As expected, the huz was completely taken with the idea of
Amazon's Kindle and surprised me with one for my birthday (he also told anyone and everyone to get me Amazon giftcards to load it up with books). i'll admit, my gut reaction was skepticism. what is this clinical looking white and grey device that looks like the love child of my iPod and a 1st Gen Game boy? do you
really think you're better than my 3rd floor library filled with the best (and worst) of mainstream and gay *cough* literature? do you
really think you'll ever take the place, in my heart, of a
real book? then i turned it on.
this thing is
frickin' cool. it's lightweight, easy to use, easy to
read, has stunning graphics and is amazingly versatile. it's not
just a book on a screen, people. you can change the size of the font or turn almost any book into an audio book (there are built in speakers and a headphone jack). as you read the book, you can scroll through and make notes, highlight passages, save screens, look words up in the
built in dictionary; and since it's, basically, a big-ass cell phone, you have limited web access so you can hit things up on wikipedia or google. further, when you finish a book you can buy one (or a newspaper or magazine, if you're into those sort of things) and DL it in, like, 30 seconds right from Amazon*. also, you can
e-mail certain documents (.DOC, .TXT, certain PDFs, etc) directly to your Kindle's dedicated e-mail address**!
so far, the only downside i've found is the availability of books. granted, my taste in books does
not fall under the umbrella of mainstream fiction (Amazon calls iLGBT fiction "genre fiction"), but right now there's only a handful of books by "my authors" that are available and the usual glut of LGBT "erotica" in all it's many flavors (erotic superhero fiction? erotic vampire fiction? erotic postal worker fiction?), but you can tell Amazon which books you'd
like to see available for the Kindle, so i'm assuming that, like movies on DVD, eventually almost
everything*** will be available.
in short, i'm really
quite pleased with the Kindle. while it will never take the place of "real" books in my heart, i tend to think of it like Pinocchio or Cylon 8: cute and fun with the potential to be incredibly endearing (though not
quite the "real thing").
*
they tout the "try it free" feature, where you can DL just the 1st chapter and read it, but (honestly) i need more than just 10 pages to figure out if i'm going to like an author.**
i found a Zelda players guide and sent it right to the Kindle and was able to cheat while riding the bus!*** i was most excited when i thought i could get the entire Harry Potter series but found out that JK Rowlings is vehemently anti-digibook.
