Kindling the fire

Nothing gets my heart beating and my brain wanting more than a good page turner.

The invention of the Kindle — a hand-held device that can download and store virtual books — suggests technology is trying to push printed books aside and make a page-turner into a button-pusher.

Although the Kindle has many advantages, its price and lack of important features should not be overlooked when considering buying a Kindle.

I have to admit though, the quality of the Kindle is outstanding. 

The Kindle has an incredible battery life lasting up to one week with Wi-Fi on, and up to two with Wi-Fi off. Material downloads within minutes, the screen does not glare in the sunlight, and the device is easy to read.

Most people believe that because it is an electronic device the screen would be comparable to a computer, but it's not. The Kindle uses an "electronic-ink" — a display technology designed to mimic ink found on ordinary paper — to make you feel like you are reading a book. 

Like most outstanding electronics, it comes with its flaws. 

The device is not a touch screen which is what attracts most of today's market, does not play video, and is in black and white. Also, e-mail or comment on subscriptions you might like.

Although it has a backup copy of all of your reading material online, the warranty covers only one accident, but after that, once it breaks, it breaks. And you're out $259.

The Kindle is good for heavy readers because it can store a maximum amount of books with a minimum amount of space.

Amazon.com, the official provider and bookstore for the Kindle, prices the device at $259. This is a big turn off for most of Kindle's potential users. When I put that much money into a product, I expect to get my money's worth quickly.

When looking at the Kindle editions of my favorite author, Karen Kingsbury, I found the prices were between 32 percent and 36 percent — with some being as great as 50 percent — cheaper than the print edition. This would save me between $4.20 and $5.40 for each book. However, I would have to buy 48 to 68 books before I would break even between my savings and the cost of a Kindle.

If you are an avid book reader this seems like a great deal, but for the occasional reader, not so much.

With e-reading devices such as the Kindle, book sharing and page turning would be a thing of the past.

My family and I all love reading Karen Kingsbury novels and when we can, we like to share our books with each other; sometimes even shipping to family members on the east coast. 

Kindle does not offer the luxury of being able to share books the way you would if you had a print edition. Unless you trust your friends and are willing to let them take your $259 device for a couple of days, you cannot get around this.

Being a student, I have a lot of expenses and if I can find a way to make studying easier and ease the load on my back then I would consider buying it if the pros highly outweighed the cons.

For a student, Kindle would make it easier to carry textbooks if instructors were to use them. This seems highly unlikely for three main reasons: lack of page numbers, editions of books would need to be available both on the Kindle and in print, and annotating consumes time.

First, and perhaps most importantly, the Kindle has no page numbers; instead they have location numbers, which is completely different.

Because of the lack of page numbers, MLA has not yet developed a proper citation. The closest MLA citation format allows for the format to be used only if the book is difficult to find in print or if the book is only available digitally, which Amazon only provides digital books of best-selling printed books.

Second, the same edition of the book would be needed by all the students. And if the students do have the same edition, the instructors would have to take class time to convert the page numbers to location numbers for the few students who would have a Kindle.

Third, although Kindle allows its readers to annotate and underline, the annotations cannot be read directly without finding where the annotation is and making it visible. This is more time consuming for students to go through their text to see what they felt was important about the text and for instructors to grade the annotations if required.

And because the Kindle is a new technology, within a few months Amazon might be coming out with a new and better version, so you would be stuck with the older version. 

Or you could just get an iPad.

Because each generation is becoming more electronic-dependent, it seems that e-readers such as the Kindle will become the future of reading.

Although I like the idea of having a lot of books at the palm of my hand, I'll stick to my page turners.

Contact Joseph Matter at jmatt4130@students.clark.edu.