Fly on the wall: can you Kindle?
I’ve been up since about 4:45. Don’t ask why.
I’ve already listened to a meditation cd, done my morning pages (yes, I’m doing them again), made cappucino in my handy dandy stovetop Mukka Express (with rice milk, which by the way doesn’t foam), added brown rice to my lunch salad, prepared a pineapple-and-goat milk yogurt breakfast and am now sitting here before you. Or, sort of you. Or, actually my computer screen which reminds me of you.
Oh, you know what I mean.
Searching my brain during all these morning exercises for blog material, the best that I could do this first fair morning of September is report on my Kindle experience. It actually was more of a “drive by” Kindle experience but nonetheless, an experience. For those of you not paying attention, Kindle is the trendy electronic device from which you can now read books, periodicals, God knows what else. It’s an exclusive product of amazon.com but I’ve heard tell that Sony’s coming round the bend with competition.
The Kindle wars. Stay tuned.
Anyway, being in the business of paper printing and making books that one can curl up with at night, my reaction to the device surprised me. From its picture on the home pages of amazon, my convilluted brain (I know, you already figured that one out) interpreted the picture of a Kindle as a small, awkward boxy thing that would be entirely too small and uncomfortable to use. How could you possibly read a book from this tiny white plastic box?
Wrong!
Colleague Kelly from my office (where we sacrifice trees on a daily basis to bring you your favorite books) brought over her new Kindle wrapped all pretty in a leather binder for me to behold. And, behold I did. This space age invention was about letter sized like the pads of writing paper upon which I write my daily publicity tasks. Wow! Who’d a thunk it? Perhaps, I would have had I applied some logic to my inaccurate visualization of the thing.
It was pretty. It was sleek. It looked completely user-friendly and I hated that I liked it. Still do. What will this little plastic thing do to my career? To my industry? To life as we once knew it?
Seriously, I was and am impressed and can’t wait to have a go at a Kindle first chance I get. Admiring it is one thing but actually using is different. I do expect that I’ll like it but I’ll refrain from saying so until one appears in my life. Now that I travel with my new Mac Pro laptop, I’m beginning to see the wisdom in these flat and skinny wonders of electronics. Dare I say that this one will replace the cloth and paper gems we love to hold in our arms, highlight with yellow markers, earmark our favorite pages? You know what I’m talking about.
I don’t think so.
But, at this early stage of love (at first sight), I fear there is a place for Kindles. I may be the last one to report on them yet I hope not to be the last one to own one. Or at least rent one for a spell. Test drive one? Amazon, can you hear me?
It’s 6:35 am and time to consider the matters of the day, which entails a little tree slaughtering and book peddling. However harsh it sounds when I joke about the trees, please take note that the company I represent, HCI, replaces every single tree it uses by donating annually to the Arbor Day Foundation, a fantastic organization (hi Kevin!) that is in the business of planting trees, among other things.
Buy a Kindle.
Plant a tree.
Until next time…
1 Comment »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
But it doesn’t smell like a book. And you can’t walk down shelves upon shelves of books in a bookstore to browse. Hmmmm . . . I am a geekette of the 3rd degree and I still don’t know about electronic books. . . but I’ll want my book to be publised in that format. What does that make me? Not saying . . .
BTW, I do like your writing style.
Margaret Ann