Glenn Reynolds mentioned that the latest Kindle is selling like gangbusters. Having gotten one as a Christmas present, I thought that I’d give it a bit of a review.
I’ve got the one without 3G web access, so I can’t really speak about that; but it’s a darn convenient book reader. This Kindle is easier to read than I thought that it was going to be, holds a battery charge for a long time, doesn’t have problems with sunlight that I’ve noticed, and is easy to carry around. So far, I’ve been using it to pick up various collections of pulp and Golden Age SF/fantasy books on the cheap: mostly books that I’ve read before, but either don’t have anymore, or don’t quite know where they are at the moment. It’s easier to read while doing something else than a regular book is; no pages to randomly turn on their own. Also: as a bathroom reader it’s pretty much ideal.
Lastly, speaking as someone who is left-handed I very much appreciate that they set up the page-turning buttons the way that they did (top button on either side: backward; bottom button on either side: forward). That went a long way towards making the thing intuitive for me.
Bottom line? If you’ve got the cash for one this is a pretty sweet gadget; I imagine that I’m going to wish that I had the unlimited Internet access, so you should probably fork over extra for that. I expect that this will become a standard travel accessory for me.
If your into Golden Age Sci-fi then check out the books of H. Beam Piper.
The non-Kalvan Paratime novels were one of the first three things that I downloaded.
I liked the Kalvan novel but I also enjoyed the future time line stuff like Space Viking and The Cosmic Computer{ also published under the title Junkyard Planet}. he also published the first Time Cops stories. Another good series of books is Robert E. Howards Soloman Kane stuff.
I think that a lot of my Golden Age SF collection is going to end up being duplicated on the Kindle: it tends to to be available for less and it’ll make it easier for me to read ’em again. I just grabbed a Robert Howard omnibus for the Conan stories, frex: been meaning to go through those again.
I have a Sony reader from Christmas 2009, it’s not left my side. I have the entire Heinlein library, and am methodically moving through it.
That said, I bought my wife the Nook Color for Christmas this year. I’m jealous. It’s an order of magnitude beyond my Sony.
Just got a kindle, too. Was on the fence about it at first. No? Love it. I travel a lot. This will make traveling with reading material much easier.