For the most part the new kindle announcement is good news. The new Kindle Paperwhite has a much better screen and continues to focus on reading as its main purpose.
But there are four six areas where I think the new Kindle Paperwhite took a step back.
Image from Amazon.com
1) Storage Capacity – The new Paperwhite (the eink Kindle) has half the storage of the Kindle with Keyboard or the Kindle Touch. I think that 2 GB is enough for storing the current books you are reading, but not for an entire library. And many people want to store their entire library on a kindle. Amazon estimates that the new Paperwhites will store 1100 books. I currently have over 3000 books in my kindle library. On the other hand I try to keep the books on my kindle down to about 40-50. So it is not a huge deal for me. Also the kindle software does not like full storage. So if you kindle is slow, try taking off books that you are not currently reading.
Summary: Art is fundamental to the way that we express the truth of Christianity.
I am late to the Francis Schaeffer party. This book is more than 30 years old. And it is only the second book by Schaeffer I have read.
But I think it is as readable (and important) today as it was when it was written. I was talking with my wife a couple days before I started reading this about the differences that technology has made to the arts. We were talking about how tools made it so that anyone could edit movies or take pictures.
The most exciting new feature for me from today’s new Kindle announcement is Whispersync for Voice. This is a feature that seems natural for Amazon. It allows you to listen to an audiobook, and then pick up your kindle and read, and then return to the audiobook again. As someone that listens to a lot of audiobooks and loves kindles this is a perfect idea.
And Amazon is well positioned to make it happen. Amazon is the largest ebook seller. Audible.com (owned by Amazon) is the largest digital distributor of audiobooks. This just makes sense for Amazon to try. Here is the Amazon commercial about it.
The flagship product for this will be the new Kindle Fires. With the Kindle Fire you can alternate back and forth between professionally narrated Audiobook and the kindle ebook on the same device. And for those that are interested, you can actually have the ebook be highlighted as you listen to the narration. This might be good for younger readers that are trying to read a book that is a bit too hard for them on their own.
Update: The Kindle 3 (or Kindle with Keyboard) just got a firmware upgrade that makes it the only eink Kindle that will allow you to listen to the audiobook and read the kindle book on the same device.
However, you do not have to buy a new kindle fire to make this work. All you need is any Kindle device (eink, any kindle app, computer or kindle fire) to read the ebook, and listen to the audiobook on an iPhone, android phone or any Kindle Fire.
You can try it out now if you like. There are just over 13000 books that are currently read to work with Whispersync for Voice.
Amazon has a couple dozen public domain books where you can try it out for free. I picked up The Three Musketeers. I checked the book out from the library earlier this year and did not finish it before I had to return it.
New E-Ink Kindle (Paperwhite) with higher resolution screen (212 ppi). A whiter screen, new fonts and a lighted touch screen. The battery (with light) on will last 8 weeks at a charge. Paperwhite 3G (free worldwide) version will be $179 and the Paperwhite wifi only will be $119. They new kindles can be ordered today and will ship on Oct 1.
The current Kindle 4 will be now $69 (ad supported). The new lighted kindles do not seem to be ad supported.
Summary: A couple of murders and it seems that Lisbeth may have committed them.
After reading it, I think that the trilogy has been mis-marketed. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo has received all the attention. But in reality it is just a prequel for The Girl Who Played With Fire/The Girl Who Kicked A Hornet’s Nest. The last two books in this trilogy are really just one book split into two parts.
The Girl Who Played With Fire starts about a year after the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo finishes. Lisbeth is back as the main character (where she should be) and she has changed.
Takeaway: The world is changing and Christianity is changing with it.
Mark Noll is one of the most important academics of Christianity in the world. He is a historian, but the implications of his work go far beyond history. Personally, the most important book of his that I have read it The Civil War and Theological Crisis. That book looked at how Christians of an earlier generation had worked through cultural change and there were many implications for how we can now work through cultural change.
In The New Shape of World Christianity, Noll makes a subtle argument. Simply, Noll argues that American Christianity is important to worldwide Christianity not so much because it is leading the world, but more because the world’s culture is changing in ways that are similar to the ways that the United States is changing. Noll is clear that it is not that the world is becoming like the US, as much as it is that the cultural pressures (globalization) that the US is facing are also facing the rest of the world. It is just that the US is a bit in front of the rest of the world in many of these cultural changes and pressures.
I hadn’t noticed, but this is Bookwi.se’s 1500th post. Below are the most read reviews from August 2012. Part of what this shows is I am getting better paying attention to Search Engine Optimization. Because only 3 are from this month. The books in order: Fifty Shades Darker, Discovering Your Heart With the Flag Page … Read more
When I was a boy I read a lot of books (surprising I know). Some I have been revisiting over the past couple years (CS Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, etc.) I have found that I enjoy re-reading many of those books, but that reading them as an adult sometimes gives me a whole new insight into the book and sometimes leaves me missing my childhood view of the book. (In other words, some books have an adult subtext and some are just written for kids.)
The Encyclopedia Brown books are all about Leroy Brown, the child sleuth that everyone called Encyclopedia. When I was a kid I think I wanted to be him. I have always liked trivia. But I have never been all that observant. I think that is one reason why I like reading books, because I am always surprised by plots twists that most people have already figured out.
I have been in a reading malaise the last couple weeks. I have been reading a ton, but bouncing all over the place trying to find something that really interests me. The Harry Potter books have been recently added to my public library on audiobook so I decided to check them out. I have read the book, especially the early ones, several times. But other than the 5th book, I do not think I have listened to any of the books.
I remember really liking Jim Dale as a narrator and looked forward to the book. The Chamber of Secrets was just the first book to come up on the waiting list, but it has always been my least favorite of the series. There is nothing bad about the book, but it also seems to be the least fleshed out. It is still clearly a younger children’s book. It was book three and then even more book four that really took a turn darker and more teen in orientation.
Summary: A Thriller that most of the world has already read or watched.
I am way behind on this trend. This has been made into two different movies and was the most sold book in the US in 2010. It is among the top 20 most sold books ever and there have been at least 30 millions copies sold in 44 languages if Wikipedia is to be believed. I am not going to say anything about this that has not been said better by a number of other (better) reviewers.
I have been reluctant to read this book. Not because it is popular, I read popular books all the time. But because it has a reputation for being sexually violent book. Eventually after a number of people recommended it to me over the past couple years and enough people that I know (and that know my reading habits) told me that I would enjoy it and it was not over the line for my reading history, I picked it up at the library.
