As you may have guessed from my fairly obvious title, I got a Kindle. I’m sure it had something to do with my blog post (July Update) including Tom’s cameo (among other things) or Tom’s rekindled, notice I didn’t say new, appreciation for books. He gave me a gift certificate to Amazon for 2/3 of the kindle because I didn’t want him to pay for all of it. It was a bit of a decision because I could have gotten 20-25 used books easily, but I really did want a Kindle so I bought it.
It arrived last Saturday and I immediately uploaded 25 books, three I paid for including The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, and the rest were pre-1923. I realized pretty quickly that the books are pretty expensive (compared to used) and I will purchase books, but I can’t wait until the public library starts loaning Kindle e-books.
Everything was going great until Monday morning on the way to work. Less than 48 hours of owning it I gave myself a mini-heart attack by dropping it in a parking lot. If you know me, this isn’t too surprising, but I was petrified and swore at myself for not just shelling out the money to purchase a cover when I got it. The back casing partially popped open and there is now a lovely scrape (smaller than a dime) on the back left corner, but thankfully it still worked/s. This scare necessitated my lovely blue case to the left. It doesn’t photograph very well and Amazon doesn’t show the color very well, but it’s a nice blue, maybe a bit lavender-ish depending on the light. I splurged and got the one with the light because after the mini-heart attack I needed something special.
I’ve had it for nearly a week and so far the pros definitely outweigh the cons. It responds significantly faster than my Sony Pocket e-Reader which isn’t that shocking considering this is the third generation Kindle and I have a first generation Sony. The formatting of the novels is great, but I wish rather than it automatically starting you on the first page with text, it would start you on the cover page. I absolutely LOVE the notes feature, although you can (and I did) go overboard as you’ll see in the quotes section of my next post.
The two biggest negatives are the side navigation buttons (personal preference) and the lack of page numbers. The navigation bothers me because for some reason I’m convinced the left should be backward and the right forward, but both sides have a large forward and a small backwards button. The lack of page numbers really bothers me, especially as I like to see how many pages to the next chapter. You can check the page numbers, but you have to pull up the menu screen and hope that the publisher included them. I’m sure I will get used to both the navigation and the page numbers as everything else works seamlessly.
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