More Kindle DX thoughts
I finished reading my first novel on the Kindle (Lee Child’s latest Jack Reacher novel) yesterday, and I started another novel (one of the free downloads) and realized I was holding the same book and looking at the same page as before.
I normally read 3-4 books at a time. I’ll read one until I get to a tense scene, for example, and then switch to another for a while. I hadn’t realized how great a role the look and feel of the individual book played in the overall enjoyment. When I pick up a book that I’ve been reading, the visual and tactile sensations of the physical book take me back into the story (and the mindset) so that I begin immersion into the book even before I resume reading.
And books differ a lot in the physical look and feel: different thicknesses and finishes of paper, cut or feathered edges, different fonts, different bindings, different shapes—all that is gone with the Kindle: every book looks the same and feels the same: the Kindle. (There are small differences in fonts, but the overall appearance is always of the black on gray type, with no paper feel at all.
This is not a deal killer, but it’s a surprise and it is indeed a trade-off: more reading in a smaller space at the cost of some of the aesthetic experience of the book. I’m looking right now at Shelby Foote’s three-volume history of the Civil War sitting on my bookshelves: large handsome hardbacks with thin paper and feather edges. These books have a monumental feel, suitable to a history. But on the Kindle they will look and feel exactly like a cheap thriller. Something’s lost.
That’s perhaps a cost of progress. Certainly handwritten and illuminated books are also beautiful, and that was left behind as movable type entered the picture, and we adjusted.
On the other hand, as I skimmed the NY Times this morning, I copied two long articles to Word and saved them as PDFs so that I can read them on the Kindle instead of on the screen. I suspect in time I will find the right uses for the Kindle and the books best read on the device.
I suspect you’ll like it most for newspapers, magazines and the like, and that books will remain books. I’m always so happy, for example, to find myself reading a paperback with those brownish-colored pages and loose binding, as opposed to a Dover paperback, which only otherwise-unavailable Trollope novels will force me to.
Linda McConnell
14 June 2009 at 11:53 am
I was just thinking this morning that the reading experience with the Kindle is more a magazine-like experience than a book-like experience. The Kindle would also work for light fiction, which is magazine-like to begin with.
LeisureGuy
14 June 2009 at 11:57 am
I’m sitting in my Study surrounded by shelves with all colors and sizes of books, many with beautiful covers and illustrations. I love the look. I love the feel. I love the smell. No Kindle ever for me; I even have trouble concentrating on mutliple pages on my monitor,
I can see with you that a Kindle would have its place, but would never replace a real book collection.
sweetok
14 June 2009 at 12:01 pm