{"id":2833,"date":"2008-11-02T12:25:07","date_gmt":"2008-11-02T16:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2833"},"modified":"2008-11-02T12:25:07","modified_gmt":"2008-11-02T16:25:07","slug":"me-and-e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/me-and-e","title":{"rendered":"Me and e"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virginia Heffernan has a nice piece in the NYT Magazine<\/em> about Amazon’s Kindle e-reader<\/a>. The biggest complaints I hear about the Kindle from tech geeks is that it needs to have an color touchscreen with a high-powered browser, cellphone service and maybe a camera. Which is to say, they miss the point. It’s an e-reader, not an e-everything. I agree with them, of course, when they say it’s a butt-ugly piece of design.<\/p>\n

Ms. Heffernan does a good job of explaining how the Kindle’s “limitations” are what define it as a great device for . . . reading books. Which I do a lot of.<\/p>\n

In short, you get absorbed when reading on the Kindle. You lose hours to reading novels in one sitting. You sit up straighter, energized by new ideas and new universes. You nod off, periodically, infatuated or entranced or spent. And yet the slight connection to the Web still permits the (false, probably, but nonetheless reassuring) sense that if the apocalypse came while you were shut away somewhere reading, the machine would get the news from Amazon.com and find a way to let you know. Anything short of that, though, the Kindle leaves you alone.<\/p>\n

And alone is where I want to be, for now. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bliss. Emerge from the subway or alight from a flight, and the Kindle has no news for you. No missed calls. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ready only to be read. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like a good exercise machine that mysteriously incentivizes the pursuit of muscle pain while still making you feel cared for. The Kindle makes you want to read, and read hard, and read prolifically. It eventually makes me aware that, compared with reading a lush, inky book, checking e-mail is boring, workaday and lame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The only thing she doesn’t touch upon is what I consider the Kindle’s game-changing aspect: the ability to download free samples of e-books rather than having to buy the whole thing. There are a number of books that I’ve decided not to buy after checking out their first 30 or so pages on the Kindle. In some cases, I decided I simply didn’t like the book enough to buy it; in others, I’ve passed because the formatting of that particular book hasn’t looked good on the device, or because a translation isn’t the one I wanted (Amazon’s Kindle store is a little hinky when it comes to books in translation).<\/p>\n

Give it a read<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Virginia Heffernan has a nice piece in the NYT Magazine about Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. The biggest complaints I hear about the Kindle from tech geeks is that it needs to have an color touchscreen with a high-powered browser, cellphone service and maybe a camera. Which is to say, they miss the point. It’s an e-reader, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Me and e”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46,4],"tags":[127,420],"class_list":["post-2833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-literature","tag-kindle","tag-virginia-heffernan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-JH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9840,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-182-virginia-heffernan","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":0},"title":"Episode 182 – Virginia Heffernan","author":"Gil","date":"August 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show #182: Virginia Heffernan \"It's very, very weird to do something along with three billion other people.\" Cultural critic Virginia Heffernan joins the show to talk about her new book, Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art (Simon & Schuster)! We talk about what's behind the screen, why\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/29097624096_8e6b5311df_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/29097624096_8e6b5311df_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/29097624096_8e6b5311df_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/29097624096_8e6b5311df_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/29097624096_8e6b5311df_o.jpg?fit=1200%2C970&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2023,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/kin-and-kindle","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":1},"title":"Kin and Kindle","author":"Gil","date":"April 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Once upon a time, Robin Williams said, \"Cocaine is God's way of telling you that you have too much money.\" This week I bought a Kindle. It costs $399 (but I had $150 in gift-credit, so I pretended it only cost $250), can download books wirelessly from Amazon, is perfectly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000FI73MA","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1787,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-nov-23-2007","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Nov. 23, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"November 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's time for some post-Thanksgiving links, dear readers! Happy Black Friday! Go buy me stuff! The NYTimes reviews its new building. * * * Good thing they didn't get Frank Gehry to design it! * * * I'm sad that my personal fave was nowhere near gaudy enough to win\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2104,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/kindle-part-1","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":3},"title":"Kindle, part 1","author":"Gil","date":"June 18, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Ahoy, dear readers! I'm awfully busy at the BIO show in San Diego. But rather than leave you without your daily dose of my ramblings, I thought I'd post this e-mail I wrote a pal in response to his query of, \"How do you like your Kindle?\" I have more\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000FI73MA","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10086,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-197-the-guest-list-2016","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":4},"title":"Episode 197 – The Guest List 2016","author":"Gil","date":"December 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show: The Guest List 2016 It's time for our year-end Virtual Memories Show\u00a0tradition: The Guest List! I reached out to 2016's pod-guests and asked them about the favorite book(s) they read in the past year, as well as the books or authors they're hoping to read in 2017!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Comic books & strips"","block_context":{"text":"Comic books & strips","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature\/comics"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/Scribners-620x504.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/Scribners-620x504.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/Scribners-620x504.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2876,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/cant-start-a-fire","url_meta":{"origin":2833,"position":5},"title":"Can’t start a fire","author":"Gil","date":"November 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I meandered around a Borders store for the second time in a week! This time, my wife was getting her hair cut on Saturday afternoon, and I figured I could spend a little time among the books to feel guiltier about not participating in National Novel-Writing Month. (I really meant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2834,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2833\/revisions\/2834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}