(Un)E-Z Reader.
The missus sold me her old Kindle Fire (7") model last week, since she'd gotten herself a Kindle Fire HD the week before. Hooray for federal tax refunds.
The first book that I purchased for the Kindle was Christa Faust's Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick -- Double D Double Cross; I read (and enjoyed!) it last weekend. I liked it better than her book for Hard Case Crime, Money Shot.
It's taken me up until now, however, to suss out how to download free books from Project Gutenberg -- an idea I've always dug, even if I've never read an entire volume from their site on a computer.
Turns out that Amazon locked down their Kindle Fire to make it damned near impossible to download e-books that aren't purchased from Amazon. While you can install OverDrive's e-reader software, which is apparently built on an Adobe platform, you can't even install Adobe's otherwise ubiquitous Reader freeware onto the Kindle Fire.
It wasn't until I realized that I had to go to Project Gutenberg's mobile site that I was able to download texts, in the "EPUB" format (oddly enough, the Kindle format can't be opened by the Kindle Fire; supposedly the previous version, the Kindle 3, was more versatile; if the missus ever lets me experiment with her Kindle Fire HD, I can see if it is more tolerant of different file formats), to the OverDrive reader ("Media Console"). Previously, I was able to open one HTML text from PG at a time, accessible from the Kindle's "Carousel" feature; but, as soon as I downloaded a second HTML file, it replaced the previous one.
I now have 23 books in my OverDrive reader, all from Project Gutenberg. If nothing else, the Kindle will pump up the amount of out-of-copyright books that I read (all without the critical apparatus attendant with Oxford World's Classics, Penguin Classics, or Norton Critical Edition versions; *sigh*....). What I don't like about the OverDrive reader so far is the fact that you can't highlight text (as you can in the Kindle reader proper; I was able to highlight a couple of typos that I spotted in Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick), annotate text (I'm not sure if the Kindle Fire allows this), and the fact that OverDrive's online dictionary is considerably less impressive than the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition that comes with the Kindle: I was skimming the introduction to the first volume of Capt. Sir Richard Francis Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (otherwise known as The Arabian Nights), and immediately came upon a word that, surprise, surprise, wasn't in OverDrive's crapware dictionary; this word, "pinacothek," likewise wasn't in the NOAD, 2ed: I had to find it on Wordnik (it's a variant of "pinacotecha").
I've started Alexander William Kinglake's Eothen; or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East (1844), a book I've been intending to read ever since I came across RFB's shout-out to it in the first volume of his Wanderings in West Africa. I'm in the middle of Chapter IV ("The Troad"); so far it's readable, but I'm gnashing my teeth at my inability to highlight passages (such as his offhand slur against the Irish -- pretty common for English writers of the 19th century, unfortunately -- in Chapter II ["Turkish Traveling"], salted in amongst a discussion of different saddle types, of all things) or make notes in the margins. The comic dialogue at the end of the first chapter is pretty strained, but otherwise it's okay so far.
One nice thing about the Kindle -- other than the obvious benefit of being able to store several weighty tomes on it -- is the fact that I can read in bed without either disturbing the missus or worrying about the book light tearing the pages (in the case of the clip-on light that I have) or being too unwieldy to use when I wish to highlight and/or annotate (in the case of the lighted magnifying glass that I have; this is an absolutely essential tool when reading my copy of Shakespeare's complete works).
I was beginning to wonder if the only damn use for the Kindle Fire was to play Angry Birds, Words With Friends or Draw Something 24-7; hopefully I'll find further uses for it the more that I play with it.
The first book that I purchased for the Kindle was Christa Faust's Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick -- Double D Double Cross; I read (and enjoyed!) it last weekend. I liked it better than her book for Hard Case Crime, Money Shot.
It's taken me up until now, however, to suss out how to download free books from Project Gutenberg -- an idea I've always dug, even if I've never read an entire volume from their site on a computer.
Turns out that Amazon locked down their Kindle Fire to make it damned near impossible to download e-books that aren't purchased from Amazon. While you can install OverDrive's e-reader software, which is apparently built on an Adobe platform, you can't even install Adobe's otherwise ubiquitous Reader freeware onto the Kindle Fire.
It wasn't until I realized that I had to go to Project Gutenberg's mobile site that I was able to download texts, in the "EPUB" format (oddly enough, the Kindle format can't be opened by the Kindle Fire; supposedly the previous version, the Kindle 3, was more versatile; if the missus ever lets me experiment with her Kindle Fire HD, I can see if it is more tolerant of different file formats), to the OverDrive reader ("Media Console"). Previously, I was able to open one HTML text from PG at a time, accessible from the Kindle's "Carousel" feature; but, as soon as I downloaded a second HTML file, it replaced the previous one.
I now have 23 books in my OverDrive reader, all from Project Gutenberg. If nothing else, the Kindle will pump up the amount of out-of-copyright books that I read (all without the critical apparatus attendant with Oxford World's Classics, Penguin Classics, or Norton Critical Edition versions; *sigh*....). What I don't like about the OverDrive reader so far is the fact that you can't highlight text (as you can in the Kindle reader proper; I was able to highlight a couple of typos that I spotted in Butch Fatale, Dyke Dick), annotate text (I'm not sure if the Kindle Fire allows this), and the fact that OverDrive's online dictionary is considerably less impressive than the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition that comes with the Kindle: I was skimming the introduction to the first volume of Capt. Sir Richard Francis Burton's translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (otherwise known as The Arabian Nights), and immediately came upon a word that, surprise, surprise, wasn't in OverDrive's crapware dictionary; this word, "pinacothek," likewise wasn't in the NOAD, 2ed: I had to find it on Wordnik (it's a variant of "pinacotecha").
I've started Alexander William Kinglake's Eothen; or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East (1844), a book I've been intending to read ever since I came across RFB's shout-out to it in the first volume of his Wanderings in West Africa. I'm in the middle of Chapter IV ("The Troad"); so far it's readable, but I'm gnashing my teeth at my inability to highlight passages (such as his offhand slur against the Irish -- pretty common for English writers of the 19th century, unfortunately -- in Chapter II ["Turkish Traveling"], salted in amongst a discussion of different saddle types, of all things) or make notes in the margins. The comic dialogue at the end of the first chapter is pretty strained, but otherwise it's okay so far.
One nice thing about the Kindle -- other than the obvious benefit of being able to store several weighty tomes on it -- is the fact that I can read in bed without either disturbing the missus or worrying about the book light tearing the pages (in the case of the clip-on light that I have) or being too unwieldy to use when I wish to highlight and/or annotate (in the case of the lighted magnifying glass that I have; this is an absolutely essential tool when reading my copy of Shakespeare's complete works).
I was beginning to wonder if the only damn use for the Kindle Fire was to play Angry Birds, Words With Friends or Draw Something 24-7; hopefully I'll find further uses for it the more that I play with it.