Replies

Just some random thoughts on this. I have been contemplating the purchase of a Kindle. I know lots of folks like the feel of real books and are anti-ereader as a result. While I have lots of hard copy books that I dearly love, there are a lot of things I would love to read that I don’t want taking up space in my home permanently. I like the idea of picking up a an ebook at a discounted price and giving it a whirl. If I don’t like it, I haven’t thrown $30 down the crapper. I bet I would read more with an ereader than I do now. The death of one business model gives rise to the next. CD sales have plummeted since the advent of digital music, doesn’t it make sense that books will follow the same path?

The death of one business model gives rise to the next. CD sales have plummeted since the advent of digital music, doesn’t it make sense that books will follow the same path?

The difference is, most CDs are complete ephemera. And while many mass market paperback books fall into the same category, scholarly and professional books do not.

Lots of libraries fell into the trap of electronic media being the wave of the future 15 years ago. Now, many of them are stuck with legacy data in archaic formats that are increasingly hard to access. Personally, I want a book I buy to be easily accessible to me 10, 15, 20 years from now. Can anyone assure me that a Kindle/iPad/Nook book that I buy today will still be readable?

I bought a Kindle about a year ago. Then, later, I bought the Kindle DX. I have a large library in my home, but the Kindles are getting more use than the paper books: (1) the Kindle is easier to read, because I can adjust the type size to my liking, and the Kindle is typically lighter than a physical book, (2) the Kindle remembers where I left off in a book and takes me there when I return, which is useful when you read a dozen books at the same time. The Kindles automatically synchronize themselves so that I am am able to pick up one and start where I left off on the other. (3) The Kindle will hold about 1500 books at the same time, so you can carry a substantial collection with you as conveniently as you might carry one small paperback. (4) I can buy an eBook on the Kindle practically anywhere. For instance, I was reading a NYT book review and liked what I read. I pulled out the Kindle, ordered the book, and in 30 seconds it was in my Kindle waiting to be read. I could go on, but those are the Kindle's main attractions.

On the con side, the Kindle is B&W, and pictures come out so poorly as to be unusable. Reading an art history book on the Kindle, for example, would be pointless. This is why when the iTablet comes out, I'll buy one at once. I am very impressed with the way Amazon has organized the Kindle, and I hope that one day soon there will be a color Kindle comparable to the iTablet.

I just bought 119 books on amazon last Sunday. Total cost to me ? $8.93. I bought all 20 volumes of the English translation of the Babylonian Talmud for .99, plus 25 folklore and mythology texts as 1 purchase for 1.99. (That included the full text of the Mabinogion, Wirt Sikes' British Goblins ,( a book on Welsh folklore and folklife), Yeats' Celtic Twilight,some of Lady Gregory's translations of Celtic myths and legends...) . Most expensive books I bought were The Mythic and Magickal Folklore of Plants by T. F. Thiselton-Dyer for $3.94, and Manly Hall's The Secret Teachings of All Ages for $2.99. (I couldn't pass up a title like that!) All the other books were completely free, including all 6 books-the complete text-of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the Kalevala, and the original Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. Lots of great public domain downloads for free, all categories of both nonfiction and fiction .

I love my kindle, and next time I go on vacation , it and maybe my netbook alone will go along. No more lugging 5-6 books in a giant bookbag in case I get bored or there's a delay-not when I can take a whole library of hundreds of books with me!

PS. Even many of the cheap (5.00 and under) downloads will send you a few sample pages on request before you buy,not to mention the 9.99 full price books. So there's minimal risk of buying a book and then not liking it...Not that at, eg, 1.99 for Macculloch's Religion of the Ancient Celts that the risk was too great in the first place! :-D

I received a Kindle for Christmas, 2008, not long after they went on sale. In my life I have received 2 really wonderful Christmas gifts, gifts that I continued to enjoy long after the Holidays. The first was my bike when I was 8 years old. The second is my Kindle. Access to virtually every book I could ever want to read, at any time I wanted them, from anyplace I was at, is just a wonderful gift. Additonally, Kindle will allow you to download a sample of each book, about the first 100 pages, for free. Like you can buy the entire book, don’t like it then delete and it costs nothing.