comments

1. Sheila Ryan on November 23rd, 2007 at 2:54 pm

   You go first. Then tell the rest of us how you like it.

   It would certainly seem to mesh well with the Cooper Renner policy dictating that excess baggage be jettisoned.

   Tuesday night WBUR’s On Point used the Kindle’s debut as a jumping-off point for discussion of that perennial favorite, The Future of Reading; I listened to it on XM whilst driving from Chicago to Galena. Steven Levy, who authored Newsweek’s recent cover story on that topic, waxed enthusiastic; Sven Birkerts (The Gutenberg Elegies) played the role of grumpy old Luddite. Birkerts’s lament for The Book as We Have Come to Know It was so unfocused and inarticulate that before the program’s end I wanted my very own Kindle in the worst possible way.

2. Daryl Scroggins on November 23rd, 2007 at 3:56 pm

   Coop–a couple of days ago I heard an interview of the man behind this thing, and it sounds good. But I think I’ll wait until next year to get one if I do: that $399 price is likely to drop in a big way, I’m betting.

3. John Buaas on November 24th, 2007 at 9:10 am

   This isn’t answering anyone’s questions, but . . .

   I keep seeing it (the name, but perhaps the paper it’s intended to replace, too) as “kindling.”

   I admit it: I’ve just never understood the whole e-books thing. Given how software and wireless technology continue to evolve into incompatibility with older versions, I compare that with how bound books have been with us for, what, a thousand years or so, and books win, still: they’re as portable, easier to read, and don’t need for batteries or, in the case of Kindle, a cellphone tower. And you can write in/on them.

   Of course, 4 years ago I didn’t see the point of blogs, either . . .

4. Sheila Ryan on November 24th, 2007 at 9:28 am

   Kindling. That’s pretty good, John.

   You know, originally they were going to call it the Fahrenheit 451, but that just didn’t resonate with people in the focus groups.

5. Daryl Scroggins on November 24th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

   I agree with John: bound books are still ahead. Good point about being able to write in them. I think this Kindle thing will let you highlight text, but I’m not sure about notes in margins. Seems like the main thing it has going for it is that it will hold a couple of hundred books. But we still read at the same speed–and how many times have you taken five or six books with you on vacation and only gotten around to reading half of one of them? Is it that hard to pick up two or three of them to take along? I’m sure this capacity would be a very good thing for academics and various professional people who need immediate access to many books on the spot, but I don’t think that’s who they are marketing this thing to, and they couldn’t make enough money to keep it going if they were.

6. Sheila Ryan on November 24th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

   There is much to be said for the bound dead-tree book as a brilliant, convenient technology. Listening to the “On Point” program I mention in my earlier comment, I waxed good and wroth as Print Defender Sven Birkerts mumbled vagueries and decried the brave new Kindling world. The program’s only interesting and concrete observation pro the printed, bound book — well, the only one I heard, noted, and remembered — came from a listener who called in to muse about the social bond cemented when friend loans friend a favorite book. (The caller also mentioned the loaning of sound recordings back in the Really Wayback Days predating cassettes and mix tapes.) Of course, we twenty-first century folk still share favorite books and music, albeit by different means, but I thought the caller raised a good point re: the simple difference between recommending a title and loaning a friend one’s own physical copy of a book or an LP.

7. Cooper on November 25th, 2007 at 10:00 am

   Anybody who knows me knows I love books. I’m a book guy. I don’t think the book is dead. But the ability to have several dozen (or more?) “classics” on hand–Moby-Dick, Emily Dickinson, etc.–as well as some reference tools, without loading down several more shelves, suits me mightily. (Likewise the ease and relative cheapness of getting a just-published page-turner which one wants only to read and dispose of.) I don’t have a place; I don’t have a study, an office, a home, as it were, to save all these things in if they’re bound volumes. But if they’re on the Kindle, or something similar, then. . . . I can imagine loving both books and Kindle, for variant reasons, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to buy a Kindle tomorrow. $399 is a major purchase for me.