Kindle -- some days later

So I have owned the Kindle 2 for almost two weeks. I just thought I would check in and tell you how much I like it.

I like it sooooo much that Saturday, when I was lying on my bed and I thought maybe I would re-read one of my favorite books which was like four feet away from me, I had to talk myself out of buying it on the Kindle. It would have been so easy. Now it wasn't that it would have been such an effort to roll over and pull the book off the shelf. It was that it seems like such an effort to have to hold the book open and turn the pages. I mean, how lame is that? It's like after you get used to having cruise control, paying attention to your speed and the position of your foot feels like an extraordinary task. (Not you? Well, I'm lazy past all imagination.)

When I read with the Kindle I just hold this tablet thingy and periodically move my thumb. I don't lose my place when I put it down. It remembers where I am. When I don't know what a word means I can push the little joystick thingy and see the definition of the word at the bottom of the page. I haven't actually bothered to put down a book and look up a word in a dictionary in a very long time. At least for fiction, I mean.

I am proud to report that I did resist the temptation to purchase a Kindle copy of the book that was a mere four feet away. I bought American Gods by Neil Gaiman instead. In the past 9 days I have read four novels on the Kindle. One was Coraline, but another was American Gods, so it evens out. I have purchased one academic anthology and read several articles in it. I have the first chapter of half a dozen other books (fiction and non-fiction) sitting in my list while I decide whether to buy them.

The lack of page numbers is still bothering me, mostly in the anthology. If I put it down for a while there is no quick way to figure out which article or chapter I am in. It can be done, but it is wierd. I can look at the bottom of the screen and see that the text on the screen is location 105-120. I can then click to the table of contents, which has no location numbers, and click on the title of the article I think I am in. If it starts at location 210, that's not it. Usually in anthologies there is a header that tells you what chapter or article you are in.

That and the lack of organizational folders are my only major complaints. I could probably come up with a long list of suggestions, but that's all for actual complaints.

Except of course that they need to get Laurie King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice available NOW. I'm in this contest where someone (probably a publicist) is impersonating Mary Russell (the now 109 year old protagonist of a series of Laurie King's books). She sends out quotes from the book and you respond to them. The problem is that Friday evening I was telling our guests about it and Ron, who is a very kind 85 year-old man who has never asked me for anything, asked if he could borrow it. I couldn't say no. The last three of the Mary Russell books are available on Kindle, but the first five are not...yet. I really want that book back...it is difficult to participate in the contest if I can't look for the quotes. I couldn't let myself buy the book if it was just on the shelf, but who knows how long it will take Ron to read it?