John Miedema

In this sixth post in my Kindle “shakedown” series, I find that the Kindle shakes and falls when it comes to note-taking.
Reading my first book on the Kindle, I was satisfied with the way it let me highlight text. The functions for entering and editing notes were also acceptable. One immediate limitation I found was that notes must be linked to a particular location in the text. When I wanted to jot down a general note, I improvised by creating a general notes section at the beginning of the text. …

Amazon designed the Kindle to be bookish, with the dimensions of a paperback and a tapering of width to emulate a book’s binding. Does this design work for Kindle newspaper and magazine subscriptions? I was given a Kindle for Christmas, and in this fifth post in my shakedown series, I give my take on reading subscriptions.
Every Saturday I pick up a print copy of Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper. Unfortunately, the Globe does not deliver its print edition to my rural address nor is it available internationally. When the …

I have read about 2500 books. Print books. I have only read 2.5 ebooks on my new Kindle. In this fourth post in my Kindle shakedown series, I consider the Kindle book reading experience. Given my history with print it is not surprising that I maintain a preference for it, but I enjoy reading on the Kindle more than I expected.
A primary reason for getting an ereader was my interest in reading the work of indie writers publishing via ebooks. Like many others, writer Cliff Burns was frustrated with the …

Walt Crawford has written a thoughtful piece on slow reading in the March 2010 issue of Cites & Insights. I am honoured that Walt highlighted some of the important themes that I have discussed at this blog and in my book. He also refers to a number of other related writings by T. Scott Plutchak, Will Richardson, and Steve Lawson. Well worth reading.
Walt is not new to the subject of slow reading. In my research, I ran across an article called “Contemplation and Content: Getting Under Their Skins” in …

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 …

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 …

Update, Dec 7: I am maintaining my I, Reader reading list at LibraryThing.
============================
This is my starter reading list for the next draft of I, Reader in 2010. Recommendations most welcome.
Battles, Matthew (2003). Library: An unquiet history. W.W. Norton.
Borges, Jorge Luis (2000). The library of Babel. David R. Godine.
Brand, Stewart (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University of Chicago Press.
Buzbee, Lewis (2008). The yellow-lighted bookshop: A memoir, a history. Graywolf.
D’Angelo, Ed (2006). Barbarians at the gates of the public library: …

The I, Reader series started as a collection of notes I kept over the previous year, as part of a book concept. The reason for undertaking the blog series was to provide a first draft of the ideas in the notes, a first rough cut. It was recognized that the first draft would not be anything close to a book, but it was hoped it would provide the outline of one. Writing the series did prove helpful in articulating the ideas, and sorting them into themes. The themes suggested a …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 5, Conclusion to this theme and the series
“We too are machines, just machines of a different type.” — Jean Luc Picard, ST: TNG, The Measure of a Man
The intent of the I, Reader series was to explore the connections between reading and web participation. The series used Asimov’s I, Robot as a starting point because his short stories raise many timeless issues that arise at the collision point of people and technology. People fear that technology will ultimately replace them. In practice, people use technology to extend …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 4
In Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books, Lynne Sharon Schwartz tells how her attention was caught by a piece in the New York Times by
a Chinese scholar whose “belief in Buddhism … has curbed his appetite for books.” Mr Cha says, “To read more is a handicap. It is better to keep your own mind free and not let the thinking of others interfere with your own free thinking.” … Lying in the shadow of books, I brood on my reading habit. What is it all …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 3
The I, Reader series has wrestled with opposites. Robot vs person, print vs digital, self vs other, quantity vs quality, on vs off. Opposites are a hallmark of Western rational thought (as Mark commented). Other approaches may be helpful.
One, it can be valuable to simply reflect on opposites, koan-like, without making any effort to resolve them.
Two, we can reject the opposites, and look for synthesis.
In discussions of reading, one common dichotomy is that of print versus digital technology. The common view is that digital …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 2
Bibliophiles alert, if you have not discovered Keith Miller’s The Book of Flying, stop what you are doing and go get a copy. It is irresistible; I previously wrote a short tribute. Miller ran across it, and commented that his second book, The Book on Fire has been published. I am currently reading it. It is a mythology, fantasy and fetish of books, reading and the Library of Alexandria. Some quotes fit wonderfully with my current theme:
And slowly I arrived at a realization so startling I was …

Reading Mysticism, Pt. 1
The adventures of Bilbo Baggins did not end with his famous good-bye to his friends and relatives at his eleventy-first birthday party. Nor did they end in the final chapter of Lord of the Rings. He sailed off with Frodo and Gandalf and the elves into the Grey Havens. Stories demand an ending, but if it has been a good story, are we ever content. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle finally killed off Sherlock Holmes, but at the insistence of his readers, resurrected him. Beyond endings, there is …

There is one theme left in this I, Reader series, and I find myself reflecting on the next stage. This was just a first cut, an attempt to give some form to a number of ideas that have been cooking for a while, living a half-life in text files. I am pleased with the progress so far and think maybe it will be worthwhile to write a second, serious draft next year, probably offline.
A key question I have been reflecting on is the target audience. It would be naive to …