Saturday, March 21, 2009

Kindle2

I finally got a Kindle2. I have been looking at the Kindles since they first came out, but I kept putting off getting one for a variety of reasons. The first generation ones were a little bulky and new technology, which is always scary, and I am always broke, which was another powerful inducement to wait. When the K2s came out, though, I had a much harder time waiting. They are sleek and many of the complaints early users had were gone. I went so far as to place one in my amazon cart several times, but I didn't get one until Saturday of last week.

It came Wednesday. It's already one of my favorite pieces of technology. I have read two books on it and am about halfway through a third. I have about 25 books downloaded onto it including some of my very favorite rereads. Almost all of the books I've found so far have been free, too, since they are old enough to be out of copyright protection. It's amazing.

There are so many people and sites out there putting out literature for free. I find that to be a wonderful thing. It's like having a huge free bookstore with thousands of titles for the asking. Granted, the latest best-sellers are not free, but that's not a big deal to me. I pay less to download the ones of those I'm interested in that I would pay to buy them from my local bookstore. Plus, I can get them when I want them, something I can't always say about my local book store.

I've also noticed that with my Kindle I read much faster. I don't know why that should be true, but it is. It may be because of the adjustable print size or the ease of use, but even though I've always been a fast reader, I'm really flying now. The day I got my Kindle, I read the 8th Sookie Stackhouse novel and half of a Lauren Willig book, too. I'm now working on rereading Beloved.

Are there things they could do better? Absolutely. Sure. It's a device in development. I know that future models will just get better and better. I love the one I have now, though, for what it is: the integration of literacy and technology. It's time the two met and were friendly.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Sookie Stackhouse Novels


I have become addicted to the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris lately. I started reading them last weekend, and so far I'm up to book 7. I am ripping through them with great gusto, and I can't wait until my Kindle gets here so I can download the last two. The series is nothing like I thought it would be.

It's really quite beyond genre classification. There are elements of horror, mystery, "chick lit" (whatever that is), and a healthy dollop of good old fashioned romance novel thrown in for makeweight. The heroine is admirable, strong-willed, and thoroughly Southern. The guys (and I guess I have to use that term rather loosely, all things considered) who pursue and woo her are interesting and exotic. My personal favorite is Eric. Despite his shortcomings, he's just...well...let's say he's the type one wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers (not that he would, again, all things considered).

Once I finish with this series, I think I'm going to start her Lily Bard series. I have one of them on the shelf, in fact, and now that I know how much I enjoy her writing, I think I'll explore other avenues to see if they're as pleasurable to stroll. In the meantime, I will go see what else I have on the "to read" shelf now that Spring Break is allowing me to indulge my voracious literary appetites.

Waiting on My Kindle

I have been drooling over the Kindle2 on amazon for a long time now, but I have resisted temptation successfully until yesterday. I finally gave in after several days of having one in my cart and bought it. Now I'm just waiting for my favorite UPS driver to roll up the driveway with it so the real fun can begin.

I love pretty gadgets, to be sure, but that's not the only reason why I wanted to get one. I have thought long and hard about the way I read, and it really made sense to me to get a Kindle. I tend to rip through pulp fiction very, very fast. I can destroy a novel in a day, two if I get really ambitious and nothing else is pressing. It's very tiring to have to try to guess whether or not I'm going to like a new series enough to purchase all the books for it in order to have them on-hand for a big reading spree.

I also ALWAYS have at least one book in my bag. I never go anywhere without a book in case a moment opens up to read. Long trips mean even more books need to be packed, and sometimes I just have the wild urge to read something random. The Kindle weighs less and will be like a portable library in my bag. I'm pretty excited about that. So many of my favorite books are public domain and therefore downloadable as free e-books. The cost of others is less than it would take to get them from our local bookstore, and they'll come instantly.

I made a custom skin for it on this awesome site called skinit.com. I uploaded a pastiche of bookcovers from some of my favorite books to make the skin, so my Kindle will be protected, literary, and colorful. One of my least favorite features of it is the plain whiteness, but that was a fairly easy fix. I always have to customize everything I own, anyway, so I would have skinned it no matter what color it came in. I actually looked at the skins on this site, iStyles, too, but I wanted to make my own, so I did it on the other one.

I got a nifty Janine King carrying case from eBay. The style is really funky in a fabric called Geisha Fans, and I liked it way more than any of the cases on amazon. I decided that it had a lot of personality, and I enjoyed that more than the basic black or leather ones I was seeing elsewhere. I don't know why designers don't understand that people like to tweak things. Is it just me?

I have been surfing for free e-books, and I've been thoroughly astonished by how much good stuff there is. I already have 11 free titles ready to download from the Project Gutenberg offshoot site when I get the Kindle Wednesday including the complete Emily Dickinson Poems, something I often turn to for solace, and a collection of Jeeves and Wooster stories, one of my "feel good" standbys. I haven't even dug around very much yet, either.

Well, I think it's time to start digging for more stuff. My Twitter tweeple have been really awesome pointing out tips. I think this was a good investment in something that I'm going to enjoy for a long time to come.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

And Another Thing...

I am in a permanent state of song-stuck-in-the-head, except I have a whole album stuck in mine. Chris Thile's How to Grow a Woman from the Ground won't get out of my head. If I'm concentrating on something else, I always start to hum abstractedly, and lately, it's been tunes off that particular disc that have always been the running soundtrack waiting to pounce. It's not that I don't listen to other things, either. I have tried to drive it out with ZZ Top, the Stones, Howlin Wolf, Ella Fitzgerald, Third Day, TobyMac, good disco, and Bach. That mandolin won't go, though. How does he do that? It's not annoying, just weird, but if it goes on much longer, I think I'm going to start getting worried....

Late Nights

Well, with the time change, I'm back to my late night routines. I love daylight saving time. I like the way the light hovers in the trees and the sky glows that greenish blue for a long time after the sun has dropped. It makes me feel like going outside and dancing in the pastures.

Of course, this also means that once again, I am not getting my work done. Grr... I am now, deluded soul that I am, feeling that it is only 10:00, when in fact it is now 11:00. I am frantically throwing together the last preparations for tomorrow's work day despite the fact that I really want to be bopping around the house cleaning, reading, and well....playing for lack of a more adult term. I feel playful, sort of like a big cat with some string being dangled before it. Maybe I have spring fever?

Oh well. One more week to get through until I can have some legitimate late nights with Spring Break. I can do this. I know I can.