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OK, I didn't get to this as fast as I promised, but I wanted to weigh in on the great Kindle debate of 2008.
First let's talk about cost. $400 is a lot of money. I would not have spent the money myself. It was a Christmas gift and a wonderful one. If the price is too high for you I can respect that. I don't really want to get into a debate about whether it is "worth" $400 or not. That is really up to the individual to decide. But considering what people spend on cell phones, PDAs, Mp3 players it doesn't strike me as ridiculously over-priced by any means.
The no brainer type for this device is an avid reader who travels a lot. If you read a lot of bestsellers or popular books and you are on the road a lot the Kindle would be awesome. You can bring an incredible amount of reading material in one handy device that is about the size and weight of a trade paperback. Plus, if for some reason you run out you can buy more instantly. As a bonus you can listen to music and do some basic web surfing. I can't imagine why a book addict traveler wouldn't find the Kindle a wonderful tool.
But I am not a frequent traveler, so why do I love the Kindle? Convenience. The basic advantage is the ability to have access to a wide array of reading material in a small light weight form. With the Kindle it is easy to never be without something to read.
Let's start with books. And let's start with a few caveats:
- Yes, not all books are available. This is a drawback. I wish more books were available. But a lot of books are available and more are being added every day.
- There are still some books I want to read in hard copy format. Books where the illustrations, the look and feel of the book, are part of the process of reading it. But this is a limited set of books so it isn't a big problem. I don't need to read everything on the Kindle just enough to make it worthwhile.
- I really haven't had much trouble inadvertently hitting page forward buttons or anything else. But it does take a little time to get used to handling it given the location of the buttons. At first I thought it would be a problem, but I just seemed to get used to it.
Now on to the positives.
One of the great things about the Kindle is the instant nature of the process. Find out one of your favorite authors just came out with a new book? Buy it on your Kindle and read it seconds later. Imagine if the Kindle was around for the Harry Potter books. The moment the book came out you could start reading it. I find that cool. No running to the store or waiting for Amazon to ship it to you.
More below.
I will address this more fully tomorrow when I have more time, but here are a couple of posts that lay out the two sides:
- Meagan McArdle offers ten reasons why she loves her Kindle
Today in New York City a memorial service is being held to honor one of my heroes: William F. Buckley Jr. In remembrance of this occasion I wanted to try and put down some of my thoughts about how this great man impacted my life.
WFB - to use the shorthand - and I had little in common on the surface. He was a wealthy, Ivy League educated, world traveler with roots in the South and East Coast. I was born and raised in the Midwest in a Middle Class family, attended a small liberal arts college, and my only foreign travel was a trip to France in grad school.
He loved classical music and I barely know the difference between Bach and Beethoven. He loved to sail and sailed around the world. I have been a on a sail boat probably twice in my whole life. He was a master of the English language. I struggled with dyslexia as a child and still struggle with spelling and grammar. He was a lifelong Catholic and I am an evangelical protestant who grew up in small Bible churches.
In short, he was a sophisticated, highly intelligent, famous, and impactful person. I am not.
But it was his greatness - his goodness, his fundamental rightness - that called me to strive to be better, to know more, to communicate better, to make an impact.
For more keep reading.
I am officially declaring this Small Book Appreciation Week. What does that mean? Not much really. Each day this week I am going to be discussing a small book or novella that I have enjoyed recently. And if I have time maybe some musing on what make small books so enjoyable.
One obvious reason I enjoy small books is the ability to read them quickly. If you have what seems like an ever shrinking amount of time to devote to reading small books can help. If you have an afternoon free you can often finish a small book in one sitting.
In order to really get engrossed in a larger book you have to have a larger block of time in which to devote to reading. Reading a large book chopped up into tiny increments can significantly diminish the enjoyment. Small books don't require that commitment.
What say you? Do you enjoy small books? Or do you need a deeper more complex plot and text to keep you interested? Feel free to leave a comment or link here if you feel like blogging on it.
If you are not reading the fascinating roundtable Ed organized to discuss the new Nicholson Baker book Human Smoke you should be (start here).
I am so far behind in my reading I am almost at the point of despair, but the intelligent thoughts of the participants Ed brought to this discussion have almost convinced me to take the time to read the book.
I am sure I would bring strong opinions about it as I have a Masters in history with an emphasis on twentieth century foreign policy and my political perspective seems likely to be the opposite of Baker's. But nearly 500 pages is a daunting challenge in that my time alloted to reading seems to shrink daily.
I am interested to see what others think as reviews come out. But be sure to check out this week's roundtable whether you intend to read the book or not.
I seem to be in a sort of extended writers block. I am as obsessed about books as ever and I am still finding time to read remarkably. But I am having a hard time writing about what I read. I can't seem to focus long enough to think intelligently about what I am reading or long enough to get the thoughts I have down. For some reason writing feels like work these days.
Perhaps, now that a big part of my "day job" is writing, writing as a hobby and for no pay seems wrong or a distraction. But I think mostly it has to do with habit. When you are posting regularly and engaged in debates and conversations things flow much more easily. In the same way, when you get out of the habit of posting regularly and the creative juices seem to die up it is hard to jump start things again.
Not sure why I am posting this either seeing how I have no indication that anyone reads this blog except for those that surf in from Google searches and other side doors. Publishers must see something in that as they keep sending the emails and the books. Which is like bartenders emailing alcoholics offering to buy the first round.
I never intended this to become simply a running record of the books I have read - or more accurately a record of some the books that I have read with a long lag time. But this is kinda where we find ourselves. Not much left to do but suck it up and press on. But being a blogger I wanted to write a meandering post about the lack of content and muse about what it all means.
BTW, I really like the word that makes the title of this post. I found it via one of the sleep screens on my Kindle. Great word. For more see here.
If any of the fine readers of this blog had the chance to listen to the Brock Clarke interview I would love to hear what you thought of it. Please drop a note in the comments to this post or the interview post or send me an email.
I know the format of my posts are not ideally suited for debate and discussion but I would love to hear what readers think. So don't be shy about offering comments, criticism, or anything else that comes to mind.
Are YouTube videos an effective way to pique your interest in a book? Here is an example for A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz:
Here is the accompanying blurb:
Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn't decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
What do you think? Is this a good way to use "new media" to get a book noticed?
Ross Douthat has a great story about WFB over at The Atlantic excerpted from his book Privilege. Here is a hilarious passage:
“You aren’t actually going to go swimming, are you?” he asked me.
“Aren’t you?” I demanded.
“Well ...”
“Well what?”
“I don’t really like to swim very much in general.”
“Well, Jaime,” I said grandly, “neither do I, honestly. But you know, I think there comes a time in a man’s life when he has a chance to say to his grandchildren, I once went skinny-dipping with William F. Buckley, Jr. And this, Jaime, this is that chance.”
One of my heroes has died. William F. Buckley Jr. died overnight in his study in Stamford, Connecticut.
It is one of those headlines or emails that comes across your screen and feels like a punch in the gut. I was aware that his health was failing but you just don't think about losing someone like this until it happens. And then it hits you that the world is somehow different. It feels like the end of an era.
WFB, as he was often known, changed the face of American conservatism and politics like few others. And like millions of others it was his writing, persona, and magazine that lead me to conservatism. I own all of his books and have read them all excepting his last (Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription)
His range was remarkable. He wrote political polemics; syndicated columns; unique memoirs; books on sailing, language, and faith; and novels. He singlehandedly changed the perception of what conservatism could be. And in the process changed America.
RIP.
