I must admit that I never thought that I would buy a Kindle because I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with books. I love the feel of them and yes the smell of them too. I like to keep them in pristine condition and I even manage to keep the spine of thick paperbacks intact, which is often no easy task as they’re so meanly and tightly bound.
I saw someone on TV a while ago and he was preparing to read an extract from a book. He opened the book in the middle and immediately bent it back as far as he could and cracked the spine. I can’t remember who he was, I must have blocked it out. It seemed like it was his way of rolling up his sleeves to be ready for work. I’m not in favour of the death penalty but really – he deserved to be put up against a wall and shot! So, that’s my attitude to books, even mass market paperbacks and that’s why I was so against Kindles/e-readers.
However, although I’ve only read one book on my Kindle so far I must admit that it was quite a positive experience. It’s so easy to handle and if you have problems with your hands, which so many older women in particular have I think after a lifetime of housework, DIY -ing, gardening and such, then you will probably find a Kindle to be a boon. It’s lightweight and its great to turn pages with just a touch. A Kindle/e-reader must also be brilliant for people who have restricted movement, maybe after a stroke or something, when holding a book and turning pages might be difficult. It’s easy to pop it into your bag just before you leave the house which is great too. I don’t know about you but I’m always running around at the last minute to pick up a book to take out with me, it’s handy to have one if you get stuck in a queue somewhere. You don’t want to be dragging a massive tome around though so a Kindle solves that problem.
The only thing I have against a Kindle is that as far as I can see you don’t get any information on the book you are reading. I would have liked it to begin exactly as a real book does with the date of the book’s first publication and such, and I always like to see who a book has been dedicated to. I missed that info.
You’ll think that this is mad but I would also have liked more in the way of instructions than came with the Kindle. I know that sounds daft when the gadget is an e-reader and you can obviously get the instructions from the screen but as I’m not technologically minded I have an aversion to tinkering with things like that in case I do something which damages it. Of course Duncan came along and had to see what it could do – which was a revelation to me. It’s more than an e-reader, it’s really a wee computer and you can access the internet to read blogs and the like. I can see myself getting quite fond of it though and I’m making myself some Kindle cases, wee sleeping bags to protect it, I haven’t gone as far as to name it/her/him – but you never know, I just might!
I’ll still be buying some real books but they’ll be special editions of books which are so lovely I just want to hold them, Folio books or similar. I can’t imagine ever buying a non-fiction book for my Kindle because for me things like gardening or history books or luscious coffee table books are all about the feel of them and their lovely glossy paper and of course I have to have a sniff of them now and then and lets face it there are definitely worse thing to sniff!
The old free books that have been digitized don’t have all the front pages etc. but I have never bought a new book for the ereader so maybe they do. Anyone out there know about this?
Katrina here is a link to a users guide for the kindle fire
http://kindle.s3.amazonaws.com/Kindle_Fire_Users_Guide.pdf
Also see if your library has ebooks to check out. Mine does but I’ve never done it yet but know others who have and love it.
I get carsick reading in the car but have discovered that if I take a Dramamine before we leave I can without getting sick and the ereader with a light is great for reading while traveling at night!
Peggy Ann,
According to Joan you can sometimes click back from the first page to get more info, I must try it. My Kindle is the ordinary one – not the Fire. I think I ‘d better stay away from library e-books for the moment, I have so many books to read. I don’t read in the car, mainly because I like to keep an eye on what’s going on in the traffic, I’m not really a back seat driver – honest!
Glad to hear you are getting on with it.
It is a godsend when you are going out and does save all the weight lifting carrying booms around, although I do like that feeling as well.
As for the man with the spine of the book, they should be natural creases in there not forced ones. Although one wonders whether he was making a statement of some sort.
I am trying to think about what I miss when reading on my kindle: probably being ale to keep my finger in the place I was reading and flicking back to reference something if I feel that I have missed a part of the story and need a recap.
Jo,
I definitely miss not being able to flick back easily because in a real book you usually have a fair idea of how far back you need to go and even which part of a page you’re looking for. A Kindle would have been wonderful when I was stuck at Edinburgh airport last year and the flight I was waiting on kept being pushed back – half an hour at a time – for 4 hours. Only coffee shops were open and I just about lost the will to live, I was so bored!
I’ve had my Kindle for a while and still don’t know all the features. Like Jo I miss being able to flick through the book easily, and having to remember the location to get back to where I was. It’s annoying if I’ve gone to the end, say, because the ‘Go to the last page read’ is then the end – when I’ve not read that far.
If you use the ‘Go to’ feature you can go to the cover and the beginning and also connect to the book details on Amazon.
Margaret,
Thanks for the info. I know there’s a way of sort of turning down a page so that when you click back you can get back to where you left off easily, but I haven’t tried it yet.
I’ve discovered that although the first page of the first chapter comes up when I click on a title, I can usually ‘page back’ and get at least some previous information, like the publication date, sometimes book cover, etc. I’m not very adventurous with these things either, but I am brave enough to play with it a little bit.
Because I now have quite a few books on my Kindle, I was wondering if I could sort them by author, so it would be easier to remember / find what books I’ve downloaded. I found that I can click on the ‘Most Recent First’ at the top right on the ‘Home’ page and scroll over. I’m then given the option of sorting by Title, Author, or Collections.
However, when I sort by Author, Anna Katherine Green shows up in the A’s and sometimes in the G’s, Dorothy Sayers in the D’s and in the S’s, etc. I suspect this is because of the way the information was entered on the book I downloaded. Sigh, nothing is perfect. I’m now sorting by Title and, happily, it does not think that ‘The’ is really the first word of many titles!
And now that I’ve just been playing with my Kindle, I want to sit down and immediately read all the wonderful and interesting books I’ve downloaded!
Joan,
Thanks for the info, I’m going to have to force myself to be more adventurous with it.
It seems very weird to me that some sites go by the first name of an author, it just seems unprofessional somehow. Have you read anything by Sarah Orne Jewett? I believe she was from Boston so I thought you might have read her, her books sound quite interesting so I might give her a go.
I’ve read The Country of the Pointed Firs and I have a copy of Deephaven with an inscription from Jewett to Edith Fiske in 1900, although it’s not a first edition. It has a lovely illustrated board cover but I haven’t read it.
Jewett lived most of her short (59 years, my God! my age!) in Maine. When I looked her up on Wiki, I was irritated to read that she lived with Annie Fields, the widow of James Fields of the publishing firm Ticknor and Fields, in what was termed a ‘Boston marriage’. Were they or were they not lovers? Who cares!
Joan,
The Country of the Pointed Firs is the one I was thinking of reading. It’s lovely you have a book inscribed by her.
Don’t worry, 60 is the new 40! I read the Wiki thing too and was annoyed by the ‘Boston marriage’ bit. It’s certainly of no interest to me. I had to laugh when I saw a thing on TV years ago, it was a meeting of lesbian women and the speaker was adamant that Jane Austen was that way inclined because she had shared a bed with her sister Cassandra!! My attitude is always – I don’t care what you get up to with consenting adults, just don’t bother me with it.
My Kindle is the model previous to the Fire and doesn’t have the bells & whistles. I don’t think I can read blogs on it (anybody know otherwise?) It has wi-fi but I always keep it turned off unless I’m downloading books, to save the battery.
In any case, it’s fun to be able to get the old books – especially when they’re free!
Debbie,
My Kindle is just an ordinary one too so I’m sure yours will do more than you realise. So far I’ve only used it for reading but it’s nice to know that I could get on to the internet if I had to. Unfortunately I don’t know how Duncan did it! I’ll find out and get back to you.
Wow, I’m guess I’m the only adult human in the western hemisphere without one? Anyway, glad to see it works for you! I like the cover as wee sleeping bag, though I always thought of the covers as akin to tea cozies somehow. Incidentally, do tea cozies still exist or have I dated myself horribly?
Niranjana,
Oh, for once I’m not the last one to get a gadget! I still don’t have a mobile phone and don’t want one. I love being able to get free old and out of print books although sadly the Thirkells aren’t old enough. Nina, tea cozies are so old-fashioned they’re actually all the rage now, so you’re hip – just as well because I have at least three of them!
đŸ™‚ That’s the only way I’ll ever be hip! Too bad the ‘vintage’ cachet doesn’t apply to electronics.