Why I Don't Have a Kindle

[the_wanlorn]

You guys, this is ridiculous. Every time I go to Amazon, I think to myself "Man, I should really start saving up for a Kindle!" And then I go surf my wishlist and remember, oh right, this is why Amazon's not getting 300 of my hard-earned dollars at one pop.


I went through the first 2 pages of my book-only wishlist. I discounted the books that weren't out yet because, well, there was only one of them, and it was a comic book. Here's the list, with the ones that I can get on a Kindle bolded and italicized

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, by Marion Nestle
The Beginner's Guide to Dog Agility, by Laurie Leach
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, by Blake Snyder
Save the Cat!, by Blake Snyder
Creating Characters, by Marisa D'vari
The Shameless Carnivore, by Scott Gold
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by Bruce Perry
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy, by Alison Bechdel
How to Screw the Post Office, by Mr. Unzip
Dial 911 and Die, by Richard W. Stevens
Out of Control: Who's Watching Our CPA?, by Brenda Scott
Milk - The Deadly Poison, by Robert Cohen
Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, by Philip Dick
The Silk Code, by Paul Levinson
Still Life with Chickens, by Catherine Goldhammer
Keep Chikens!, by Barbara Kilarski
The Lobster Coast, by Colin Woodard
The Lobster Gangs of Maine, by James M. Acheson
Renewing America's Food Traditions, by Deborah Madison
A Woman's Book of Choices, by Rebecca Chalker
The Boston Driver's Handbook, by Ira Gershkoff
Stuffed and Starved, by Raj Patel
On Good Land, by Michael Ableman
A Very Small Farm, by William Paul Winchester
Flour Power, by Marleeta F. Baseyu
It's a Long Road to Tomatos, by Keith Stewart
Paddy Whacked, by T.J. English
American Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniques, by Alan Toogood
Latvian Mittens, by Lizbeth Upitis
Root Cellaring, by Mike Bubel
Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv
Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth
McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container, by Rose Marie Nichols McGee
Traditional Scandinavian Knitting, by Sheila McGregor
Favorite Mittens, by Robin Hansen
Folk Mittens, by Marcia Lewandowski
Physics for EntertainmeAmerican Horticultural Society Plant Propagation: The Fully Illustrated Plant-by-Plant Manual of Practical Techniquesnt, by Yakov Perelman
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, by Bruce Barcott
Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin
The Three Incestuous Sisters, by Audrey Niffenegger
Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer, by Harold Schechter
Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanasev
The Twelve Ceasars, by Suetonius
Lost in Austen, by Emma Campbell Webster
Dance, Dance, Dance, by Haruki Murakami
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Eden Express, by Mark Vonnegut
Behemoth: Seppuku, by Peter Watts
Behemoth: B-Max, by Peter Watts
Starfish, by Peter Watts

That's right, 5 out of 50. That's 1 in 10 books, or a nice 10%.

"But wait!" you say. "Some of those books it would be ridiculous to get on a Kindle! What sort of freak wants knitting patterns for their Kindle?"

And you're right, so I took out the 11 books that I thought were ridiculous to want in ebook form. Here's the new list:

Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, by Marion Nestle
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, by Blake Snyder
Save the Cat!, by Blake Snyder
Creating Characters, by Marisa D'vari
The Shameless Carnivore, by Scott Gold
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by Bruce Perry
Dial 911 and Die, by Richard W. Stevens
Out of Control: Who's Watching Our CPA?, by Brenda Scott
Milk - The Deadly Poison, by Robert Cohen
The Silk Code, by Paul Levinson
Still Life with Chickens, by Catherine Goldhammer
Keep Chikens!, by Barbara Kilarski
The Lobster Coast, by Colin Woodard
The Lobster Gangs of Maine, by James M. Acheson
Renewing America's Food Traditions, by Deborah Madison
A Woman's Book of Choices, by Rebecca Chalker
The Boston Driver's Handbook, by Ira Gershkoff
Stuffed and Starved, by Raj Patel
On Good Land, by Michael Ableman
A Very Small Farm, by William Paul Winchester
Flour Power, by Marleeta F. Baseyu
It's a Long Road to Tomatos, by Keith Stewart
Paddy Whacked, by T.J. English
Root Cellaring, by Mike Bubel
Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv
Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth
McGee & Stuckey's Bountiful Container, by Rose Marie Nichols McGee
Physics for Entertainment, by Yakov Perelman
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, by Bruce Barcott
Your Inner Fish, by Neil Shubin
Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer, by Harold Schechter
Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanasev
The Twelve Ceasars, by Suetonius
Dance, Dance, Dance, by Haruki Murakami
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Eden Express, by Mark Vonnegut
Behemoth: Seppuku, by Peter Watts
Behemoth: B-Max, by Peter Watts
Starfish, by Peter Watts
Maelstrom, by Peter Watts
Blindsight, by Peter Watts
Black Sun Rising, by C.S. Friedman
Crown of Shadows, by C.S. Friedman
Feast of Souls, by C.S. Friedman
When True Night Falls, by C.S. Friedman
The Madness Season, by C.S. Friedman
In Conquest Born, by C.S. Friedman
This Alien Shore, by C.S. Friedman
The Wilding, by C.S. Friedman
Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve

Okay, so now it's 10 out of 50, 1/5, 20%.

You guys, that's still ridiculous. $300 is not worth being able to only get twenty percent of the books I want. Get your damn act together, Amazon. I want a fucking Kindle.

Comments

[nopoppersforme.livejournal.com]

PLUS, you still have to pay nearly the same price for the kindle-version as a hard copy of the book. The kindle seems cool, but dang it's not exactly in the budget.

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

What?? I buy my new releases on the Kindle for $9.95 or something when the hardcover books are still $25+. Of course, not ALL of them are probably at that price, but I have been loving it just for that.

-Bree

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

LOL KINDLEWIFE

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

AHEM AHEM.

I think you mean:

LOL EBOOKAUTHOR.

:D

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

LOLOLOLOL That too!!

[nopoppersforme.livejournal.com]

Lol, everything on my wishlist comes in paperback! I can totally see where the kindle edition is a plus for you in that case!

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

As I admitted above, I'm also an e-book author and get most of my quirky paranormal romance and urban fantasy in e-book format, so half the time I'm not even buying the books from Amazon to begin with. I mostly just buy hardcovers there. :D

-Bree

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Really?? I've not looked into the prices of anything, since, you know, I don't have a kindle yet. But that seems kind of ridiculous.

[livii.livejournal.com]

Do you know if you can import stuff onto Kindles - say, maybe, PDF files of out-of-print EDAs or something like that, I dunno, I'm just SAYIN' it's an IDEA.

Basically I need to gets me a fine little electronic personal reader device to read PDFs on. Like, yesterday. :(

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

Yes. :D You can import PDFs if they are converted first, which you can either have Amazon do for free, or you can do yourself by downloading something like Mobibook Creator. (It's like, 3 clicks to convert.)

...I don't work for Amazon, I swear. I just REALLY LIKE my Kindle.

-Bree

[livii.livejournal.com]

So awesome, thank you! ♥ To follow up - do you know if they look nice? I know it must depend on the quality of the initial PDF, but assuming a decent PDF, is the quality nicely readable? The Kindle is attractive due to the way they display pages - I'm terrible at reading things online (I never finish long fanfic, f'r instance) so it has to look really readable for me to use it.

...that's another thought - can you convert word-type files as well?

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

KINDLES ARE GORGEOUS IN EVERY WAY AND EVERYTHING LOOKS GORGEOUS ON THEM AND WHYYYYYYYYY DON'T ANY OF THE BOOKS I WANT EXIST IN EBOOK FORM?????/

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

See what happens when I let you touch my Kindle?

There there, darling.

-Bree

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

I shoulda stole it while I had the chance. :(

[moirarogers.livejournal.com]

You can convert HTML, Word, PDF... just about anything!

Word and HTML convert the easiest. Sometimes with PDFs they'll convert a little funny depending on how they were made, but nothing that makes it so I can't read. (I also am not a fan of reading long stuff online.) A word or text document is almost always perfect.

I do a lot of critiquing for people, so I convert their word files and put it on the kindle and I can highlight stuff and make notes while I'm reading. If I could figure out how to convert those notes back to some sort of reasonable format I'd be set. (Though I haven't looked recently...someone may have devised a way by now.)

-Bree

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can.

Kindle "format"

[(Anonymous)]

Don't forget that any non-drm prc/mobi format works fine on the Kindle (in addition to TXT and many others can be converted with mobicreator, including DOC and PDF).

Just a quick scan of you wish list shows these are available in mobi ( native Kindle formats) -- and for free! Why wait, get them now ... oh, that's right, no Kindle, so you're stuck reading on the monitor or another backlit device that disappears in the sun).

Behemoth, by Peter Watts
Starfish, by Peter Watts
Maelstrom, by Peter Watts
Blindsight, by Peter Watts

Several short stories there too -- http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm

Many books are out there for free - you can probably still download the TOR books (23 of them) if you search a bit for the links (they may even still be listed on the new web site).

If, however, you do read mostly comics (even if you call them graphic novels) or extremely complex technical books (formulas, diagrams and complex fonts/tables) or knitting patterns, the Kindle isn't for you.

Re: Kindle "format"

[the-wanlorn.livejournal.com]

Well, or I could just, you know. Upload them to my iPod and read them on that, since the backlight is bright enough that it doesn't disappear in the sun.

And how many of the books - books that I actively want to read right now, not books that I just stumble across at Tor or on Undernet - that come before the Vonnegut books are available anywhere online?

Re: Kindle "format"

[(Anonymous)]

I've been using the Kindle now for a while and must say it is simply awesome. Yes the price tag is quite high but don't forget this is also a ECO-thing. Especially the amount of books I own. I felt guilty enough to buy it. But knowing what I know now, I'd pay double, if need be. The future of reading is here!

~N4D
http://www.need4deal.com/KindleStore-Kindle_Store.html

Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv

[(Anonymous)]

Last Child in the Woods ––
Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,
by Richard Louv
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
November 16, 2006

In this eloquent and comprehensive work, Louv makes a convincing case for ensuring that children (and adults) maintain access to pristine natural areas, and even, when those are not available, any bit of nature that we can preserve, such as vacant lots. I agree with him 100%. Just as we never really outgrow our need for our parents (and grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.), humanity has never outgrown, and can never outgrow, our need for the companionship and mutual benefits of other species.

But what strikes me most about this book is how Louv is able, in spite of 310 pages of text, to completely ignore the two most obvious problems with his thesis: (1) We want and need to have contact with other species, but neither we nor Louv bother to ask whether they want to have contact with us! In fact, most species of wildlife obviously do not like having humans around, and can thrive only if we leave them alone! Or they are able tolerate our presence, but only within certain limits. (2) We and Louv never ask what type of contact is appropriate! He includes fishing, hunting, building "forts", farming, ranching, and all other manner of recreation. Clearly, not all contact with nature leads to someone becoming an advocate and protector of wildlife. While one kid may see a beautiful area and decide to protect it, what's to stop another from seeing it and thinking of it as a great place to build a house or create a ski resort? Developers and industrialists must come from somewhere, and they no doubt played in the woods with the future environmentalists!

It is obvious, and not a particularly new idea, that we must experience wilderness in order to appreciate it. But it is equally true, though ("conveniently") never mentioned, that we need to stay out of nature, if the wildlife that live there are to survive. I discuss this issue thoroughly in the essay, "Wildlife Need Habitat Off-Limits to Humans!", at http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3.

It should also be obvious (but apparently isn't) that how we interact with nature determines how we think about it and how we learn to treat it. Remember, children don't learn so much what we tell them, but they learn very well what they see us do. Fishing, building "forts", mountain biking, and even berry-picking teach us that nature exists for us to exploit. Luckily, my fort-building career was cut short by a bee-sting! As I was about to cut down a tree to lay a third layer of logs on my little log cabin in the woods, I took one swing at the trunk with my axe, and immediately got a painful sting (there must have been a bee-hive in the tree) and ran away as fast as I could.

For the rest: http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/louv