Amazon Kindle

In May my mother was scheduled for sinus surgery, to be performed by a specialist about three hundred and fifty miles away from us.  This was going to involve several trips back and forth, and flying was not going to be an option; we had concerns about the pressure changes on top of the costs.  I was able to take FMLA leave to pick up driving duties and provide her with some basic comfort and company, which meant a lot of sitting around in hotel rooms and hospital waiting rooms.

I’ve always been a reader, and I’d been thinking about picking up an e-reader for some time. While I wanted to wait until they were more affordable (a couple hundred bucks buys a fair few paperbacks, afterall) this was all the excuse I needed to gift myself.

Amazon’s Kindle has been one of the best gadgets I’ve ever owned; it provides instant access to more than I could possibly read in a lifetime. Sadly, I’ve thought of several titles not currently available in Kindle format, but it’s been an overall fantastic experience.

My first book purchase was the bizarre Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town by Cory Doctorow.  I’d been hesitant to get it simply because the premise was so odd, but I needed to start somewhere and I’d enjoyed everything else of his I’d read.

The Kindle has been great fun ever since that first read. I’ve got a decent collection building, everything from Kindle versions of mass market books and short stories to small press and effectively self-published work. eBooks are letting a lot of people who wouldn’t otherwise be widely published (or published at all) and this is pretty wonderful.

Sure, there are downsides. There’s almost certainly a large collection of garbage out there for sale. Also, there’s this bizzare Twitter phenomenon. Just about every time I tweet with the #Kindle hash tag, I get a new “follower” — some self-published writer who is effectively trolling for sales. There are, apparently, a lot of people writing vampire stories. The world doesn’t need any more crappy vampire dramas, in my opinion, and I’m left deciding whether to block these people as SPAM or just ignore them — I’m certainly not going to be purchasing the wares they’re hawking.

Then again, there’s the exchange that happened yesterday. I finished a collection of three short stories called Paintwork by Tim Maughan. He noticed the tweet and tweeted back “hope you liked it!” If I were selling stories on Kindle, I’d do the same thing, so I tweeted back letting him know that I did, in fact, enjoy his sad tales; and he tweeted back again. I’ll be buying more from him based on that, and while I don’t think that buying a story is buying the author’s time, short little interactions like this really are part of what make ebooks special for me.

This year, my wife participated in , and when she completed her work (yes, she “won” by writing more than 50,000 words in a month) I converted a copy of it to MOBIpocket format for my Kindle. There was something special about getting to read the first “copy” of her book, it left me grinning more than once. She’s working on polishing it for probable self-publication now, so there may be more on that later.

My Kindle suffered a hard crash a few months after I bought it, sadly, but Amazon replaced it immediately after having me attempt to get it to reboot. I’d tried all their suggestions before calling them but was more than willing to try again with their tech; I work in a call center too and the best way to get help is to cooperate. I had my replacement a couple days later, and it’s been fine.

Of course, Amazon announced an entire new line of Kindle options late this year, much like I suspected they would, but I’m glad I didn’t wait.