Kindle

I borrowed a Kindle from the Texas A&M library. The library bought about a dozen of them for faculty, staff and students to test out. The library allowed me to download two books so I chose my book, Pilikia Is My Business, because I wanted to see how it looks on the Kindle, and a Lee Child book. When I picked up the Kindle, it already came with two other books that a previous installer had borrowed. Surprise, surprise, the previous borrower had downloaded a different Lee Child.

The Kindle is about the size and weight of a trade paperback. Most of the reviews have been correct. The Kindle is easy to use and the electronic ink is easy to read. The reviews have also been correct that the next page and back page buttons are too easy to hit accidently. I keep navigating away unintentionally. It's like constantly dropping the book or trying to read on a windy day. I'm sure that I'll eventually get used to it and learn how to avoid clicking away.

Leaving a bookmark is not quite as easy as bending the corner or putting a marker between the pages. You have to click a wheel which brings up a menu of choices. Then you have to turn the wheel to get the cursor to the add bookmark choice, and click it again. You can have a lot of book marks. When you return to the Kindle, it will open to your last bookmark. To find other bookmarks, you have to go to the menu again and pull up the list. The bookmarks are identified by the first line on the page, not page number. I'll have more to say about that.

Leaving notes is also as easy as leaving a bookmark and the process is similar. Click the wheel, go to the menu, choose notes, which brings up another menu, and find the item for making a new note. You type the note using a tiny keypad. It's not touch typing, but it works. My six year-old granddaughter, Morgan, mastered it with very little instruction.

My complaint about the Kindle? It doesn't have page numbers. It marks things by "location" which appear to be line numbers, but don't include blank lines. Why no page numbers? The Kindle navigates by pages, so why aren't they listed? I felt lost without the page numbers because I depend on them heavily when I read. I wrote about how I read in a blog post, By The Numbers. Basically, I use the page numbers to identify the changes in acts. I tried using the locations in the same way, but it's not as easy or intuitive as using page numbers.

I'll have more to post about Kindle in the future.