On First Looking Into Amazon's Kindle

Emily Haines--"Reading In Bed" (mp3)

I am always surprised to find myself to be a typical American after all. Here's how: once you sort through all of the economic b.s. that comes your way on a daily basis--stimulus, price index, consumer confidence, corporate earnings, etc., you can reduce our economic situation in any given day, week, year, decade or century very, very simply. If we don't spend, we die. So I must do my part.

Ain't that America?

And while a 40% off sale at Banana Republic may not rouse me from my summer slumber, while car commercials sound, to me, exactly like adults talking in a Charlie Brown special, you drop the price of a gadget I've been marginally interested in by about 30% and you've got my attention. Thus I have done my patritiotic duty, my contribution to economic stimulus and purchased a Kindle.

It's been kind of a gadgety summer. I splurged for the ability to watch World Cup Soccer on my phone. I'm spending a new $5/month to access the Internet, and especially email, for that same gadget. I've given myself eyestrain playing Spit obsessively on a handheld device. And now I've got a Kindle.

Here are my initial discoveries:

1. The device. The Kindle has a nice, light, cool feel. It's easy to use, as long as all you want to do is read on it. But there are kinds of ways to highlight, bookmark, type, search and a bunch of other things, and I didn't have the patience to wade through the directions to figure all of that out. I don't do a whole lot of that in a regular book, so I don't figure to do too much here, but we'll see.

As soon as you get your Kindle, you are immediately positioned to spend more money on it. After all, it is "The Precious," and you've got to protect it. So the very first night I had it, I was out at Target buying a case for it. Already, Amazon is pressuring me to buy an extended warranty. There are even little pieces of plastic that you can put over the screen to protect it. So far, just the carrying case (at about $30).

And, of course, the major expense with a Kindle is....

2. The "books." I'm guessing that most people want to load the damn thing up (see Ipod ownership). I did. And I wanted to do it as cheaply as possible. First stop. The freebies. Amazon gives you pretty good access to books published before 1923 that don't have standing copyrights (you can get Beowulf, but you can't get Seamus Heaney's Beowulf), so you start scrolling through the page after page of classics that you've never read but intend to and still probably won't, even though you're loading them like mad onto your new Kindle. I've now got Moby Dick, I've got Edith Wharton, I've got every work Edgar Alan Poe ever wrote, I've got some cookbook from 1874, and I've got Heart of Darkness because I've read it a bunch, understand it, know how difficult it is, and want people skimming my Kindle to know it's on there. And a bunch more.

And then there are those other kinds of freebies, current books, mostly novels, largely romance, that Amazon or someone has seen fit to offer for free. And some of them, like The Heir have high ratings from Amazon readers. What the heck, I like thrillers, throw it in the buggy. The only problem is that The Heir is an amateurishly-written, religion-lite tale of a guy who decides that inheriting a billion dollars isn't really all that. The real treasures are not stored on earth, they are, blah, blah, blah. I know that because I've spent the last two nights reading it.

And, finally, to the real books. By this point, I was feeling pretty cheap. The New York Times bestseller that I expected to buy for $9.99 was actually $12.99. I guess it didn't make the list. I didn't buy it. I bought one of the guy's earlier books that I'd never read for $7.99. Beach read, if I ever get there.

3. The reading. The Kindle is very easy to read on. But it may play to my weaknesses. I am a fast reader, and, left to my own devices (no pun intended), I read too fast, which means that I'm purely skimming for plot and not remembering much when it comes time to have a conversation with my wife who will at some point read the same book and remember every stinking detail. But anyway.

I like the feel of holding the Kindle, reading from it, pushing the "Next Page" button. The only thing that works against me some is that you don't read a book by pages, you read it by percentages. I guess I haven't really adjusted to this yet, because it makes me kind of nervous. Percentages have a way of doing that to me. And so I have it in my head--productivity, you know--that I've got to get to a certain percentage during a reading session. I've got to work on that.

4. The misrepresentations. You think you're going to spend your mornings reading the Times, your bathroom minutes reading the Atlantic Monthly. I don't think so. For one thing, a subscription to The New York Times will cost you about $15/month, the Atlantic about $3/month. As far as I know, you can still access those on the Internet for free.

But the clincher is when you read people's comments on Amazon and you find out that you are getting portions the publications, not the publications in their entirety. Admittedly, you're getting most, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme, reason, or way of knowing what you're not going to get. So, no periodicals or mags for me, at least not yet. Do you really want The New Yorker without all of the cartoons?

5. The verdict. I like ease and portability of the Kindle and the way its look and presence call me to read. Like the Ipod, which I carry everywhere at all times, the Kindle reassures me that it can easily step in to fill time riding in a car, sitting on a bench while the family shops, eating alone. These days, I like to keep my time filled up. I'm interested to see if, once I settle down, I will read with the same depth, or if I'm feeling like I'm needing to speed, speed, speed to meet my quota or to get to the other books packed on my Kindle. Perhaps I'll have to give Heart of Darkness another go round and see what that's like. I also have a sneaking suspicion that if I am ever going to read Moby Dick, that event will need to take place on the Kindle. Perhaps the newness of the gadgetry will counterbalance the challenge of the text to create a pleasurable experience.