The Amazon Kindle 2

Last April I got an Amazon Kindle. For those who don't know, a Kindle is an e-reader, an electronic book. And it's an amazing device. It uses a relatively new technology called e-ink which in every way makes the viewing screen look just like a paper book. Now you don't any longer have to get paper cuts or lick your fingers every time you want to turn a page. It's not like the lower resolution of LCD, nor is it backlit like it. Instead it can be read in ambient light, even in bright sunlight. It's just like paper.

It also allows you to have access to any of 300,000 books and more within one minute. Nearly all books are less than $10, many even free! It is continuously connected to the internet via a 3g connection (mobile phone) and thus to Amazon's electronic Kindle store. You can search books by Title and/or Author and download and pay for the book with a single click. I bought mine for $360, but they are now available for $299. My module is the Kindle 2.

Anyway, ever since I've gotten the thing I can't stop reading. I get the AP World, AP US, and MIT Technology News all day every day automatically updated as it changes. When I'm reading any of over 1,500 books it can hold in its memory, it always remembers where I was the last time I read it. It also keeps all of this information online for me to access via web. I know this sounds like a commercial, but I swear, I'm not benefitting by referrals or anything like that. If you get one, though, you will thank me!

I've managed to read my way through most of Dickens, which I've always wanted to do as his writing just blows me away. (What he's done with the English language should have been illegal for all of the pleasure it brings to lovers of the language.)

Once, while reading the bestseller "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a good nonfiction about the Lincoln administration, they mentioned the then controversial abolitionist book "Uncle Tom's Cabin". I realized I'd never read that book, so I left off reading the current book, downloaded "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in less than a minute, read that book start to finish, and then picked up "Team of Rivals" and began reading right where I'd left off! Amazing!

Now, for some good books I've read. I just finished "The Help" #1 on the NYT bestsellers list. It's a very heartwarming and educational book (fiction) about the experience of negro maids in Jackson, Mississippi during the Jim Crow years. I've never been into fantasy fiction like Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and others, but during an Amazon promotion, they gave away the first in a series of one writer for free. So, I thought I'd try it. I ended up reading 12 600 to 900 page books by the Author Robin Hobb. The books were amazing and the writing was excellent! I recommend them most highly.

Books I also recommend include: The Unlikely Disciple (nonfiction), My Sister's Keeper (fiction, now a movie), I Know This Much is True, (fiction), The Lovely Bones (fiction), and The Copper Beech (fiction). I've read many, many more since I got my Kindle, but these were the very cream of the crop.

If you have a Kindle or any questions about the Kindle leave me a comment!