Kindle, kindle, little book

Kindle, kindle little book / How I wonder do pages look / Up above the shelf so free / Like cybertext you can see?

 

I've had a Kindle (Amazon's e-reader, for those of you who have been in a library for the past couple of years) for about two months now.  I was persuaded to buy a Kindle, not the Sony reader, because the Sony is small, the pages turn in a way I find visually disrupting, and the Kindle has many more reader-user friendly features, including the ability to download books remotely without a computer.

I've enjoyed it hugely.  It's not like reading a book, and I can't quite imagine curling up on a sofa in front of a roaring fire with my Kindle - and I certainly wouldn't read it in the bath - but the actually experience of reading is very easy on the eye, and you can do lots of things which make it very practical to use:

• You can put in lots of bookmarks
• It knows what page you were on, on every book you have on the go
• You can write marginal notes or excerpt passages
• .. and email them to yourself (for preparing a blog or lesson notes, perhaps)
• It lasts a very long time - 4000 page turns or something like that
• You can read lots of books at the same time

It's not backlit, so the page is easy to read and no strain, and you can vary the typesize to suit you. I found no difficulty for reading two or three hours at a time on journeys, for example. It's light and sleek and easy to carry around, and it can do lots of things a book can't:

• Download periodicals automatically (so on holiday I read The Times each day in the mountains of Peru, and now get the TLS each week)
• Carry dozens of books at a time
• You can get a free trial chapter of a lot of books to try before you buy
• Order and receive new books remotely, in a matter of a minute or two (so, dis-satisfied with guides in Peru, I found and downloaded a book on Inca culture in two minutes on a coach on a mountain road)

Modern best seller type books are cheaper than print versions, but not massively so.  But out of date books can be fantastic value - $2 or $3 for a lot of books, and the same amount for some huge compendia including many, many books - I paid that amount for almost all Rudyard Kipling for example, and the same for dozens of murder mystery short stories and novels - so I'll always have something to read, even if my mood changes from when I packed my bag.  It does have some disadvantages, of course:

• No colour
• The cheaper books have less good internal navigation (though its not really a serious problem)
• Graphics can be small (you can zoom, but a map in a guide book is designed to be seen all at once)
• Papers like The Times don't have the crossword or the bridge column!
• So far, the book collection, though large and growing, is not comprehensive and has a slight US bias - but that is changing already

I am thrilled with my purchase, and will continue to read it regularly.  For me, its ideal as I travel a lot and carrying several books can be cumbersome, and you don't always know what you'll want to read in three days time.  And, to answer Cornflower's question, I don't think it affects your propensity to snooze - the page turning button is, if anything, less strenuous than turning a real page!

Comments

[Cornflower]

Fair enough, Lindsay, name it!

[Lindsay]

Cornflower - of course, but there is nothing for free in this world, you know, so we'll have to talk about a price!

[Lindsay]

Dark Puss - I don't know, I haven't tried, but it does claim to be able to use them.

[Dark Puss]

Hello Lindsay and thank you for this helpful and informative review. How does it deal with pdf files?

DP

[Cornflower]

Please may I have a go of yours, Lindsay?