So for Christmas (quite a while back now) I received from my folks an Amazon Kindle 3 wi-fi (I do not have the 3G model) which you can get at Amazon or a few brick and mortar stores for $139, $189 for the 3G model. I’ve not had any experience with the previous generations of the Kindle, so I’m ignorant of how the experience is different on this generation. I do have a friend who had a Kindle 2 and when he saw my Kindle 3, he marveled at it being a smoother piece: quicker page loads, quieter page turn buttons.
Get Your Greasy Mitts on One
I desired a Kindle not by reading about it, but by handling one. I was amazed at how light it was in the hand and how easy it was to read. Prior to that, it wasn’t even on my radar. I thought that one would be foolish to read on an electronic device when books were not all that expensive and the experience of handling a book was so joyous. Plus, I like looking at a bookshelf full of books. I stare at a computer all day at work, and all night in writing papers and studying. The last thing I want is yet another screen to stare at and strain my eyes. Then, I saw a Kindle.
The nature of E-Ink
The reading experience is much like that of a book, thanks to the e-Ink technology. It doesn’t use pixels. I’m still at a loss for how this works precisely, but the effect is stunning. The Kindle screen looks like ink on paper. In fact, when I first saw one, it had the “screen saver” on and I thought it was a printed overlay on the screen much like ones that first come attached to the screen of cell phones. It looked printed and I was not expecting a screen to look like ink.
The second thing I noticed is that it was not back-lit. This is a major point that sold me on the Kindle. I hate back-lit screens. They cause severe eye strain when used for hours on end. This looks just like a book–zero eye strain (eye strain is due to looking at the brightness of the screen and then looking away at ambient light; the eye has to adjust each time and we suffer eye strain after prolonged periods of the eye shifting back and forth). Also, studies have shown that looking at a back-lit screen prohibits the production of melatonin, which aids in falling asleep (read that a while back, google it if you are doubtful of its veracity). So the Kindle will not keep you up if you like to read at night before bed (as I do). The obvious downside to this is that you need a book-light if you are reading in the dark (such as when reading in bed and your spouse wants to sleep). But again, this prohibits eye strain and does not prohibit you from becoming sleepy.
Take your library with you
Another major plus with the Kindle is the portability. I can take my super light Kindle with me anywhere I go. I have access to many books that would take many many backpacks to bring. It is a library in your hands. It’s also a great conversation starter. The battery lasts a long time. With the wi-fi off, mine goes about a month between charges. Yes, a month. As in about 12 re-charges a year. In fact, with the wi-fi off (and 3G off for applicable models) the device uses no power until the screen is changed. So while reading a page, no power is used until you turn the page or start highlighting.
Buying from Amazon
Buying books on the Kindle is very easy and you receive them in the time it takes to download. So, no waiting for shipping or even paying for shipping. Book sizes are incredibly small and are thus delivered quickly; and I don’t believe that I will suffer from running out of hard drive space. Also, there are a large amount of free books available. Indeed I have only paid for 3 books thus far: two for class, and one other. The majority of free books are public domain and so are classics. This is a great way to start reading Charles Dickens and the Leatherstocking Tales (of which the Last of the Mohicans is a part) like I’ve always wanted to (don’t be upset that I ended a sentence with a preposition, Strunk and White were full of hot air). Also, publishers often have promotions in which they offer some books for free for a limited time on the Kindle. I have a few blogs in my rss that are focused on this so I can always be sure to take advantage of the offers. Sure, most of the time the books seem to be romance novels, but there are some good books that come out occasionally. One such book that I thoroughly enjoyed is Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos. It is one of the funniest books with the most keen insight I have ever read. Seriously, even if you don’t have a Kindle, get the Kindle app and download this book. It’s no longer free, but it’s well worth the $8.59 for the electronic copy. Hard copies are just a bit more expensive. Right now, Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk by Dale Fincher is available for free and I “purchased” it this morning. It was on my list of books to buy after seminary and it popped up in my rss as free. Can’t beat that.
A further bonus is the wonder of downloading a sample of a book before you buy it. I love this. With a pretty tight budget, I can’t just go buying books that I think I would like. That is one downside to not buying a hard copy from a brick and mortar store. You can’t thumb through the book and check it out first. But with the Kindle (or Kindle app), you can download a sample; which I believe is the first 10% or so of the book. Sometimes, this doesn’t quite work out well. One book sample I downloaded was so full of endorsements and had such a lengthy preface that I only got the first page of the first chapter in the sample. That sucked. But others aren’t so bad. Really large books wind up giving you large amounts as the sample as it is the first 10% and not an allotted amount of pages (or, locations as they are referred to; yes, again with ending with a preposition, get over it). The sample of the Lord of the Rings gave me the first few chapters of the Fellowship as a sample. Sarah and I bought it when we got to the end of the sample and with only a 10-15 second pause, picked right back up reading. We’re currently at the 3rd chapter of the Return of the King. –As a quick excursus, I must say that the Kindle is very nice to read out loud with someone. This has been very nice in our marriage. Instead of watching TV, we read out loud to each other, usually before bed. I highly recommend it to couples.–
One thing that is interesting and causes worry for some is the fact that Amazon knows what books you own and can actually modify the books that you have. Some got scared when Amazon took one particular book off of people’s Kindles without their permission. Sounds like scary big brother doesn’t it? Well, the fullness of the story is that the book that was sold as a Kindle book was sold by someone who did not own the rights to the book, and was thus making money off of the property of someone else. Amazon zapped the copies on every Kindle that had it (assuming they were connected again at some point to either WiFi or 3G) and refunded them in full for the cost of the book. So, owners lost a book that was in essence, stolen, and was refunded their money. That’s fine by me. They were protecting the rightful owner of that specific book. On one occasion however, Kindle did alter a book that I had bought. They emailed me and asked if I would allow them to alter the book. The book was Lord of the Rings and the email stated that they were aware of a few omissions and typos in the Kindle version. They requested I email back with “yes” if I wanted the update, or just ignore it to keep it the way that it was. I responded “yes” even though Amazon cautioned that I would lose my place, my notes, and my highlights. I thought that was fine, since I didn’t do any of that with this book anyway, and it’s easy enough to find the chapter you left off on.
Highlighting
Also, the Kindle does allow highlighting, which it saves. Since the screen is not color, the highlight is dotted underline that leaves no question that it is a highlighted passage. It also has the option of showing popular highlights, which is quite interesting at times, showing the exact number of people who highlighted that particular passage. You can also append notes to the text. This is quite useful in books that are required for class. Furthermore, there is another feature that I confess I have to use quite often. It has a built in dictionary. You move the cursor over a word and it displays a short definition on the bottom of the page, click enter and go to the dictionary itself for the full definition. This is wonderful for someone who always says, “What does that mean exactly? I’ll have to go look that up later.”
Layout
As for the way the Kindle is laid out, it feels quite good in the hand. You have page turn buttons on the left and the right side (so, good for southpaws too). It lacks a row on the keyboard for numbers. I’ve heard that this was to decrease the overall size of the Kindle from the previous generation which did have a number row. I’m very happy with the size so I don’t complain too much about having to enter numbers a different way. As I said before, the Kindle is very light and thus makes for an immersive experience. Some of the books I read on the Kindle would be much much heavier in paper format. The Kindle really does seem to disappear as you read, enabling you to read for hours without complaint. In fact, the week after I got it, I was reading and realized that I had been reading for 4.5 hours straight. Sure, book-lovers may say that that is no big deal. But I’ve never been able to do that with a paper book before, and was thus shocked. I then took a snack break and then continued reading!
So what?
The Kindle really has proven to increase my reading vastly. Sure, you can have access to Kindle books (including the free ones) on various devices like the iPhone and iPad. But I wouldn’t buy a book unless it read like a book, ink and all. The Kindle seems to me to be the e-reader for the book lover. There is even rumblings in the publication business (from blogs of folks that work at publishing houses) to the effect that they may have bundling in the future, as in, buy a paperback, get a electronic copy as well.
Some not so great things
That being said, I do have a few caveats to my enjoyment of the Kindle. You can’t quickly scan through books with the Kindle. Although, if you are searching for a word or phrase in the book, you can type it in and call up its every occurrence. But sometimes, I like to just scan a book quickly and see its overarching flow in thought and structure. You can’t do this easily on the Kindle.
Also, reference books simply would not work well on the Kindle. The Kindle is set up to do linear reading. It’s just not set up to flip back and forth. For instance, shortly after I got the HCSB and the ESV Bible on my Kindle (both for free) I took my Kindle to church. Shortly after the sermon began, I turned the Kindle off and looked on with my wife in her Bible. If only one passage was being exegeted, the Kindle performed fine. Sure you would turn to the physical page faster than navigating screens, but it would have worked fine. The problem came when the pastor directed us to look at another passage, and then another. It was just too clunky to navigate to different passages quickly. The Kindle wants you to read it cover to cover (although that phrase does not really apply to the Kindle now that I think about it). You have to go back to the Table of Contents, select a book, then select a chapter, then press the page advance button until you got to the passage you wanted. So while I have two versions of the Bible on my Kindle, they rarely get used. This also is a problem in class. Usually in class, I have my computer though, so I use the Kindle app instead of the Kindle itself in that setting.
Another issue is that of page numbers. Kindle naturally used a useful to no human system of marking progress called “locations” and a progress bar. The progress bar made sense, the locations did not. This has been updated and now many books do have page numbers that correspond to the page numbers in the print versions. This makes it better for book clubs or citing in papers. But not all books have page numbers. Many of the public domain books do not, since there is no direct print version that it comes from. Also, when Amazon updated my LotR, it no longer has page numbers, but just the stupid locations. It’s a minor annoyance for personal reading, a larger problem for citing books. I do believe that Amazon states on the page for each book whether it does have page numbers before you buy it. I’ve never bothered to look actually.
Other stuff
There are a variety of other useful features on the Kindle such as resizable fonts, the ability to read pdf files, text-to-speech, etc. But this was really the highlights of my experience with it. If you have one, what has been your experience? Any Nook owners want to chime in? Any questions?
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