WSBG reviews In the Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

To be honest, World’s Smallest Book Group didn’t actually discuss the book we read all that much at our December meeting. Why talk about travel writing when most of our members had been travelling: Reba to Switzerland: Darcy to Switzerland, London, Italy, Greece, Slovenia, etc.: Joyce to Argentina.  Lots of wonderful travel talk.  Didn’t leave much time for the book.

Joyce liked it best because she had actually been to many of the places along the Silk Road described in the book. (She’s easily our most exotic traveller and all my distant travels have been with her!) The book is well written and has fascinating information, especially since he takes the “hard seat” approach to travel in Asia. Interesting juxapositions of yesterday and today in his encounters. But somehow it didn’t really grab us. 

Perhaps there’s been too much going on in the world of late for us to let ourselves be swept away this time. 

One personal note:  this is the first book group book I’ve read on my Kindle. Boy did I miss easy access to a good map. Found myself going to Google Earth to follow along.  Plea to Kindle designers/makers: please incorporate awesome map technology asap so I don’t have to read it at a computer.  Thanks.

How I’m feeling about my Kindle

As I’ve been reading my first two full length books on the Kindle, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I feel about the experience… does it work? does it feel right? does it change the experience of reading, and if so, how?

Here are my observations so far:

In many ways, it is easier than reading a printed book. By that I mean:

1. It’s lighter and therefore easier to hold. Especially in bed, where I do most of my reading (as long as I keep it in the suede case that came with it…without the case, there’s not enough room to hold it and not touch buttons unintentionally, more on this issue below.) Since the case is very book-cover-like, that works very well).

2. It’s also really easy to carry around, which I find I do more often and catch more moments for reading on the fly. If I travelled a lot, this would be the most important feature, I’m sure.

3. It’s easier to find the place I left off. When I open it, it instantly lands on the last page I was reading, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting to mark where I was, losing the bookmark, risk breaking the spine, decide whether or not it’s okay to fold corners of pages, etc.

4. The ordering and buying process is incredibly convenient. (Maybe too convenient? Will I buy too many books?!)

5. It enables my habit of reading more than one book at a time. (Confession: in addition to the two Kindle books, I’m also reading three other print books I had before getting a Kindle.) If I find it hard to carry one printed book around, imagine if I tried to carry all the books I’m reading at a time? Impossible if I want to maintain my already-listing posture.

Other favorable features:

I love the “get a free sample” of the book feature. So far I ordered sample portions of five books. I subsequently purchased two of them, and am liking both a lot (those are the two I’m reading right now.) I decided against buying the other three, based on the sample. Two of the books I likely wouldn’t have bought in any case, but one I probably would have, based on the book descriptions, reviews and recommendations. So maybe I saved myself some money? Possible, but debatable.

These old eyes love the adjustable font feature. The other day I actually read without my reading glasses! That hasn’t happened in years! (I went back to the next smaller size though, because I found I wanted more words on the screen, so the glasses came back.) But I don’t find my eyes getting tired when I read a long time, like I sometimes do when reading a print book with small font.

I love the fact that I don’t have to agonize over decisions about what to do with the book after I read it, viz., somehow make room on a bookshelf here at home (not easy!) in case I want to read again someday or loan to a friend, take back to Powells, take to Goodwill, etc. It will always be there for me and never take up any space at all. I find this very cool!

I love the fact that I can’t ever lose books, because Amazon will keep my copy on file.

The downsides:

You can’t get every book you might want this way. For example, upon the recommendation of the delightful son of a co-worker, I tried to buy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close last week. Incredible as it may seem for a newer book that is quite popular, it wasn’t available. After ordering the print book (which arrived within 24 hours from Amazon!), it was clear why: there are very some strange color markups and visual effects in the text, which presumably would be impossible to replicate in the Kindle. Future technology may change this, I’m guessing…

It’s very touchy. You have to work to get the hang of holding the Kindle so you don’t touch something that makes it do something you don’t mean to do. At first, I couldn’t find a way to do that, but then I found using the cover handled the problem for me. I think they still have some design work to do. But that’s the name of the early adopter game!

There are still so many features I don’t know and don’t use yet, and sometimes I feel that makes me a bad person. Right now I’m just happy to read. Once I feel I really get the hang of that, I’ll try to move on to annotating, highlighting, and all the other cool features I don’t understand yet and feel guilty about not using.

There is something different about the reading experience. I’m trying to figure out what this means, and whether it is a matter of habit? For example, and I hadn’t really thought much about this before, but I think there IS something sensually soothing about the feel of a book cover, thumbing through the pages, smelling the fresh paper and ink. I’m trying to deconstruct and parse exactly what the print book experience is for me. I’m still working on it, and will check back in when I have something insightful to say.

I’ve found there are a lot of really interesting discussions on the future of books on the web. I hope to have something to contribute to that discussion someday.

But first I have to find something more insightful to say.

Kindling a gift of the Magi

The irony of it…. in my last post, I confessed to our excessive e-aquisition, which is mostly an i-aquisition. When I wrote it, I had forgotten about the Kindles.

Yes, Kindles. That would be plural. Here’s how it went down: I bought Ric a Kindle for his 60th birthday. Kindle is Amazon’s new wireless electronic-paper display device you use to wirelessly order books and I’ve heard it’s a wonderful reading experience, way better than any other means of electronic reading (because it’s not backlit, so not the usual eyestrain). Weighs less than a typical paperback. Can download books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc wirelessly. Connected to wikipedia. Not designed by Apple (as far as I know), but really easy to use.

People are calling this device a game changer, the future of reading, revolutionary, etc.

Ric’s not a obsessive reader like I am, but he really enjoys reading magazine articles, and I thought he might enjoy reading books this way. And Ric is very much interested in being on the bleeding edge of technology, so I thought this would be a great fit for him.

So he opened it on his birthday and seemed quite pleased. Maybe not quite as shocked as I thought he would be, but hey, it had been a long day and he didn’t open it til 8 p.m. or so. He started using it right away, and was off to the races. (Meaning he started downloading stuff right away)

So when our anniversary rolled around, he gave me a box to open, I noticed it was from Amazon, and seemed about the same size and weight as one I had hidden from him when it arrived in the mail. So I opened it, and guess what…. he had ordered me a Kindle before he opened his. (Because I am an obsessive reader of all things.) Kind of a gift of the magi thing, am I right?

No hair cutting or watch pawning involved, but it did take a while to get it all sorted out because the one I bought had automatically registered in my name and the one he bought was in his, so we had to deregister and so forth. But it’s all cool now, and last night before I drifted off to sleep, I read a few chapters of The Monster of Florence on my Kindle. Pretty awesome experience, I’d say. And the convenience factor is off the hook. Excellent for traveling.

Forgot to take it to the book group meeting on Sunday to let my sistah readers give it a try, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they decide to get them too, given that they are all obsessive readers and inveterate travelers.