Review: Amazon Kindle – a conversation with my friend Cristina – part I

Welcome to t^h’s first review! I have been interested in the Kindle ever since the first version came on the market, but the Kindle 2 has really gotten my attention because it’s so much more attractive esthetically, and seems to have been much improved as far as functionality goes, as well. But my fascination is not limited to the looks and functionality of this object. I am interested in the implications in terms of our relationship with reading and with books. Let me first mention a few of the things that are being said about the Kindle, give you my position on the matters, and then move on to an interview I had with my friend Cristina.

• I have a dear friend whose life partner is a well known and accomplished writer, editor and teacher. He was in the process of publishing his latest novel when the first Kindle was released. I remember my friend saying to me “We’re very worried about this Kindle thing and what it will mean for the book and its sales.”
• The text-to-speech function has been criticized for a number of reasons: Amazon does not pay audio rights to authors, because it is a computer voice and not the voice of a professional actor — no one has been paid to create an audio version of the work, and Amazon does not make extra money (but there is an added incentive for people to buy the books, knowing of this added bonus/value). On the side of the readers, of course, it is criticized for the same reason from the opposite perspective: the voice is a computer-generated strange voice with no inflections and it’s a bit creepy. On the plus side, it’s a boon to blind readers, who, however, cannot operate it by themselves.

Then there is the whole “book as object” question.

Where I Stand

• Anything that is used for reading HELPS reading. I don’t understand why anyone would be afraid of a gadget that is made for readers, to help people read in circumstances where reading a physical book might be inconvenient, or when carrying many books may be difficult. “We read too little these days,” “no one reads anymore,” etc. This is all we hear, and yet we complain that the Kindle might spell the end of reading as we know it (or knew it). Bulls**t! The more we read, the more we read. So if the Kindle means that one person who would not have read a book is now reading, long live the Kindle!
• I’m not sure where I stand on the issue of audio rights because any text can be read by a computer-generated voice these days, and no one pays rights to read to their kids at night (I still read to my teenagers from time to time). I would say that I don’t feel strongly about this and I would tend to side with Amazon. As for the fact that books are cheaper on the Kindle than in book form, I say that a percentage of something is a lot more than a percentage of nothing. If the Kindle means that more books are sold, albeit at a lower price, long live the Kindle!
• I must come clean about myself. My name is Ilaria and I am a book addict. Here’s the thing. I think most people who know me would agree with this description of me: aside from Zen monks, I am the least consumeristic person I know. I have no attachment to objects. I could walk away from every single thing I own. I could move to another country, another planet, with the clothes on my back and never look back. I would not miss a single thing. Not even my beloved house. The only things that I accumulate are books. They are the only thing I like to shop for. I will stand in Barnes & Noble for hours, that is my idea of fun, and browse and browse. I pick books up, I put them down, I run my palm over the cover, my fingers over the page. Sometimes I smell them. I do not lick them (that would not be nice). I own a lot of them. And yet, I could walk away from them too. In fact, I have walked away from them. When I moved to New York this last time, after 18 straight years in Florence, I brought with me my two children, four duffel bags of clothing (mostly theirs), and one of my two guitars. For 11 years my books remained in boxes in the basement of my house in Italy. Only last year, when my new home was renovated and my Italian house sold, did I finally ship the boxes over here. And most of them I have not opened yet. I have collected almost as many books again as I had, and I’m sure there are quite a few doubles (have to have Dickens, have to have Homer, the Russians, the French, etc.) But I am of the old world and of the new. As much as I love books, I also love the computer, the web, the age of information, and I am deeply fascinated by how new tools and media change the way we absorb information, art, literature, stories.

And now let us move on to my interview with my friend Cristina. Cristina was the ideal candidate for this interview. She has spent her life among books, cherishes them as objects, has collected and preserved them. At the same time she is also a modern information professional, highly computer-literate, a connoisseur and lover of gadgets. She has a Mac, a PC, an iPhone… you get the picture. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Cristina is originally from Italy, and was for many years a librarian. Over the years she developed special experience in the evaluation of private libraries and book collections. She herself has a collection of first editions, which she left in Italy. Then she came to the United States, and got a PhD in Information Science. So you see, she lives on both sides of the cultural divide, if we can call it that, between Book Land and Gadget Land. And now, for the interview itself. Ilaria: Over the time that I have known you, the past year or so, I noticed that you mentioned your Kindle on various occasions, at different times during the day, and this made me curious, as I knew you to be a great lover of books. You kindly agreed to this interview, and here we are. What do you think are the pros of owning a Kindle, and how did you come to acquire one? Cristina: My first encounter with the Kindle was almost by chance. My boss had purchased a few of them to conduct experiments where I teach, and they were languishing on the shelves. So after a while my colleagues and I decided to start using them, and I brought one home with me. What the Kindle has done for me is make reading a seamless experience from one medium to the next, from one moment of my day to the next. I’ll give you an example. I read the New York Times in the morning on my computer. I also subscribe to the hard copy on the weekend, because I still enjoy clipping. But when I am ready to leave the house, I take my Kindle with me and can continue reading the Times on the subway. The funny thing is that it’s not pleasant to read the paper on the Kindle. It’s compressed, there are no or few images, and it doesn’t look very good. But I can scan the article titles and when I find one I like I can read the whole thing. I end up reading entire articles that I almost certainly would not have the time to read if I weren’t on the subway. The other thing that the Kindle has done for me, and this is truly an added value, is that I use the Kindle to read fiction. I had stopped reading fiction in my life. I am in a phase in which I just don’t have the time to read fiction. This phase may end in about five years, but for now… And I missed it terribly. Cultural consumption was the biggest luxury in my life. As a librarian, having the good fortune of working in the cultural world, I was on top of things for many years. I had lost this, and the Kindle has allowed this luxury back into my life. Furthermore, I can have many novels at once on the Kindle. I don’t read sequentially. I read several things at the same time, so it’s very convenient. Ilaria: So, to summarize, so far the benefits of the Kindle are:

• Being able to move seamlessly from one environment to the next while continuing to read, from paper, to the computer, to the Kindle on the go;

• Being able to read things that you normally would not read (for lack of time) while commuting, such as newspapers and fiction.

I’m sure there are many other things you want to tell me about. Let’s take a break and continue the interview after coffee and croissants.

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