Work in Progress
I suppose now that Christa has gone and spilled the beans, I should probably explain how and why I changed my mind about e-readers enough to actually go out and buy one. That's right, friends. The big bad Amazon corporation finally wore me down and convinced me to buy a Kindle.
This is all very embarrassing to me because a mere month ago I admitted my belief that people only buy e-readers because they feel guilty about not reading. Then a mere week after that, I admitted that I personally have not been reading much lately. So now when I say that I just actually bought an e-reader ... ugh.
Don't think I'm not aware of my own hypocrisies. Don't think I'm above hating and ridiculing a person for the simple reason that I'm exactly like that person. Apparently.
But this isn't true. Not exactly. I love reading and I don't believe I need help to force myself to do it. I was just skeptical of the e-reader, while at the same time being pretty damn curious about it. I didn't want to like the e-reader, and I had a list of reasons why I didn't need to explore that particular branch of technology. But most of my problems with e-readers had to do with comparing them to mp3 players. While the mp3 player does solve a problem -- how do I make my music portable -- the e-reader is not built to address this problem. Obviously, unless you are a student, you probably don't need to take your library with you everywhere you go the way you do with your music library.
My problems with e-readers, having never used one, were as follows:
- If your device breaks or malfunctions, you lose all your books.
- It's not as aesthetically pleasing as reading a paper book.
- You can't lend or borrow e-books.
- I hate digital-rights management. I don't want to buy things with DRM.
One by one, I've investigated or at least thought about these issues, and have managed to debunk all of them:
- Kindle books are stored in the cloud. If your device gives up the ghost, your books are all still out there, and they're still yours to re-download for free.
- This is pure idiocy. The aesthetic value of paper books varies on a case-by-case basis. I've refrained from reading a lot of books based on how they feel or how they look. I hate reading large hardcovers or books with embarrassingly garish or feminine covers. When you place a leather case on the Kindle, it isn't the same experience as reading a paper book, but it's enjoyable enough, and it's the same no matter what the content is.
- I don't actually care about this. Our basement is full of paper books, and far too many of them are missing. Often Christa will suggest an author to me, and I will go down and pull one of that author's books off the shelf. "Oh, don't read that one," she'll say. "That one's awful. Read his other one." Well, you guessed it. The other one -- the good one -- isn't in the house because someone else borrowed with intent to keep.
- It's true that Amazon e-books have DRM, but Amazon has always been a pretty good citizen about this issue. Their mp3s come without DRM, which is one reason I like to shop with them. I'm okay with some compromise here, and if I end up not liking this compromise, the Kindle isn't all that expensive anymore. It can be written off as a fun experiment. No one is forcing me to keep using it.
Here's what I like about the Kindle thus far:
- Free classics. When it comes to books whose copyright has lapsed (i.e. books written before 1923), you can download them for free from Project Gutenberg and read them on the Kindle. Amazon also has some free or cheap classics you can get right from their site. Right now I'm reading The Trial by Franz Kafka, which I've been wanting to read for quite some time.
- Seriously long battery life. Since the screen doesn't light up but rather looks like paper, the battery life is "up to one month."
- Magazine subscriptions. It's going to be great to be able to read magazines without having magazines strewn all over the place. The selection is pretty small, because it's limited to text-heavy magazines, which are really the only kind of magazines that make sense to read on a Kindle.
Here's what I don't like so much:
- The buttons take some getting used to. It's easy to forget where the page-turning buttons are and accidentally flip a few pages while you're putting moving the device around or otherwise adjusting your posture while you're reading.
- There's a little glare. While the glare issue is way, way, way better than a glossy computer screen, there is still some glare. There's no glare with paper books.
- The music player could be way better. You can put mp3s on the Kindle and listen to them as you read, but you have no control over them. They are played in the order you put them on the device and that's that. Why even have this option if it's going to be so useless?
So there you go. I bought a Kindle. It's been fun so far. I'll still read paper books. But I'll probably end up reading more old stuff on the Kindle. Or maybe just huge hardcovers with garish feminine covers.
Valley of the Dolls, here I come.
[filepath: /assessment/reading]