Amazon Kindle

Jan 28 2012

Kindle Quick Hits: The Flinch by Julien Smith

One of the interesting things that has developed as part of the growth of e-books is the ability to publish essays and shorter type works quickly and easily and reach a large audience.  If you want to publish something quickly and have the potential to reach a large audience you can now do it yourself in e-book form.  Charge little (anywhere from $.99-$2.99 usually) and make it easier for people to pull the trigger.

I have been taking advantage of this development to read some interesting e-books from a variety of genres and authors.  And over the next few days I want to take a moment to offer my quick impressions of these shorter works.

First up is a e-book that was actually free: The Flinch by Julien Smith.

A book so important we refuse to charge for it.

Julien Smith has delivered a surprise, a confrontation, a book that will push you, scare you and possibly stick with you for years to come.

The idea is simple: your flinch mechanism can save your life. It short circuits the conscious mind and allows you to pull back and avoid danger faster than you can even imagine it’s there.

But what if danger is exactly what you need?

What if facing the flinch is the one best way to get what you want?

Here’s a chance to read the book everyone will be talking about, before they do.

What are you afraid of? Here’s how to find out.

I saw this on Twitter and decided to check it out. After all, it was free.  It turned out to be a sort of digital pep talk.  It has an interesting hook and some useful challenges even if it is somewhat repetitive.

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By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Nov 21 2011

The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

I picked up The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo on my Kindle tempted by the then $.99 price tag. This weekend I was traveling and needed something light and short to read and decided this was a perfect fit.

And it turned out to be a sweet, dream-like fairy tale; and at the same time an inspirational story about the power of dreams and the determination to follow them.

Here is the publisher’s teaser:

When a fortuneteller’s tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her?

The fortuneteller’s mysterious answer (An elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that Peter can hardly dare to believe it.

But it is-all of it-true.

It is worth noting that writing a fairy tale is harder than it might sound.  It is not easy to write short elegant, dream-like fairy tales that don’t come off too saccharine or derivative, etc. The best evidence that DiCamillo had succeeded was that I kept reading until I had finished the story without thinking about it; she drops you into this world and you are soon caught up in it and suspend your disbelief as the saying goes. The story feels like a real fairy tale if that makes sense. Keep Reading

By Kevin Holtsberry • Reviews • 0 • Tags: , , , ,

Jun 19 2011

More on Kindle and the joy of reading

Cover of "Kindle Wireless Reading Device,...

Cover via Amazon

Miljenko Williams ruminates on Kindle and being engrossed in a good read:

But what I most like about the whole Kindle experience is that in some intangible and inexplicable way it has managed to use digital technologies to turn me away from hypertextuality.

I love the Internet – always will do, of course.  But Amazon’s Kindle has reminded me of the simple pleasure of burying oneself in a text – a pleasure I had lost in an online maze of endless restless clicking.

A simple pleasure indeed.

That wondrous permission we readers sometimes choose to offer up to those deserving writers who with their wisdom regale us and reward us.

That beautiful moment when we choose to allow an author the time and space to lead us through their world.

That is why Amazon’s Kindle is worth so very much more than its technology.

All I can says is, yup. I offered my thoughts along similar lines a few days ago.

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Dec 8 2010

Almost Heaven by Chris Fabry

One of the fun things about owning a Kindle (or any e-reader for that matter) is the free books. Publishers offer books for free in order to introduce you to an author or series in the expectation that you will then purchase the latest book(s).  Being a cheapskate fugal shopper I frequently download free books for my Kindle and Almost Heaven by Chris Fabry was one of the latest.

Here is the publisher’s description:

Billy Allman is a hillbilly genius. People in Dogwood, West Virginia, say he was born with a second helping of brains and a gift for playing the mandolin but was cut short on social skills. Though he’d gladly give you the shirt off his back, they were right. Billy longs to use his life as an ode to God, a lyrical, beautiful bluegrass song played with a finely tuned heart. So with spare parts from a lifetime of collecting, he builds a radio station in his own home. People in town laugh. But Billy carries a brutal secret that keeps him from significance and purpose. Things always seem to go wrong for him.

However small his life seems, from a different perspective Billy’s song reaches far beyond the hills and hollers he calls home. Malachi is an angel sent to observe Billy. Though it is not his dream assignment, Malachi follows the man and begins to see the bigger picture of how each painful step Billy takes is a note added to a beautiful symphony that will forever change the lives of those who hear it.

A great deal of the Christian fiction I come across is just plain bad (although to be fair maybe I haven’t sampled widely enough) and let’s be honest some of the books that are free on Amazon are free for a reason.  So the first thing to say here is that Almost Heaven is not one of those books that you simply don’t want to finish. In fact, I was so interested in the opening chapter that I just kept on reading it (something I rarely do when I download a free Kindle book).

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Oct 12 2010

Interesting perspective on the Kindle

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and Commentary’s Peter Wehner.

I have the book on my new Kindle and hope to review it here (hope springs eternal, right?) but I wanted to point out Ed’s interesting perspective on the Kindle:

After seven years of blogging, I had almost stopped book reading entirely.  Blogging is a process that takes up a considerable amount of attention, and I used to tell myself and others that I had no time left for book reading.  Three weeks ago, I bought a Kindle for the First Mate, mainly because the selection of audio books for her was small and the commercial titles rather expensive in CD or cassette format; even the Braille Library is limited in newer releases.  The Kindle has a text-to-speech function that works with most Kindle books, and since she’s already used to the computer-generated voice with her PC, she took to it enthusiastically.

After playing with it for a couple of days to get it set up for her use, I decided to buy one for myself — and I love it.  In the past couple of weeks, I have read The Road to Serfdom, City of Man, Peter Ferrara’s President Obama’s Tax Piracy, re-read The Three Musketeers, The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, and bought the subscription to Reason.  (The classics can usually be found for free or for under a dollar.) It’s been a wonderful experience in diving back into what had once been my passion as a child and younger man, and I can’t recommend the experience more highly.  Right now, I’m in the middle of A Shattered Peace by David Andelman, a book about the Versailles Treaty and its repercussions all the way to today.

I chose the Kindle mainly because of the price and the text-to-speech feature, which the Sony and the Barnes & Noble devices didn’t have.  Occasionally I get asked about the iPad, which also serves well as an e-book reader, but the iPad is more costly (around $600 to the Kindle’s $139) and has the backlighting that tires out my eyes.  The 6″ Kindle is more portable and more convenient, at least for me.


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