2012 Reading Challenge

Morgan has

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100 books?

Failure is always an option.

• Great screen. Great color. Great sensitivity. Very fingerprint resistant
• Fast connection. If your WiFi is fast, at least. Although even with the spotty WiFi in my house the Kindle seems to hold the connection better than the notebook.
• It’s an Amazon Kindle, so you get all the books that Amazon has available in Kindle format
• It will display PDFs
• It will run most Android apps
• Third-party apps are supported
• All the Sandman issues are available for it
• It plays music
• It streams movies and TV from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix.

Con

• It’s heavy. Well, heavier than a regular Kindle.
• There’s no left-handed page advance in books
• The power button is in a bad place for reading books. Too easy to bump it and put the Kindle to sleep while you’re reading. At least you can work around this by turning the Kindle so the button is at the top.
• There’s no built-in way to keep the WiFi from dropping when you’re “inactive” — like streaming music from some services. Some apps have included a “don’t sleep” feature that won’t shut down the Kindle if you’re watching a movie or listening to an audiobook, but (for example) Spotify doesn’t have that. After two minutes the Kindle puts itself to sleep and the WiFi connection is dropped. There’s probably a hack for this, or a way around it if you’ve rooted the Kindle, but if you’re not inclined to do that, it’s a definite drawback. So if anyone out there reading this knows of an app (Amazon or 3rd party) that will keep the WiFi on and/or stop the Kindle from going to sleep, please let me know! I’ve tried PowerWiFi and it doesn’t help.

They played three albums straight through, live: THREE IMAGINARY BOYS (1979), SEVENTEEN SECONDS (1980) and FAITH (1981). There were three encores.

It was at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, which is possibly the best place I’ve ever been to see a band play live. The sound was absolutely flawless. Sometimes when you go to a live show the sound is a little weird — the instruments are too loud or the vocals are too soft or everything sounds muddy, like you’re listening through the wall instead of sitting in the same place. There wasn’t any of that.

The official Beacon website says this: Known for its flawless acoustics, the Beacon has been a favored New York City stop for top acts since the Roaring Twenties. Remarkably, the original sound-system still provides near-perfect acoustics today. Yes. Yes it does.

Robert Smith was weirdly chatty. I’ve seen The Cure before and he’s usually managed a little “Hello, $CityName!” and the occasional “Thank you” (which mostly just comes out sounding like “Q”) after songs. But there he was, chatting away, making jokes, and obviously enjoying himself. It was weird. But nice.

The show was a sell-out and from where I was sitting there didn’t seem to be an empty seat anywhere. There was a pretty broad spread of ages, too — kids who probably hadn’t even been thought of when Faith was released, and people who were probably already adults when Three Imaginary Boys was recorded. Tickets were hard to get, too, so everyone was there because they actually wanted to be there (okay, maybe there were a few kids who were there because a parent really wanted them to see The Cure, or a few parents who weren’t going to let their kid go see some weird, old band, and possibly some disinterested significant others who couldn’t say no, because you get them at every concert, no matter who’s playing). There were no “Bros” or Hipsters who were there just because they were bored on a Friday night. It really wasn’t that kind of a show.

I don’t normally like going to concerts because the crowds are often obnoxious and the sound is usually crap. Often I’m bored after the first 30 minutes no matter how much I love the band — and it’s never because of the band, it’s because of the crowds and the sound and the standing around. By the time this show was over I was amazed that it was almost midnight (how could it be over already?!) and my eyes were burning because I kept forgetting to blink.

The fog machine got a workout and the sound of birds twittering before the show started got annoying pretty fast, but overall it was just absolutely amazing. I have never been to a show like this before. I doubt I’ll get the chance again (Unless The Cure manages to go back to The Beacon Theatre).

At the end of the show Robert Smith said “I’ll see you next year.” Everyone’s taking this to mean they’ll be doing it again.

That’d be nice.

Spotify works like a charm. It’s much better than it was on the iPod Touch (It’s still better on the Droid). Hulu works incredibly well — better than it does on my Droid. The larger viewing screen helps, too.

I haven’t really done much else with it yet, other than read books. Because that’s really what I wanted it for, anyhow.

If you follow the links you’ll see the regular Kindle is the most expensive, with the 3G and Keyboard. I don’t really want a touch screen. I like the “tap a button to turn the page” thing. Saves the screen and makes it a lot easier to read while I’m doing other things (like eating or knitting, or watching TV). It’s such a close call in price that I keep thinking “why not just spend the extra few bucks and get the Fire? But … touchscreen.

See, I get the whole tablet thing. I actually do want a table. But the thing is, the Kindle Fire isn’t really a tablet. Not completely. Not yet. It’s really just an eReader on steroids. And I live in the 21st century. If I want to listen to music while I read I have an iPod and a Droid phone. I have CDs, mp3s, Spotify, and LastFM. I am totally soniced up!

But if I get the regular Kindle, by this time next year will I find myself with two obsolete Kindles? Because I have a First Gen that I adore and works perfectly but is no longer supported and a lot of the new Kindle features aren’t available for it. My greatest fear is that one day the battery will die and I won’t be able to get a replacement for it (I actually have a spare stashed away for just such an emergency). So really I don’t even need a new Kindle. Bertie has occasional hiccups (usually caused by me not charging him completely) but is perfectly good and loyal and still works. Except it is largely unsupported now.

I thought about getting a Kindle Fire for Kitti — he watches videos and reads magazines and would probably get more use out of a high color thing — but he says he doesn’t really want one. He’s not into the whole ebook/ezine thing. Which also means that there would be no justification in getting a Fire for me and letting Kitti have the current Kindle (Bertie).

I don’t know. I feel like I should do the sensible, practical, money-saving thing and not get any new Kindle of any description. But I don’t want to be left behind when the technology changes.

Also, the Fire is pretty.

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“The language was a little too British for me so I took off a star because not everyone knows that kind of British slang… but oh well.”

and

“Have now finished reading this book. Interesting cases. Only thing I don’t care about is the British vocabulary. As we in U S say on Elm Street, for example, this book says in Elm Street. Causes me to lose some concentration.”

Really? Really?! I do understand that some local slang is hard to follow. I’m a devout Anglophile and pretty much live on BBCAmerica and even I get confused by some terms (especially ones that are specific to a region or an age group) but then again I have the same problem with some American English slang. And generally, it’s not that hard to pick up from context. It also doesn’t take that long to look it up (later or at that moment (yes, that does take you further out of the reading, but only for a few moments and that must be better than sitting there frustrated, right?)), so when you encounter it again you don’t lose any time.

One does wonder how they manage with the cop lingo that occasionally turns up in the books. I’m also willing to bet the people who left these reviews (and the others like them) don’t read much science fiction and fantasy.

I bought one of the books that had such a review. It’ll be interesting to see how “hard” it is to understand.

In my case it was a little more complicated, since my wireless network doesn’t broadcast the name. But that only involved the extra step of telling it the name.

Once it was updated (which took about a minute at the most), it gave me a code and I went to the Roku website and registered my account. It’s free. They do require a credit card (or some form of payment) on file in case you DO purchase any channels. On the website you can tell it which of the channels you want. Then you can either log into the individual services on the Roku (which is the tedious use-the- remote-to-pick-the-letters method) or get a code that you enter at the website. (The url for pairing Pandora to Roku didn’t work, so I did the slow method). That was it!

I haven’t watched anything yet, but I did try a few minutes of Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora. Hulu’s quality wasn’t great, but it was watchable. It could have been what I chose and not a problem with Hulu or Roku. Netflix was fantastic. Pandora played smooth. No stuttering or weird buffering.

I don’t expect it to be great ALL the time (I know what my internet connection is like) but if it’s decent enough more often than not, I’ll be happy with this.

(note: for Hulu you need to subscribe to a Plus account. Netflix obviously requires payment. Amazon Streaming is free for Prime members.)