I'm On A Reading Jag

It might be slim pickins' here for a while, because suddenly, it turns out I'm on a reading jag.

I'm actually reading, isn't that something? Actual full length books, from start to finish, cover to cover.

Huh? Huh? What do you think of that? I'm on a reading jag, so I can't be sitting here making up stuff of my own.

I happened to be walking through the library, saw an interesting looking book on the shelf, on display, picked it up along with another one and checked them out. I didn't know I'd actually read it, since I've checked out lots of books before that then just came home with me and set there until I finally took them back.

When I'm at the library and happen to see something interesting, I always have the best of intentions to read it. It just so happens, though, that I don't. I get busy, let's say, or I'm tired, or I'm worried about something, or whatever. I hear something from a family member about some problem with a third cousin, whatever, and I can't concentrate on reading.

Another thing about me and reading, is I'd love to read a lot of things, but it's a terrific investment of time to sit and read a book through. Because the others on the stack also look interesting. Then I pick up one of them and get going a chapter or so, the other one gets forgotten, and in the end I haven't read any of them. As it turns out, I've read the first six or seven pages of lots of books!

But this time -- the last few days -- it's been different. It's an out and out reading jag. With me finishing one of the books I brought home from the library. Then, somehow, in the course of looking up various things about it on the internet (it was non fiction), I saw an ad or blurb for some other book I thought I'd be interested in (fiction but with a historical basis), downloaded it to my Kindle, and I'm busy consuming it.

I haven't been all that interested in reading on the Kindle lately. Various reasons. Mostly because I have lots of print books already on hand, not having to put out money, and it seems like I should be reading them. But in this case, I downloaded it, and the jag continues!

I've had these reading jags before. They never last. A week or so, maybe two weeks, my biorhythms will change, I'll get busy again, and it'll be over. But I'll always have the pleasant memory of these days when I was seriously into something I should be doing all the time.

One thing that might make me stop real soon is I have a crick in my neck already from looking down. So I might be back sooner than normal. 

The Right Of Space-Hogging Non-Ebooks To Exist

It's perhaps too early to question the right of the average non-ebook to exist. But sooner or later -- perhaps within months -- I believe we'll be openly asking, "Why should it?"

Is it really worthwhile to have them hogging so much space? When the room they take up could be used for something else, or perhaps just left as an open, inviting space?

A few good books used to be a great look in a house. If you didn't want them to actually read, they made a nice way to decorate your home. There's still something to that -- especially with some kind of old hardbacks or finely bound classics. It can give a warmth or class to your decor. At least that's still true to my eye. But it's not hard to see the day coming when young people might see them and ask, "Why do you have all these space-hogging non-ebooks cluttering your shelf? You could put your games there." And really, if you think of it, it actually is kind of silly, since that was never their real purpose.

I can see it both ways. We have a clash of cultures. Those of us who grew up with non-ebooks -- books -- got used to seeing them around. We might even take one off the shelf and look at it; of course not very often, Mom would want it back on the shelf for its decorative qualities. And I can see it from the point of view of  young people today, that it's just so much dead weight. They're also very dusty. You can get dust bunnies on the tops of books, not good if you have allergies or are a neat freak.

They really are dead weight, and they really do hog space. If you go to a library you can immediately see the problem. If everything in there were converted to digital copies, it'd all fit in your hip pocket. But as non-ebooks on many shelves -- shelf after shelf -- if just one fell over, it'd kill you. On the other hand, if they dumped every ebook in the world on you, you could offer back the taunt, "Is that the best you can do? That was a mosquito -- not quite." The point is it'd be very painless, even humorous.

I've heard of communities moving their libraries across town by passing book after book along a chain of people a mile long. It reminds me of one of those examples like, "If you lined up every Jelly Belly made in a year, it'd stretch halfway to the moon and back." You just don't want to do it very often -- moving books or jelly beans to the moon or across town. But with ebooks, as a contrast, a neighborhood kid could put them in his backpack and take them to the new library on his way home. Easy!

We're living in a transitional time, with things that used to take up an enormous amount of space being reduced to microbes. Now we think in terms of megabytes, gigabytes, and terabytes. The numbers get bigger and bigger -- astronomical -- but they take up no more space than a dime. The transition is going apace, but still, like I said, there are some hold outs trying to take the old world with them.

So what do I foresee the library of the future will look like? It will still need tables and chairs; we still haven't found a foolproof way to reduce our bodies down to a microscopic size. There will still be the help lady at her normal size desk. A drinking fountain for people who get a tickle in their throat. Toilets for doing our business. And of course those Murphy tables for diaper-changing, even in the men's room(!).

What am I missing? Oh yes, the ebooks, which will take up only enough space so they don't get lost! Or enough space so one guy isn't able to steal the entire collection. But let's say someone tried to steal them. They could have it rigged up like money in the bank, to blow up and spray red paint everywhere. Then they could have spare copies of everything in a cabinet and just bring out another copy to replace the first one.

I'm personally doing my part in this great transition, throwing away my non-ebooks, donating them to Goodwill, or, more profitably, grinding them up and selling the paper mulch to bait shops to use as worm bedding. I've freed up so much space I might have to remodel my house and take off a room, meaning I'll then be saving on heating and cooling costs ... and paying less taxes as my house becomes smaller. And look how happy the worms of the world will be..

There's no good reason to hang on to the extraneous junk of the past. Books may have been good for our great-grandparents, but ebooks are good for us.

E Ink Shortage Roils Ebook World

The ebook world -- including the Amazon Kindle and all its imitators -- has been shaken by a sudden drop in the supply of E Ink.

Chalk it up to an unforeseen consequence of too much success too fast. Or maybe greed is at the root of it. They probably should have seen it coming but they didn't. And now we all have to suffer.

Millions of readers have already emptied their shelves of books to make way for ebooks, turning to the little reader devices. Of course they thought all would be well and there would be no problems. But reality always seems to have a way of intruding on everyone's best laid plans.

With the sudden drop in the supply of E Ink, ebooks are already very scarce and the problem threatens to get worse. To deal with the crisis, Amazon.com is now limiting customers to one ebook a month, or two if you can prove you can actually read that fast. No relief is in sight.

Like the supplies of gasoline, where we are used to shortages and price increases supposedly due to continuous retooling for summer and winter blends and other screwing around, it's anyone's guess what the problem is with E Ink production. To be frank, we're not entirely what E Ink even is, but we think they crunch up black chalk and mix it with chemicals. As to how there could be a shortage, when's the last time you shopped for black chalk? It's tough to find.

Speaking for myself, of course I prefer the Kindle to actual books. Shakespeare only wrote one book but it's a thick one! It's a lot easier to cart your whole library around when it weighs nothing. But with the shortage, I'm glad I kept a few old fashioned books, just in case they don't get it resolved by the time I read the 600+ page ebook on the Third Reich I'm currently working on.

Is Amazon Monitoring My Reading Speed?

I had a weird passing thought of paranoia (very mild, since it doesn't really matter) while reading my Kindle.

The weird thought was that everything you do with the Kindle might be reported back to Amazon, who, with no evil intention that I can think of, would be carefully filing away and examining the data.

I eventually would've had this thought no matter what, except when I first got it I became aware that they compile everyone's highlights, so they're able to show you the most popular highlights as you read along. Which I really didn't want to see, so I turned the feature off.

Really, why would I want to see everyone else's highlights? When I buy a book I'm not looking for the most marked up one I can find. I want a clean book! And anyway, everyone else's preferences aren't my own ... If you're sitting drinking a glass of pop you don't want the flavors everyone else is savoring to keep appearing in your mouth. One at a time, let my experience be my experience; my private thoughts don't have to have that social media accompaniment.

But this thought this morning is a little more than the highlights although of the same genus. They could be monitoring everything, like the angle I tilt the thing most often, whether I'm reading in the sunlight or a room, of course what words I look up in the dictionary (charting out everyone's vocabulary skills), and anything else you can think of having to do with reading comprehension, speed, apparent interest (if my speed picks up or slows down, one having to do with breathlessness, the other with savoring), etc., etc.

If the Kindle's tipped up at a certain angle, of course you're reading in bed. Wouldn't it be great to quantify how much reading people do in bed, so they could tie it in with marketing, something to do with mattresses? Or selling nightlights? I don't know what devices there might be in this device, all with their own evil or benign devices. The thing could be tracking my every move. I spilled a tiny bit of seasoned salt on it yesterday and I thought I heard it groan. I'll try pepper today and see if it sneezes.

It probably doesn't matter. The big companies want to know everything about us. And we're complicit if we hold their spies in our hot little hands. We may as well lay back and enjoy it, and just hope it's all going into a big aggregate number and that it's not so specifically individualized.

I might run a magnet over it and see if it cries. I have a big magnet on my refrigerator. I think I got it out of a car motor one time. No, probably not a car motor. Wherever I got it, it's the most powerful magnet I've ever seen. We'll see how the Kindle stands up to this big lug. I'm afraid to put it against appliances -- the refrigerator doesn't seem to mind -- since I don't want them acting up.