Thread: want *huge* books to be available.
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Old 02-13-2009, 01:49 PM   #6
delphidb96
Wizard
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Posts: 2,999
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Citrus Heights, California
Device: TWO Kindle 2s, one each Bookeen Cybook Gen3, Sony PRS-500, Axim X51V
Quote:
Originally Posted by thorn View Post
i can't 'early adopt' the kindle -- even the 2 is out of my price-range for now, and i need to figure out whether there is enough material out there that i do want to read but don't feel i need to be able to bequeath to my nieces/nephews -- which would be pretty much anything i decided to annotate. assuming that right of first sale is *nowhere* on the kindle horizon.. and i want more people using them so there's better support like for the iPod; and it would be really nice if it would cost a bit less money; and i want color (lower priority, but desire's there). these are not complaints. i'm just part of a patient demographic.

as far as deciding how i would use it goes: a large attractor for me would be the availability of 'the really huge books' for kindle. books i've wanted to read for years, but that are just too big to haul with me on my commute. Atlas Shrugged. Dark Sun. (i've read The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but that one too. it's excellent, and others should be able to read it without messing up their backs & shoulders. and fingers. carry that one in your hand walking four miles a day until you're done with it, and believe me you'll feel it.)

is Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace available in a kindle edition? i read that last summer; that would be another one for which the kindle would be the 'killer app'. my back, shoulder and arm got tired, and the book itself got fairly grimy, slightly damp on occasion.. anyway. you get my point. a really large book will be part of a person's life for a *while*, if one's main reading time is during a commute. kindle is not only good for carrying many titles -- it would be even better for carrying around those that weigh a ton. how about the OED and/or a set of encyclopedias, to help us understand what we're reading? maybe even centralized, whispernet access for all to both of those, without each individual even *having* to have their own copy loaded? how expensive could it be for amazon to let kindle owners look up a term or two every couple of weeks?

what do you-all think? the more i think about it, the more it kind of bugs me that my annotated kindle copies would be for my access only, for the duration of my, or amazon's lifetime. i wonder whether one can bequeath one's amazon account. *that's* an interesting thought. username & password in a sealed envelope left with lawyer...

Technically, the "huge" books, when they finally get released, will run on the Kindle. I know this because I recently undertook to scan in "Atlas Shrugged", created an HTML file of it and then converted to Mobipocket (.prc). It's a monster file more than 1.5MB in size but it works just fine on my (original 64MB) Cybook Gen3. And we know that any non-DRM'd mobi ebook will be transferrable to a Kindle. In fact, my copy of "Atlas Shrugged" is one of those "how will it work on ebook reader XXXX" ebooks in my collection. BTW, having AS as an ebook makes it *much* more accessible.

Derek
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