Feb

Read it in New Ways

Here we are in the brave post-modern, post-futurist world, and in this brave new world, we have options. Oh, boy, do we have options! No longer tied to the dog-eared paperback, or the family-favorite with scribblings in the margins from Great Aunts, we seek our literature with new forms of delivery. This rant, of course, is pushed along by the announcement of the 2nd iteration of the Kindle–Amazon’s great gift to humankind. Much has been said about the Kindle, which allows us to travel with dozens of our favorite books taking up mere ounces in our luggage.

Flashlight Worthy Books‘ founders Peter and Eric debate the worth of Kindle with solid arguments on both sides.

Christian Science Monitor rounds up a bunch of reviews in an article on the launch of Kindle II. If you read down in the comments, you will see a link to a very thorough well rounded review.

Then there’s the inevitable funny, personal and negative blogger’s take.

Before there was Kindle (and its lesser cousins), the hand-held electronic book collection, you could download books from the Internet to your computer, or to your PDA, or, of late, to your cell phone. From their computer, some people prefer to print them off, while others read directly from the computer screen. Either way, sources for books on the Internet proliferate.

You can download classics from the original source of e-free books, Project Gutenberg. Because all their books are out of copyright, they are generally more than 80 years old. You can also volunteer to help them enlarge their library. The organization of books seems rather strange to me. If you are looking for books that shed light on travel, go beyond the bookshelf called Travel and look at some of the country shelves, at Pirates, Buccaneers and Corsairs Shelf, and at shelves like Art or Archaeology. Don’t forget Women’s Travel, which for some reason is segregated from Travel.

Find strictly classics, (including one I recently downloaded and have on my TBR list, Down and Out in London by George Orwell) at Planet E-Book. A drawback here is that you do not get any information about the edition or translation of books. For instance, I would not mind re-reading the Illiad, but it makes a great deal of difference which translation, and Planet E-Book does not tell me on the web page.

More on alternatives to travel books without paper and ink on the morrow.