Aug 4, 2009

Kindle sample chapter reviews

I was lucky enough to take a little vacation in the States last weekend, and of course I brought the Kindle along to witness the glory that is the Full Kindle Wi-Fi experience. And, well...wow. I mean, I adore my Kindle, Wi-Fi or no, and I already have more to read on it than I'm going to be able to manage in half a year at least, but all of that is just base logic...the truth of it is, I fell in love. You can order books. All the books. From. Your. Bed. Or from the car mid-roadtrip. And then, because I get motion sick and can't read in the car, you can have it read your new acquisitions to you. I took out a sample subscription to the New York Times, because we were in New York, and it downloaded to my Kindle each morning as I had my tea in the hotel cafeteria.

Oh! And we saw an ad for it in the subway. That was neat.

Okay, so I won't front - the wi-fi is an insanely amazing thing. But I also don't have an iPhone, so maybe it's just because this was my first exposure to handheld 3G anywhere-internet. Though to be fair, the connection was a bit lousy - I had to log into facebook again every time I did anything, so log in, type a wall post, log in, post the wall post...sigh. So the iPhone would probably win that battle. But still. You can Beam Books Out Of The Sky. It's like heaven.

Oh, so I downloaded some sample chapters. And by "some" I of course mean "every one I could get at before my battery ran out." Now that my pet rat has gotten old and his greatest joy in life is to be read out loud to, I've been reading him a whole variety of NYT bestsellers, and he seems to be quite enjoying it. To date:

Swimsuit: I was relieved that this ended when it did. This man does many things I never would have allowed as an editor, plus I'm not really big on the whole "gruesome murder" bit. Benji enjoyed it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: Is that right? This one was a big hit all around, and even the Manfolk, who pretended to be playing video games and not listening, let out a couple of good chuckles over it. I would definitely accept this one as a gift, if I have any admirers.

Twilight: Ah. I see.

Finger-Lickin' Fifteen: Um...maybe I just wasn't in the mood? I'm rather pleased that there's this huge series of popular books with a Latina heroine, so we'll give this a thumbs up, but...meh.

How the Beatles Destroyed Rock and Roll: Now, this one actually takes advantage of the sample chapter setup. Unlike stupid James Patterson, whose fancy "publisher" apparently didn't have enough time to look and see that 60% of his sample was the table of contents, this here book gives a big fat juicy sample, unhindered by massive quantities of front matter. I'm only a few pages in (Benji was dissatisfied by the lack of dialogue), but the narrator seems like a sweetheart and he's saying all those smart things about Blues music that always make me go all weak in the knees.

Stay tuned for a guest post from that boy who downloaded all the sci-fi sample chapters.

2 comments:

Emilie said...

You read Twilight?!

E said...

Well, I read the first chapter, anyway. That's all they give you for free.