to start a fire...

       so i promised you this post ages ago, but i'm just now getting around to it. i've been pretty distracted, and even now i had to force myself to put it down and pick up my laptop. i'm reading six or seven books at the moment, but like i mentioned in my pulse, i recently uploaded my harry potter collection and i became absorbed in the sixth when i opened it to make sure it worked. not my favorite of the series (that spot is reserved for the seventh), but it is one of the better written of the bunch. and while harry and dumbledore walk towards slughorn's house for the first time, i'm being soothed by the minimalist themes of philip glass's brilliant score to "the hours." yes, it's an mp3 player, too. for someone on a shoestring budget (who's already bad with money), it's fairly expensive, but i haven't for a moment regretted hitting that little "add to shopping cart" button. i love my kindle.

       for those who aren't sure what it is, you might find it easier to go here and learn all about it. i think they represent it fairly accurately. one of the first things i noticed about it as i tore into the box was how sleek it is. it's fairly pretty. very thin and lightweight, it's the perfect size -- not too big, not too small. the second thing i noticed, and the one that surprised me the most, was the little clear plastic protective cover. yeah, doesn't sound too surprising, but wait for it -- it had some printing on it over the area of the screen. except... when i removed said clear plastic protective cover, the printing didn't come off with it. it took me a minute to figure it out. the first cover was the size of the entire kindle, so i thought perhaps there might be a second just for the screen... but no. it wasn't printing. it was the screen. i was baffled how clear the writing was. they aren't kidding when they call it "electronic paper."

       so i had ordered it on a thursday and i received it the following tuesday. in that time i had browsed amazon's kindle store and purchased somewhere around 80 books to download, so i was expecting to have quite a wait while all of the books were delivered. when i finally figured out how to turn it on, though (i'm sometimes technologically challenged), i was pleasantly surprised to see that my entire collection had already downloaded while the kindle was being shipped. i opened my first book, neil gaiman's "the graveyard book," and read it in a day. i couldn't really decide where to go from there, hence the reading several at once thing. i now have 93 files (many more books since a handful of those are the complete works of such and such) and i still love it. i still can't get enough of it. the only thing i don't like is that not every book that's ever been published is available for it, but you can upload your own documents, pictures, and music files (including pdf, text, and word document types among many others -- which is how i got hp on there) and have enough to go on. people who say that it will be the end of print books are wrong -- i've always been an avid reader, but purchasing this thing has nudged that up so now i'm even buying more print books than ever before (just received ursula k. le guin's "the left hand of darkness," jonathan barnes' "the somnambulist," and eiji yoshikawa's fourth installment of "musashi" within the last couple weeks). now all i need is time to read them all!

       but i'd highly recommend it. if you're sitting on the fence, just do it. :) you won't regret it. i also purchased the standard leather cover and the clip on lcd book light (the kindle isn't back-lit). i've been able to sit and read it for hours without eye strain (something i can't do with a computer). the battery lasts forever as long as the wireless is turned off (i've already lost the power cable a couple times because i'm rarely using it). hmm...what else? oh, i also love the dictionary feature, where you just scroll up to a word and a little window appears at the bottom of the screen with a definition. you can also add notes and highlights quite easily. and i love that you can access wikipedia or search google from anywhere for free. it's really quite wonderful.

       ok, this is getting too long and geeky and fan-boyish. real update to come soon enough, but some of you were asking for this one. later taters!