Kindlemania!

There was a surprise Kindle 3 under the tree this Christmas. I’ve built it a little protective sleeve.

There have been lots of reviews and reports about K3 on other walking blogs, but here’s the stuff I care about.

1. The device is astonishingly compact, light and thin—far easier to carry and pack than a single book, let alone many.
2. Its battery life is weeks and weeks.
3. It holds enough reading material for a lifetime of vacations, business trips, waits at doctors’ offices, and afternoon tea-sipping. (Not to mention those tooth-brushing sessions during which turning the pages of a self-closing book with one hand while manipulating a vibrating Oral-B with the other is the closest I get to calisthenics these days.)
4. Downloading is essentially instantaneous—and I really appreciate that you can download your own .pdf documents if you’ve created, say, lists or itineraries or notes for a remote conference call.
5. Prices are fine, though it’s true I rarely quibble over the cost of book I really want.
6. The reading experience is excellent—just like a book, really (Treasure Island, my first download—it’s free—was a treat, as usual)—though I prefer jotting notes (if any) in margins to doing the same thing electronically on a tiny keyboard
7. As yet, no way to borrow library books for Kindle, though our library does lend ebooks for other formats. As a big lib-user, this is a drawback.

The overriding obvious for me is that K3 is an elegant alternative to the book duffel that usually accompanies the family on holiday (one 12x12x24 for each traveler, plus one more—jammed to bursting and weighing like gold ingots—for the books essential for loafing enjoyment), or those two or three tomes dropped heavily into the briefcase. For the constant, voracious reader who often travels with books, it’s a dream. New Zealand? Absolutely. And undoubtedly just about everywhere else.

24 days, 10 hours, 51 minutes, 6 seconds.