On 20 Oct 19:50, Jenny Hopkins wrote:
On 12 October 2010 21:29, simon ransome simon@nosher.net wrote:
I totally agree - I have hundreds, if not over a thousand books (partly thanks to having worked for Clays the book printers in Bungay for a few years in the 90s ;-). I love just furtling through them, especially my large collection of 1970s and 1980s computer reference books (VIC-20, 64, PET, 6502, BBC, Spectrum programming, etc).
However, I also love the idea of a Kindle (I've been playing with the Android app version recently), as it would save having to haul around 5 or 6 heavy O'Reilly books if I fancied a spot of light tech reading on the train...
I had to join in the thread just because i like the word 'furtle' so much, I've nothing much to add. I too love paper books, and there can be no comparison to being able to pick one up and have a small furtle through it to see if you fancy reading it. However, I was thinking of getting my Mum one of these for her 80th next month - she's got degenerative eye disease and grumbles like mad about the choice of large-print books on offer in the local library. She's as luddite as they come, though, so not sure how the jabbing of buttons will go. Have read very favourable reports for font sizing and background quality for impaired vision. Also agree that for travelling or computer books a kindle is a great option. The number of tech books I have on the shelf that I've blinked and they're out of date....if I get Mum one, I may be wooed.
Shh, don't tell anyone, but I've back-tracked a bit on my position on the kindle, I've now got one... and as soon as I've finished the paper back that I'm currently reading I've got some books lined up to read on it... Confused the shit out of me when I took it out of the box and didn't realise that the screen was actually the screen (looks very much like a piece of paper covering the screen, until you bother to read it and note that it tells you how to turn it on... ;)
Actually looks like a very nice device, and there's plenty of stuff to get on it... though the current series I'm reading doesn't appear to be available :( (It's the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobbs, some of his newer stuff is available, which I might try out... but I'm going to have to get the last in the trilogy in paper back...). Also, it came named "Mr's Kindle" which is probably down to my name settings on Amazon, so I stood with the Kindle sitting on the worktop whilst logging in to amazon on my phone, hit manage kindle and renamed it... hit submit, glanced at the kindle and it'd already updated it's name :) (actually, before that when I first turned it on, I'd already grabbed some books on amazon, as it's the 3G model, when I turned it on it immediately started grabbing the books from amazon, which was quite scary! I've since turned off the wireless - it only lasts 10 hours with the wireless turned on, or a month with it turned off... so, I'll use the wireless only when I need to download new books, really quite nice device).
The page turning buttons are located neatly on either side of the screen, though I think I'd have been more tempted to have put <- on the left of the screen and -> on the right of the screen rather than having both on both sides of the screen, one above the other, but that's been the only thing so far that I've found a bit wrong.
Jenny
PS: Whilst we're on the subject, does anyone else have their books shelved alphabetically, or is it just me? ;-)
I've not got 'em alphaspagettically, but instead grouped, because I have a fair number of trilogys and sets of books that belong together. If I was going to order my books in any sane way it'd be: Alphaspagetical author Alphaspagetical series or title Sequence of series
I've not got round to that yet :)