Writer's Blog: I Was Wrong

A while back, when talking about the Kindle, I mention not being able to click to a specific park of a book. Well it turns out I was wrong about that.

I've looked again at 'Writer Good or Die' and it does let you jump to specific sections. So, what can I say, my bad.

I've just looked at another of the titles I've got and this one doesn't allow for that ease of navigation.

It seems that the kindle is quite an interesting thing. How things are formatted seems to vary dramatically. I downloaded a sample of Star Trek Titan: Orion's Hounds. These books, at the beginning of chapters, have a bold capital letter. Unfortunately it doesn't format properly so we get...

W
e...

Instead of We... As with any news technology there is a ways to go before it is perfect. Given the price difference I'll probably still be buying this books in paper form.

Addendum

I'm still reading Abhorsen and I hope to be able to post a short review soon. However it might have to wait until after I get back from holiday.

Writer's Blog: Books so Easy.

The Kindle has many free and not too expensive books. I am slowly going through the free books and downloading them. There are thousands of these free books so this down loading could take a very long time. Also each book will take me at least a week to read.

I will also buy books for the kindle. Somehow buying on a kindle feels less real than on the main Amazon website - maybe because you have to wait for that book to arrive. So it could be very easy to spend a silly amount of money on books.

I have only bought the one book and that was a '1,001 Writing Prompts to Ignite Your Creative Spark.'

I've skimmed this book and will be looking at it in a later post.

Writer's Blog: I Gave In

Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a - it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It's-it's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.

Rupert Giles - Buffy the Vampire Slayer - I, Robot... You Jane.

I had always said that a Kindle didn't interest me. I agree with the above quote. There is something wonderful about actually holding a book in your hands. So although I now have a kindle I don't think I'll ever stop reading books.

There is still something wonderful about a book shop. Seeing all the stories in neat rows. You can just pick up a book and flick through it - you can't do with a kindle. Like anything this device has good and bad points.

The obvious best thing about a kindle is the huge amount of free books available. As I write this post I am periodically checking the free book list and downloading them.

The Green Fairy Book.

The slightly annoying thing is that some books that should be their, i.e. they're out of copyright, aren't. Also I was very surprised to find that Harry Potter does not have a kindle edition!

The Grey Fairy Book.

Nevertheless this is an excellent purchase. Now onto what could be improved. As I mentioned you can't flick through, like you can with a book, there is of course the option to search which is almost as good. However some of the books I've down loaded are short story collections and, unless its just me being silly, it seems that you can't just jump to a story and have to instead navigate to it. This to me seems like a bit of an oversight.

The Awakening and Selected Short Stories.

Finally the geek in me is laughing. I now have a 'padd' and can pretend I'm aboard the USS Enterprise!