John Miedema
bibliophilia and its discontents
The ereader is changing the way we read books, but it has yet to enhance the way we discover titles. I am in the middle of shaking down my new Kindle. The Kindle store only has about 300,000 titles, precious few considering that three times that number of new titles appear annually (Bowker’s, 2003, 2007). I could not find Nabokov’s Lolita, though I credit Amazon’s preparation for the Canadian Kindle release, stocking Giller prize winners such as MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. Once I found a potential purchase, the online reviews were useful, as was the free first chapter sent to my device. Traditional bookstores might find it worrisome that I almost purchased a book off their shelves, till I remembered I had a Kindle and purchased the ebook for half the price.
The Kindle store is linked to the reading management software running on the ereader. I tested deleting my purchased content — the program restored it, apparently synchronizing with my account at the bookstore; ...
Read the full story »The ereader is changing the way we read books, but it has yet to enhance the way we discover titles. I am in the middle of shaking down my new Kindle. The Kindle store only has about 300,000 titles, precious few considering that three times that number of new titles appear annually (Bowker’s, 2003, 2007). I could not find Nabokov’s Lolita, though I credit Amazon’s preparation for the Canadian Kindle release, stocking Giller prize winners such as MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man. Once I found a potential purchase, the online reviews …
The Case for Books is the title of Robert Darnton’s new book. I am reading the hardcover print edition, my other Christmas gift after a Kindle. The physical casing of books seems in question in the digital age. Will ereaders replace print books? The book too is a technology. A better reading device must both preserve the best features of the print book for long form reading, and then enhance them. In this second post of my Kindle shakedown series, I give my personal take on the Kindle’s hardware and …
My Kindle Shakedown series is being reprinted at the TeleRead blog. Part 1 has been posted here and there, and eight more posts are planned for the series. Teleread provides news and perspective on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics. I have found it a helpful source of information as I evaluate the Kindle, so I am pleased to contribute back.
BookBook by Twelve South was recently added to the Reading Gallery. I like the way it juxtaposes the fast and slow of information. It is an actual leather case you can purchase for the MacBook.
It is time for me to give an ereader a serious shakedown. In Slow Reading, I asserted that print books are still the superior technology for reading anything of length or substance; that view remains. However, it is clear that the writing and publishing world is changing. I am discovering excellent writers who are publishing their material independently, often as ebooks. I want to read this material, but not on a computer, and without printing it. A specialized reading device might fill the gap.
Amazon’s ereader, the Kindle, came to Canada …
I recently added a Reading Gallery to my blog. The gallery is a collection of images of readers and acts of reading. Each time you visit my blog home page you will see one of the images in the upper left. The particular image is randomly selected. The current collection has six items and I will be adding to it slowly. New images will be introduced with a post.
Images were obtained from artists distributing them under a Creative Commons license or with their explicit permission to me. Credit is …
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