Kindle thoughts

Having had the Kindle2 (K2) for about 2 weeks now, I have to say I really like it.  It facilitates a particular kind of reading, but it does that really well.  I think owning one makes you more aware of the difference between 'Books I want to read' and 'Books I want to own'.  If I was a regular Library user, and I lived near a library that was pretty extensive, the kind of books I would check out are the ones I now read on the K2.  Stuff I want access to, but don't care to store or display.

One exception would be books I feel embarrassed to be seen reading...  the K2 is a perfect 'plain brown wrapper' over the cover of what ever trashy novel or self help book you might feel like diving into on the subway.  Now I can finally read those Wheel of Time books without fear of ridicule.  (kidding)

You might say 'checking books out from the library is free, while buying books on the kindle is expensive." and you would be right.  But I think alot of the material I am interested in reading these days is public domain works.  So it really is the work of a couple of minutes to pull it down from Project Gutenberg and email the text file to Amazon to be converted for Kindle reading.

On that note, I have been reading Kenneth Hite's excellent Tour de Lovecraft book, (funniest book book of Lovecraftian literary analysis to date,) and at the same time reading the old Lovecraft stories on the K2.  Becasue that's how I roll.  Some thoughts on that I recently tweeted:

1 - The builtin dictionary tool makes a new vocabulary experience; ah the forbidden knowledge of the gibbering polysyllabic monstrosities

2 - short stories work really well on the Kindle. Lets see the return of the pulp writer, able to sell individual stories directly on Amazon

3 - I am soo entertained by hearing Text to Speech try to parse the pronunciation of the names of the Great Old Ones. Much too entertained.