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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
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I’m not your classic “early adopter” when it comes to new electronic gizardry (a word I just made up that means a combination of gizmo and wizardry, with a secondary definition of bird digestion). I’m not even what one ersatz electronics guru referred to as an “early adapter,” although I do sometimes wonder if my purpose in life has been reduced to making sure my various devices are all plugged in correctly.
So I’m a bit surprised to be a longtime owner (since February!) of a second-generation Amazon Kindle. The e-reader looks both futuristic and pedestrian, like something Harrison Ford in Blade Runner might be reading from and then bleeding on.
My sister, who travels a great deal for work and is fond of airplane fiction of the Dan Brown and Robin Cook schools, adopted a first-generation model early. Borrowing hers, I was thus able to experiment when I had some travel of my own. I usually take a bunch of books on the road. So I weighed the Kindle against the books—seriously, I put them on a scale—and promptly decided to get one of them there newfangled, thin, low-mass reading machines of my own.
Amazon sells Kindle versions of many new books at a discount. But one of the first things I discovered is how much stuff you can cram on it that is totally free. Project Gutenberg, which is trying to get everything that’s now off copyright onto the Web, has posted thousands of classics, and it’s easy to download them in seconds on a home computer and then move them over to the Kindle. Three decades ago I bought (but still have not read) a copy of The Brothers Karamazov, which sits on a shelf at home. Now, with the Kindle, in less than five months I already have not read the electronic edition of The Brothers Karamazov on three continents.
(By the way, the 1958 movie version of that book stars a very young, very subdued William Shatner, who later, as Captain Kirk, was often handed a Kindle-looking device, which he then invariably glanced at, signed and returned. So rather than being an e-reader, it was probably a deep-space requisition-generating machine with which to authorize the purchase of red Starfleet shirts, which are tough to keep in stock.)
Users can also easily move PDF and text documents over to the device. So instead of printing out the 125 pages of manuscripts and proposals that we may go over in a given editorial meeting, I just load the whole PDF onto the Kindle. At the meeting, it’s then a snap to shuttle between the editorial notes and a Dan Jenkins golf novel called Slim and None, which unfortunately also describes the chances that I will read The Brothers Karamazov before you read this column.
But the Kindle is not without its drawbacks. The ease with which one can sample a book’s first chapter for free and then buy the complete work can lead the less careful reader astray. That was how, before a recent flight to London, I wound up getting a Dean Koontz best seller called Relentless. The plot was man-bites-dog intriguing: a novelist gets a bad review, after which the reviewer appears to be intent on tracking down and killing the writer.
But then (SPOILER ALERT!, although “spoiler” suggests there is something that could be ruined), I unexpectedly descended into a Bizarro world of good-guy survivalists, bad-guy intellectuals and a six-year-old physics supergenius named Milo who actually does read Dostoyevsky, albeit a comic book edition of Crime and Punishment. I was alternately shaking and scratching my head long before Milo builds a teleportation apparatus that can’t handle the boy’s weight but can deal with the 10-pounds-lighter family dog. Which quickly learns how to teleport itself without the device. You know, the way Pavlov’s dogs learned to salivate without the food. With his new power, the dog foils a nefarious plot. Woof.
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11 Comments
Add CommentForget reading "Brothers K" and check out the Baen free library. I think you will be much happier with the Sci-Fi selection there. You can even get the books wirelessly transferred to your Kindle for a few cents. They will be more than happy to sell you plenty of books once they have you addicted. LOL
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou mention Project Gutenberg in the article. However, all I get when I attempt to go to the site is a message that I am not allowed to go there. If you can not go to the website then who cares?/ Jim Gottwald
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wonder how the electronic edition of SCIAM reads on the Kindle (or any other device). Any experiences any one?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJim: you should be able to access "Project Gutenberg" through http://www.gutenberg.org
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf this fails, your provider (or your employer ;-) may be blocking access to this page (or your network is not correctly configured).
Most people will consider me an early adopter of ebooks, but you are absolutely right: there's just not as much satisfaction in digitally deleting a book as there is in throwing a book against/out of something.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDid you read the User Agreement before you bought?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInformation Received. The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.
Did you read the User Agreement before you bought?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInformation Received. The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.
Apparently you took off the tinfoil hat before reading the user agreement. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI read Brothers K on my kindle - had to - it was a book club requirement. My recommendation is that you delete it from your kindle unless you want to suffer as all the old Russians have done.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOlaf: I've subscribed to Scientific American digitally and am reading it on the iRex DR1000S - a large-size ebook reader specializing in displaying PDFs which is manufactured in the Netherlands. So far, it works just fine and I have access to the entire archives back to the year 1993 - all of which I could easily download on the SD card within the device. Sure, it doesn't display color but the greyscale images are brisk.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurthermore, the device allows for convenient zooming and annotations with a stylus.
"<i>Galaxy Quest</i> Omega-13?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt sounds more like he configured the salt and pepper shakers in to a pair of time cone inverters. Masterful.