase a couple of books for a test run.
For the record, I picked up Polybius and I picked up Thomas Fleming’s work on the intimate life of our Founding Fathers. Much of what I have read out of Fleming so far is material I was already aware of.
Truth to tell, however, I have not spent much time reading on it until this morning. I was in the mood for a newspaper while Trinity watched the new reality show Toddlers and Tiaras (who comes up with this crap?) and there was the Kindle on my desk.
“I’ll just download a paper,” I thought.
Yeah, but which one? There are a hundred and fifty plus available. I decided to go with something simple and started off with USA Today, the e copy of which is a quarter cheaper. The Kindle downloaded it in less than a second and I was off.
Couldn’t I read the USA Today on my laptop? Yeah, umm, it seems the laptop’s multimedia capability is a bit of a distraction. It is too easy to go check facebook or some such.
The screen on the kindle is just about the right size for reading. You can adjust the text size and at first I had it set for a larger size before I found I was toggling the page buttons too often. I settled for something closer to default, which gives me a block of text I can concentrate on for a few seconds before moving on. The page turn is not instantaneous so if you are impatient, you’ll need to clamp down on that. If you’ve been spoiled with touch screens on the iPod Touch, iPhone and the iPad, you are going to have to wait as well.
The screen is not backlit so you can read it in daylight. On the other hand, if you want to read it in a darkroom, you need to turn on a light.
My only real issues with the Kindle so far have to do with overall design as opposed to function. When I hold it in my hand, it feels a bit too slim. Part of this is due to the fact that my hands are shaped oddly and nothing ever really fits them right. I like the item I am reading to seat itself in the palm of my hand, right where the meat of the thumb meets your life line. The other issue is that the page tabs seem a bit too small.
Do I love the Kindle? I think the jury is still out on that. I definitely like my Kindle. I like the fact that I can carry a library of books with me in the palm of my hand and that I can access those books at will. I’ve lost track of the number of times I have loaded up bags full of books to use for research while out of the apartment. The Kindle solves that problem for me. I can see it serving as a useful research device in the future.
The Kindle can also be used to store documents of your own in PDF format. I had given some thought to purchasing a Kindle DX for use in my classes for lecture notes. This would get me away from the massive three ring binders I am in the habit of carrying around. I’m not sure I’ll be using this Kindle for that purpose. I may put my notes on there so I can review them prior to giving a lecture. However, more and more, I find that I lecture without any notes at all.
I know that I definitely enjoy reading on it far more than I do my iPod Touch. The Touch can be used for very short items and I think the finger flick method of moving the text around is better than the tabs. That said, the Touch screen is far too small for lengthy reading. I still can not figure out how folks read books through their cellphones. My eyes ache at the prospect.
Will this thing do away with print books? Hard to say, really.
I’ll have more thoughts on the Kindle reading as time progresses. In the meantime, a hearty and public thank you to John Birmingham for the Christmas present.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of The Limb Knitter and Tearing Down Tuesday
North Kansas City, Missouri
Tearing Down Tuesday is now available as an ebook at Amazon.com for three dollars American. The story should be accessible on any e-reader out there.
Right now I’m just experimenting to see how things work. I figure Tearing Down Tuesday was the perfect test subject given that it has been published twice and that I do not have any remaining obligations to the previous publishers. Bangar from Down Under was asking if there should be a dedicated day to generate a sales spike and I advised holding off.
In other words, here is what I’m thinking.
If you missed a chance to read Tearing Down Tuesday at Interzone or Apex and you want to read it badly enough, here is your shot.
On the other hand, if you have read Tearing Down Tuesday then I’d advise waiting a bit. I want to offer readers and supporters something more than just the same old story. I want to bundle TDT with my unpublished story Maternal Soldier along with some additional content. I’m still thinking on what that content might be but I don’t think I’ll be able to get to it until after the semester ends.
That bundle, by the way, will be called A Murphy Double Tap and I believe I’ll be selling that for five bucks American.
I have readers. I have fans. I have supporters. Perhaps not many, but enough that they have made their voices heard during the two initial publications.
I figure this is a way to see if we really don’t need editors and publishers anymore. Maybe we still need gatekeepers.
And maybe we don’t.
If we don’t, then I think I just might bypass them.
So it goes.
Other Fronts
Today was testing for the Third Quarter in all classes. Here in a bit I’ll run my 120s through the scantron to see what I get. Tomorrow, Veteran’s Day, will be nothing but grading, grading, grading.
Then it will be time to prep for evals, which are next week. The suit is at the cleaners for the event and I’ve got funds set aside for a fresh haircut.
We’ll see how it goes.
Respects,
Steven Francis Murphy
Author of Tearing Down Tuesday and The Limb Knitter
North Kansas City, Missouri
Those that done said stuff