Cutline Speaks

Oh Kindle, my Kindle

posted by Michael on August 20, 2009

Erin's already weighed in on the Kindle in this space, but I recently won one in a contest here at Cutline (that's right -- it's a major award) and I've been using it for a few days now, so I thought I'd offer my take as well. And here it is: If you enjoy reading, you need to own one of these things. Right now. There is no -- repeat, no -- reason you shouldn't go out and buy one this very minute.

Before I explain myself, allow me to indulge in some autobiographical detail, so you can better understand where I'm coming from: I'm a book person. I come from a large family of book people. My personal library at the moment is somewhere north of 600 volumes, and my family's library is likely in the neighborhood of 4,000. I have a modest rare book collection (pictured below), focused on 19th- and 20th-century American fiction. A substantial portion of my graduate work was focused on English and American literature. Et cetera.

So what, you may ask, am I doing shilling for an e-reader? Am I somehow not aware of the mystique of the book, of the physical objects we line our shelves with and give as gifts and pass down from generation to generation? Of course I am. But here's the thing: None of that has much to do with reading. Books do have a certain power as physical objects, but I'd argue that their real value is in their intellectual and emotional impact, in their marshaling of narrative and language and structure to produce an effect on the reader. And the Kindle makes interacting with books in that way easier than ever.

For me, the Kindle effect is very simple: I'm the kind of reader who's usually working on several books at once. At the moment, I'm knee-deep into six -- Jon Meacham's American Lion, John Le Carre's The Mission Song, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Steven King's Wizard and Glass, Michael Korda's Ulysses S. Grant, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. A few days ago, before my Kindle arrived, reading generally meant being at home, digging up one of these books from wherever I'd left it last, and then hoping I'd chosen the one I happened to be in the mood for at the time (or I'd have to get up and find another).

Now all these books are on my Kindle, and I can easily carry them around with me and access them (as well as the latest editions of The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, and Time) whenever and wherever I like. If I'm not happy with the one I've chosen, I'm just a few clicks away from something else. And if I don't happen to have my Kindle with me, I can just launch the Kindle app on my iPhone and pick up wherever I left off in any one of these texts (the devices sync with each other using Amazon's WhisperSync service). So now, if I find myself with 20 minutes to spare, I can pick up one of my books and start reading. And for someone who's already overscheduled, being able to squeeze in those extra few minutes of doing something I love is a wonderful thing.

Of course, the Kindle and its competitors are by no means perfect. There are still plenty of things to be hammered out -- the hardware needs to get better, the selection of books isn't great just yet, and there are some format issues that will need to be dealt with (Nicholson Baker does a pretty good job of summing all this up in a recent piece in The New Yorker). But is there any doubt, on any of these counts, that things will continue to improve? That the hardware will get better, that more books will go digital, and so on? I don't think there is.

And if you agree with me that things will continue to improve, but are waiting for more progress before taking the plunge, I have only one word of advice for you: don't. You won't regret getting in now any more than you did when you bought your first iPod and instantly freed yourself from having to carry around a huge Case Logic every time you wanted have a good selection of music on hand.

So there it is, folks. If you love to read, you need to stop lurking on our blog and go get yourself an e-reader. Trust me -- you'll be happy that you did.

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