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The Kindle: My Annoying New Best Friend

Guest post by Maurilia Meehan October 05

The day before the floods and power blackout, my new Kindle e-reader arrived.

It was the size of a small paperback, with a classy red leather case, and came pre-installed with two dictionaries and a User’s Guide.

I began loading it up with any free books I fancied from the Amazon site, starting with Public Domain classics, like Anne Katherine Green and Mary Elisabeth Braddon, my favourite nineteenth century mystery writer.

Then the power went out.

I stoked up the wood fire, sat the kettle on it while the Young One obliviously ploughed on in the dark with her laptop.

I took up the Kindle.

Now, where to start?

Would I choose to read Sonnets From the Portuguese, the Suppressed Poems of Tennyson, The Illiad, or possibly the Baghavad Gita?

Lest you gather that only such fusty volumes are free, I had also downloaded many contemporary free first chapters. I read DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, at last, but decided against paying to read the rest. Salinger did it better.

I sampled Gibson’s Zero History, but its clever catalogue of the stuff people own did not prise open my purse either.

I am abashed to admit, however, that Stephen King, that master of the market, got me in with first chapter of Ur. It is a novel written especially for Amazon. The plot? The narrator buys a Kindle, which turns out to have special powers … I got to the end of the first chapter, and had to know what happened next.

When the power was back on, I would press a button, and the rest would be in my library in one minute.

Cost? Five dollars.

But so far all my orders had generated so many emails saying Grand Total: $0.00, that I almost felt guilty.

So what would I read next, in the dark?

Maybe I would listen to one of my free audio downloads from www.audible.com. Joyce’s Ulysses, perhaps, though I still think it’s a curate’s egg?

Instead, I choose a dramatised Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise. Listening, as to a radio play in the olden days, but with headphones so that I don’t annoy the Young One.

I could perhaps have chosen the free digital subscription to the New York Times, thrown in with the audible intro deal. This is read out every day, and would be great for commuters, or for the print challenged.

On that note, the visually impaired can enlarge the font on the Kindle at the touch of a button, or switch on a Text-to-Speech. The voice is bit robotic, but still…

*

The power was still not still not on, and the rest of the house, away from the fire, was freezing. And bed, with no electric blanket, lost its usual appeal.

So I began Anne Katherine Green’s The House of the Whispering Pines, a tale of ghostly figures and dark stormy nights, very suitable to read with the howling wind outside, by the light of the Kindle’s built-in lamp.

The Young One began to look at me peevishly. She has used up the batteries on my laptop as well as her own. I teased her that the Kindle would last for a month with the wireless off.

‘But is that all it does, lets you read?’

Still not impressed.

‘Well, there is a basic, tiny, black and white internet … look.’

Her face brightened.

‘So in an emergency you could look something up?’

‘And you can send hotmail…’

‘Oh, I suppose it’s all right then…’

But she was tired of hearing about the perfections of my annoying new best friend, and tried to settle with book and torch, an awkward balancing job. Meanwhile, feeling greedy, I paused the Green novel and got hooked on Birds of Prey, by Elisabeth Braddon.

*

Hours later, the Young One was asleep by the fire. My eyes were still not tired, as the Kindle page is not backlit, and I reached the final chapter.

The end, or so I thought.

Much to my horror, Birds of Prey was a cliff-hanger. If I wanted to find out if Charlotte’s murderous stepfather got his hands on her inheritance, I would have to read the next volume.

Fortunately, I knew just where to lay my hands on it.

Free.



Author note: MM is a Victorian writer, and cheapskate.

http://www.mauriliameehan.com


 

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Comments

by Prithvi
05 Oct 10 at 22:49

I was just eyeing a review page the other day – this is further enticing me to get one! Reading in the dark sounds like a perk, especially when camping or in bed & out of reach of the light switch. This was the review page I’d bookmarked, for reviewing: http://delimiter.com.au/2010/07/16/amazon-kindle-store-device-the-australian-difference/

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