Kindle is loaded with surprises

A couple of weeks ago I caved and bought a Kindle reader. I’ve been using this little slab of hard plastic about a week and am ready to pronounce preliminary judgment.

I have found the Kindle experience surprising. And it has been an “experience,” entailing hours of reading.

The things I thought I would like, I don’t. And the things I like — a lot — are advantages I hadn’t even considered.

You need to know that I’ve always been a slow reader. I’ve never been able to take in quantities of text at a glance or two. I don't read ideas; I read words. One by one. On a good day after a full night’s sleep, I’m phrase by phrase. But that’s changed with the Kindle because it allows me to increase (or decrease) the size of the type and bump up (or down) the line spacing. Larger type alone results in shorter and fewer lines per page. You can even set the number of words per line.

With the Kindle I find that I’m able to absorb a single electronic page in two or three glances and then click on to the next page. I’m as fast as click....click....click.

Moreover the Kindle has led me to wonder whether my slow reading all these years had something to do with being mildly distracted by being able to see two pages at once. The one-page-at-a-time Kindle keeps me focused right where my eyes need to bed.

Sure, the pages have less text, but I know I’m reading faster, a lot faster.

Of course I like the idea of being able to carry around hundreds, even thousands, of books in a device about the size of a thin slice of bread. So far I’ve loaded my Kindle mostly with free books. There are hundreds of them, mostly classics. “Meditations” shown in the photo is an example.

I also like being able to sample a book at my leisure before I decide to buy it. Hit “sample” and you are given 20 pages or so to check out. Call it electronic book browsing.

The device has all kinds of features that I have yet to master. The Kindle User’s Guide, which, of course, is preloaded into the machine as a “book” is something of a slog, mostly because you keep wanting to try out what you’ve been instructed to do.

Believe me, the User's Guide pages can’t be comprehended in two glances.

My experiments with the features have at times left me baffled. Once I wanted to find out more about King George VI and put my cursor in front of the “King.” Silly me. The Kindle told me first about BB King and then about Billy Jean. I still have to figure out how to group the three words together to get what I want. It has to be possible.

Which brings us to the Kindle’s negatives. Strangely, this sleek little reading platter seems ergonomically cumbersome. I find it hard to find a comfortable, safe place to hold it without inadvertently clicking one of the narrow “next page” or “previous page” pads that run along both sides. And strangely enough I don’t like the slimness of the Kindle, which is advertised as an attribute. I miss the heft more akin to, well, a book.

While the type itself is very sharp and easy to read, the slight grayness of the “page” strikes me as a touch dim.

The little “five-way” navigation tool in the lower right corner is too small. For someone with larger hands than mine, it could be unnavigable. The little button-keys on the keyboard are minute pebbles. With time I’ll probably become accustomed to the Kindle’s miniaturization, but I’m not there yet.

This Kindle, a third generation WiFi-only model, is clearly a work in progress — a transitional machine. But isn’t that true of all technology? At $139, Kindle 3 seems a good entry point for jumping into and enjoying the electronic reader experience.

And think of all those free books you can download.

By the way, the books you buy (or get free) are stored on an Amazon “cloud” so that if you want to buy the next Kindle iteration (certain to have a touch screen and color), you will be able to load what you have already bought into the new device. Oh, and if you have two or three Kindles on the same Amazon account, you can share the books between the family’s readers.

I was surprised that several books aren’t available in electronic editions. One of my favorites, Gerald Durrell’s “My Family and Other Animals,” apparently didn’t make the Kindle cut. For shame!

One final note, owning a Kindle comes with a dollop of guilt. I fear that our local bookstores are going to go the way of the the blacksmith, the typewriter repair shop and the video store. Browsing on a Kindle, while fun, lacks the ambiance of a musty bookshop presided over by a bookish, graying book monger who knows exactly the book you want and can lead you to it.

No scrolling, clicking or downloading.

Are electronic books mere "Kindling"?

The “Kindle” name for Amazon’s portable electronic reading device is suddenly leading to some frightening associations.

They stem from Amazon’s recent deleting of sold copies of Orwell’s “1984” from customers’ Kindles. Seems the electronic copies were sold by a bookseller who didn’t have the rights to Orwell’s classic.

The episode reveals that “buyers” of Kindle books are really lessees of them, and Amazon can cancel the lease at any time.

In the world of real books, of course, what you buy is what you own — and can sell. (Local note: that's why our Hillsdale used book sale was such a success yesterday.)

It turns out that a Kindle’s content is, as they say, “tethered” to Amazon. It might be more accurate to say that Amazon customers themselves are tethered to the retailer because the Seattle-based on-line merchandiser has a direct line to data about customers’ buying (and reading) habits. To say nothing of their credit card numbers.

That’s scary enough. But here is a technology that is frighteningly Orwellian, hence the irony that Orwell’s “1984” was the deleted book. How Big Brother would have loved to have the power Amazon does.

If this technology supplants real books and falls into the wrong hands, books and the free expression of ideas in “print,” are doomed. They can be expunged at the push of a button in some governmental, or corporate, “Ministry of Truth.”

The name “Kindle” in this context brings to mind another classic on the subject of thought control: Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” in which mass book burnings forced “renegade” scholars and historians to memorize books in order to preserve them.

Of course computers also “memorize” books — until they don’t.

In defense of books

So Amazon’s Kindle and its unborn kin are going to replace books, eh?

I don’t think so.

A Kindle is a text machine.

Books are a different medium altogether.

Here are just a few differences. (Feel free to add to the list)

You can give books away. You know, physically hand them over. Here, take this book.

You can lend books. As in “lending library” or just plan lend to a friend. Return it whenever you’ve finished.

You can sign books. Write an inscription so that years, decades from now, someone will know that you gave the book to someone, or that it simply passed through your hands.

Insert a decorative Ex Libris bookplate in your book. Bookplates are themselves art.

Authors can sign books. As in “signed edition,” which adds value and interest. Try “signing” a Kindle edition. It doesn’t compute.

You can display books. Our libraries are reflections of our interests. Visit a stranger’s house and check out his or her personal library. The stranger is a stranger no more.

You can arrange books — by topic, by author by size, by your liking.

Books are art. They are artistically designed and bound. A Kindle, as far as I can tell, is a piece of leatherette-bound plastic.

Books have unique fonts that are themselves a medium. They are important enough to be described in colophons at the end of a book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophon_(publishing)

As art, books have varying value as they are sold used to others. Rare books, of course, appreciate in value. They are the mother lode of many a garage sale.

Books have cover art. Can’t tell a book by the cover? Yes and no. Recently I was sorting through books donated for our Dec. 9 Hillsdale community book sale and came across an old, frayed paperback edition of “Catcher in the Rye.” The cover art immediately transported me back 50 years when I first read this early edition. Cover art, regardless of quality, reaches out to us and involves us in ways beyond the book’s words.

Books come in editions, which, of course, adds to their value and interest.

Resellers determine n the price of a used book. If we had only Kindles, Amazon would set the price. The books we sell at our book sale produce value that we use to support out community. Books just keep on giving.

Finally, in so many ways, books are lasting, beloved artifacts. They are part of us and of our time as well as other times.

They are permanent, they are history.

They are irreplaceable.