Tag Archives: Kindle

Neither a lender nor a borrower be (on Kindle at any rate)

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 7 Comments

Kindle lending, Over there, not over here.

When I first acquired a Kindle, I was surprised at the reaction of a book-loving friend, who said she liked to recycle her books (to charity shops), and that now she wouldn’t be able to. I pointed out the ecological benefits of not cutting down a tree in the first place and thought no more of it. But as time has gone on her words have come back to me and not just because of the carbon footprint of an e-book and the device needed to use it.After all, there’s a lot of pleasure in sharing a book, of saying you must read this and thrusting the tome in question into the hands of someone you trust implicitly to give it back (yes, a few mistakes made there!) with their own reaction. Somehow go and get it it’s only 99p on Amazon doesn’t feel quite the same.

Which brings us to the thorny question of e-book library lending. It flits in and out of the newspapers without much seeming to happen. It’s a complex issue and I almost sympathise with Penguin who withdrew from a deal to offer e-books to US Libraries. The problem, it appears is that compared to visiting the library (requiring time effort and requisite motivation) downloading an e-book is simply too easy. Too many people did it. And if that sounds laughable, I can’t really argue with a publisher wanting to preserve its business model, not to mention its authors’ interests. Meanwhile amazon.com allow a publisher to specify ‘lending enabled’ and for the book to be loaned for a fortnight, But I have never seen this on amazon.co.uk (where this sounds pretty uncompromising) and those U.K. libraries offering e-books are not allowed to provide them Kindle format.

And so it looks as if, barring blatant acts of piracy, even lending to a friend is impossible in the Kindle format. Which is sad, not just for my friends and our dwindling budgets but also for the way society and culture work.

Yes, I know we can all go online and press the ‘share this’ button, but what about the face to face experience, the handing back of the object, the stopping to have a good natter about it? Or even the surprise find in the library/charity shop you only picked up in desperation (I have discovered more than one author in these circumstances!) before a dentist, hospital or garage appointment and which proved to be a blindingly good read. If everything we choose is preselected from our previous likes/dislikes, or recommended by people we know to be on the same wave-length, where will there be room for serendipity?

It’s like my old gripe about TV time-shifting. When we all watch what we want when we want to, there may be no common ground when friends come to dinner. Even adverts used to be worth a mention, before we all filtered them out through the skip function. And providers are striving more and more to hook onto our individual preferences (the old ‘you may also like’ scenario) channelling us into our ingrained likes and dislikes and away from that moment of idleness. When our viewing/reading is all pre-ordered and sent via broadband, how will we find the surprise gem we only chose because we were marooned on the sofa with nothing else to do?

I may have gone off at a tangent (no change there then!) but sometimes the virtual world, wonderful though it is, makes me uncomfortable. I miss the act of giving and recieiving which spreads the love of a fabulous read. And if anyone does know more than me about lending on Kindle, I’ll be very pleased to hear about it.

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Tagged e-books, Kindle, libraries

Bloodless nerd or bibliophile?

Posted on July 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

So, according to Penelope Lively speaking at the Ways
with Words Festival, e-books are for “bloodless nerds” and something no “no
self-respecting bibliophile” should want. Although Lively goes on to concede an
e-book reader might have its uses, her reaction strikes me as a surprisingly strong and atypical of anyone I know (none of whom I would describe as bloodless, and many of whom are as far from nerd-dom as it’s possible to be) who has used a Kindle.

But what about this bibliophile idea? For centuries, any published writing (fiction or non-fiction, biography, poems, recipes or exhibition catalogues) has been indivisible from its physical medium, the printed page bound in cloth, card or leather. Anyone who loved reading would, by definition, love books. So is this no longer the case? E-learning designers have shown us that even academic learning is not confined to books, and now the Kindle and other gadgets are proving that the reading and assimilation of extended
prose can also be achieved without paper and ink. I could love reading and not
possess a bookshelf, never mind a library. But is that likely? For most of us, including Kindle users, the book continues to be a seductive medium and one that’s the basis of much of much of our cultural heritage. Only today I came upon two boxes containing paperback novels of the seventies and some old books culled from my childhood home – including the ‘Alice’ I’ve photographed here. Although I fell upon these books like old friends, I hadn’t actually missed
them in the last nine years, and I only found them because a mass clear-out is
under way chez nous. But will I throw them away? Forcing myself to be ruthless,
I’m hanging on to around a third to squeeze in to our limited shelf-space, not just for myself but for my children and the children they may one day have. How dreadful for them to come to Grannie’s house and not see books on the shelves to play with, to puzzle over and eventually read. If by then they are curiosities, so much the better. Browsing an online library can never be quite the same.

As an ex-librarian I have been custodian of all kinds of book collections and know that historical bibliography (the study of the physical book) is both
fascinating and crucial in some areas of literature. (I even sneaked a small
bibiographical puzzle into my first novel). But the need to trash large numbers
of out-of-date text and reference books has cured me of the sentimental
attachment to books qua books that many people seem to have, giving rise to that all too common cry of ‘I can’t throw away a book.’ Sorry, if your
shelf is full and it’s not an all-time favourite, man up and do the deed!

So maybe I was never a true bibliophile, (in the sense of book-collector) in the first place, because with one or two exceptions it’s what’s between the covers, or the lines, that matters to me, rather than its physical presence. In this sense e-books give me a kind of freedom. I can read, then store or discard as I choose without clogging up house space or recycling facilities. But I have no doubt that if any book is really meaningful to me, I’ll go and buy a copy of what for me will always be ‘the real thing.’

If Penelope Lively (whose Moon Tiger and Road to Lichfield are still among my
all-time favourites) has made me cross, I think it’s in her assumption that book
lovers and Kindle user are mutually exclusive categories. Most people I know
have embraced e-readers as something that in their convenience and flexibility
can add to their appreciation of prose. I’m sure if she tried one she’d feel
the same.

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Tagged e-publishing, e-readers, Kindle

Mrs. Kindle and the Slushpile

Posted on June 12, 2011 | 6 Comments

Maybe it’s because I was brought up a stone’s throw from the first Carnegie Library, but aside from a brief flirtation with book clubs and a couple of periods in my working parent days when I never had time to get to the library, I’ve always read a lot more books than I have bought, which is my excuse reason for not having splashed out (so far) on a Kindle. But a few months ago I did download the Mrs. Kindle for PC, not to try and replicate the Kindle experience ( I know an e-reader bears no resemblance to reading from a screen) but to be able to download sample chapters of books that had piqued my interest.

And very handy it is too. In view of my tendency to judge the book by its blurb if not its cover, it has proved a good way not to make mistakes when scouring the library
catalogue or forking out hard-earned cash. This week with an Amazon gift certificate burning a virtual hole in my virtual pocket, it has been working overtime, and because Amazon is now a broad church of mainstream, independent and the self publishers, I have been casting my net widely amongst the offerings of fellow writers and Twitter friends as well as books thrown up by broadsheet reviewers as ‘must reads.’

As a result my TBR list is growing fast and I find myself the owner of a considerable ‘slush pile’ needing to decide where I am going to spend my money (on ordering) or my time (on sourcing elsewhere). Yes, most of these books have already been pre-selected by a publisher, but without the distraction of a clever cover and enticing blurb, the format provides a level playing field on which only the writing can persuade me to get engaged with the game. And so I’m a bit
like an agent who opens every email or brown envelope to find the same kind of
package – three chapters, double-spaced – and has only a short time in which to
make a decision.

So what am I looking for?

First of all, safety. By which I mean the feeling of being in the hands of a writer
who won’t let me down. This isn’t about dazzling me with brilliant writing but
about not making the kind of mistake – in grammar, syntax, punctuation or style
- which might remind me this is a piece of prose composed by a fallible writer, rather than the doorway to a new world. Advice to writers (and editors) ? Get it right! A typo or a line of woolly dialogue might pass me by on page 100, but if it jumps out at me on page 1 – you’re sunk!

Next is information, because I need to know where I am. It
might not be in a strictly geographicalor even chronological sense but within a few paragraphs I need information about where this story is set – a hospital, a university, a woman’s tortured psyche It’s also about genre – what kind of story can I expect – is it love? Excitement? Murder? Or is this a multi-layered story that is going to reveal itself more slowly? Show me where I am, don’t tell me, because I like to work it out for myself. Do it well, do it quickly. And of course, whatever you promise me on page one – you will have to go on to deliver (on which Sarah Duncan has excellent advice).

Next is almost the opposite of information – intrigue. New writers often start with a scene of high drama – car crash, gang warfare, murder or rape. But I don’t need to be shocked on page one, I need to want to know what happens next. Questions have to be raised – (why did she not tell her father? Does she or doesn’t she fancy her boss? Is the man who just entered going to be a saviour or a scoundrel?) Because I’ll only read on to find the answers.

So really, that’s it. From my point of view, if it reads
well and I want to read on, you’re in business. An agent will have other
considerations to do with their own list and the prevailing market, but these
are additional to what I’ve spelled out here. Do this and you (me, all of us)
are in with a chance.

By the way my first three choices are all very different, but all of them ticked the boxes straight away. Here they are in no particular order.