"Kindle"ing the passion for reading

“The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.”

-Elizabeth Hardwick

While coining this pithy observation, what probably Elizabeth Hardwick did not have in mind was electronic book readers, the advent of which has made the above statement all the more apt.

Amazon Kindle 3.2.1

Recently, I was fortunate to be gifted an Amazon Kindle. I have never been as exited about a gadget as much as now. Probably, getting my first PC felt the same. I never miss an opportunity to show my Kindle off to people I know (or don't know) and brag about its features and advantages! My friends have now labelled me as "A Kindle evangelist" :-)

A must have for all voracious readers out there. Goodbye to all the rack space occupied by bulky "actual" books. This is one of those disruptive technologies that will redefine the publishing industry. We are already seeing this trend.

Why shouldn't we consider it to be a replacement to actual books when the look-and-feel is quite the same and it comes with significant other benefits ? Its E-ink display can hardly be distinguished from the look of printed paper, the result of which is that, it does not cause any eye strain (unlike regular LCD displays which have faster refresh rates). As a side effect of this, these e-book readers have longer battery life. A Kindle's battery lasts for more than a month after a full recharge, which makes it an excellent travel companion.

It comes with a host of useful features which one uses while reading. An easy-to-use in-built dictionary lookup, effortless page navigation, creating highlights, notes, bookmarks, an experimental music player, Wi-Fi connectivity and a browser and so on. It can also load pdf files, though it might not have the same page navigation ease as the mobi format.

The first book I "purchased" and read was Alice in Wonderland. I also read a couple of stories from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I plan to read many of the English classics available for $0 :-)
You could also look for free books elsewhere.

Each one can find her own set of ways to use a Kindle apart from reading books. I used it during bus journeys to prepare for a presentation (after loading the pdf version of the presentation). I also recently discovered that I could read research papers which are single-column formatted pdfs. You can play around more with your gadget if you consider to Jailbreak it. Though I haven't tried it yet, there are a lot of resources for doing so and to learn other tips and tricks. My friend pointed me to a versatile utility called Calibre that allows one to inter-convert between many different e-book formats. I now download pdf e-books and convert it to mobi format, a nifty little trick.

Finally, I would like to sketch the serendipitous turn of events that led me to having a Kindle. I was planning to buy it and one morning I decide to tell a friend who was going to US to buy me one. Fortunately, I convey this piece of information to another friend of mine who happens to be gadget-savvy and had returned from the US recently. When I say this, he retorts "I have already brought you one!" . If I had not told him, I would have ended up ordering it. My only grouse apart from him insisting that it is was gift is that I would have gone for a Wi-Fi+3G version. But thats only a minor quibble.

Thanks a lot Mahesh for such a thoughtful and useful present!