So I am thinking about buying a Kindle. I love reading and spend a good portion of the week commuting on the DC Metro so maybe it is time to invest in a Kindle.
What I enjoy the most is the fact that while I could continue to buy lots of books I will no longer have the drawback of the weight and expense of having to move from apartment to apartment with a huge library.
I even found out recently that a few of the publishers who have published my favorite books are selling electronic copies to people at a discount if you can prove you own the book by naming a few obscure facts from within the pages of the text. Interesting!
So the million dollar question for me is, "Will they have the books for which I am looking?" To answer this question I checked out the Amazon.com Kindle store. This was also very interesting. You can see the complete supply of books which range from very obscure goofy texts to extremely popular books that are currently riding the waves of the New York Times bestseller list.
You can annotate the pages, bookmark each book you are reading and if you buy the crazy expensive version then you can even put any PDF from anywhere on the device and read it as you go (I currently own a number of book PDFs and I could include those books in my library.)
At the moment the larger Kindle claims to be able to store about 3,500 books at a time. I feel safe in saying that this is more than the number of books I am typically and concurrently reading, so that would suite me fine. In addition, if I were to hop into my car, I can plug the Kindle into my car stereo and the Kindle will read my book to me. Wait, it gets better. Kindle will also play MP3s for you, so you can throw a few tunes on the device and listen to music on the go while you are reading.
It works in daylight, it is crazy thin and amazingly lite. Have I sold myself yet? I hope so. Now I just need to find a few hundred dollars to get my "kindle" on, if you know what I mean (what? I don't even know what I mean.)
As a side note, as I was reviewing the Amazon Kindle book supply I came across quite a number of interestingly opinionated reviews. I came to a book entitled "Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine." Now I have heard of Glen Beck but I really don't know what he is about other than the fact that he seems to be this slightly goofy conservative commentator. Not that I have a problem with that: I am goofy and I am conservative. I digress. I don't know Glen Beck or his material.
I started to review the synopsis of his book and decided that the Thomas Paine history part sounded interesting. Then I wondered if other people had left comments. Well, of course they had. Here, without permission is a copy of one of those comments...
This is America's eleventh hour! Our democracy is morally, politically and economically bankrupt. I suggest we stop hiding behind "trashy best-sellers" and pore over Glenn Beck's "Common Sense." If for no other reason, at least to grasp a sense of ominous reality and sobering history.
As a former Cuban immmigrant (50 years ago) I see so many similarities between my former country before Castro's revolution and the US today, that sometimes I think I'm re-living a nightmare.
Andrew J. Rodriguez
Author: "Adios, Havana," a Memoir
Here is a link to the commentator's book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Adios-Havana-Andrew-J-Rodriguez/dp/1598000489/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248395449&sr=1-1
I am hoping that this serves as a reminder that not everyone concerned with the state of the country is a white middle-aged card-carrying Republican. Food for thought, people.
Now, where did I put my credit card?
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