Picture books on Kindle

Kate and I just finished reading My Father's Dragon last night.  I spotted it in the Kindle storeand it was only 99 cents, so I thought it would be fun to read together.

We've read a couple of heavily-illustrated books on the Kindle.  It's been interesting to see how it handles the pictures. I took some screen shots, in case anyone else is curious about this.



Apparently the way the text splits around the pictures in the book is a bit different from what they chose to do in this ebook edition. I can see why they changed it, but for some reason they felt the need to insert "illustration appeared here" in the text, often right in the middle of a sentence.  I found this annoying.



These drawings are so cute and detailed. The small screen size is a bit of a disadvantage here. (The original illustrations are also black and white.)



Vertical pictures fill up the screen pretty well. Horizontal pictures come out much smaller, since of course they can only be as wide as the screen.



You can change the orientation to landscape, which increases the available width and makes the picture bigger, but it's awkward to flip back and forth. (Unfortunately there isn't a quick and easy way to do this--it requires multiple clicks each time.)

Kate and I both enjoyed the story (we read it in three installments). It was fun to see the pictures but I do think we would need to read the paper book version to really appreciate the drawings properly. We'll have to get the other two books out of the library to find out what happens next.

We also read Dick King-Smith's Funny Frank. Many of Mr. King-Smith's books feature animals behaving in unconventional ways, such as a pig who wants to fly,or a cat who keeps pet mice.This one is about a chicken who wants to swim.



There are quite a lot of illustrations--pretty much one per page. The drawings are small and simple, so I don't think you really lose anything viewing them on the Kindle screen.




The spacing of the pictures leads to large blank areas on some pages, which can make you think you're at the end of a chapter when you really aren't.



And there was this one egregious formatting error. Grrr.

This is a short chapter book for young readers. It's a cute story, if you can suspend your disbelief enough to accept that someone could make a wet suit for a chicken out of a hot water bottle, and that it would actually work.

Dick King-Smith is also the author of Babe,of course. He just passed away on January 4th. I have fond memories of reading some of his books to my siblings. I think Kate would enjoy hearing more of his stories. Another trip to the library!

Kindle(s) in the house

A few months ago I started thinking that I might want a Kindle. This was kind of a surprise, as I had never really considered it before. When we went to Idaho in July I bought an audiobook (The Tale of Desperaux) from Audible.com to listen to in the car, and then realized it wouldn't play on anything that we had. Later I was checking out their list of compatible devices and saw the Kindle listed. "Ooh, that would be cool," I thought, "I could listen to audiobooks and read ebooks! Multi-purpose!" My friend Jeanette (in our ward book club) has a Kindle and loves it. I think the thing that really sparked my interest was when I read that the new model would support Korean. A couple of other factors also pushed me in that direction:

Having been in Korea and strapped for reading material more than once, the idea of being able to carry around an entire library in one small device was undeniably appealing.

A couple of years ago I read an unabridged edition of The Count of Monte Cristo that was 1600 pages long. The story moves along at a good pace but the book was really too big to comfortably read in bed.

Plus, it's a cool gadget. And cool gadgets are cool.

So I started researching (found the mobileread forums, which were very helpful), and decided to take the plunge. As it turned out, Kindles were not shipping right then, so instead I used the money in my paypal account to get an mp3 player so I could listen to audiobooks while painting. I ordered the Kindle a couple of weeks later.



When you buy a Kindle you have thirty days to decide if you want to keep it or return it. I spent a while exploring my new toy, checking out the features and figuring things out, but of course the real evaluation is in reading. The first book that I read on my Kindle was Connie Willis's Blackout(a time travel story set during the London Blitz, in the same universe as Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog). It really isn't like reading on a computer screen. The pearl e-ink screen is very nice and the contrast is good. The biggest adjustment was just figuring out comfortable ways to hold the device, but I got used to that pretty quickly.

Now, I love books as much as anybody. Not just reading but books. There are some really gorgeous books out there. Ebooks are not gorgeous. (Though I can see how one might find an aesthetic pleasure in the sleek design of the Kindle itself.) I don't see paper books going away any time soon. But the story is the same, the words are the same, just the method of delivery is different.



My first Kindle had a small spot in the screen, so I called Amazon and they sent a replacement. (I've seen a few posts from other people with the same problem--fortunately the return process is quick and easy!)



The second Kindle also had a minor screen problem--a thin white line that would sometimes show up, depending on how it hit the text on the screen (but not, oddly, on the screen saver images). It was really only slightly annoying, but I called Amazon and they said I could return that one too. So I got another replacement. Since I had thirty days to return the defective one we ended up with two Kindles in the house for a while. Doug used the other one, breezing through a large chunk of the D'Artagnan Romances (The Three Musketeers and sequels.) Maybe when I upgrade to a future model I'll pass this one on to him and we can share an account.

It turns out that the Korean font on the Kindle is really awful, and Amazon doesn't carry any Korean ebooks anyway, but at least they're starting to think about the global market. Their site says "Our vision for Kindle is to have every book ever written, in every language, available in 60 seconds from anywhere on earth." (I doubt that this is even possible, but it leads me to believe that they will at least have some Korean ebooks in the future.)

It has occurred to me that there isn't really any particular reason for me to have Kindle right now. I could see it being really handy for someone who travels a lot, or someone who works out of the home and likes to read on lunch break, neither of which I'm doing at this time. But I'm enjoying it anyway. I like the way it saves my place, and goes to sleep by itself, and I like the way I can download sample chapters from Amazon to help keep track of books that sound interesting.



I may get a cover, later, but for now I've crocheted this sleeve to keep it in when I'm not using it.

One unforeseen complication is that I can't read it when Andy's around, because he wants to play with it. (But he actually does the same thing with paper books, too.) Mostly I only get to read at bedtime, and then I fall asleep within about twenty minutes. I've been spending Andy's nap times painting, or trying to. I'll be glad when this painting is done and I can read at nap time.

I've also just joined goodreads, to post reviews and check out what my friends are reading. Fun!