Having finally swallowed my pride I’ve started using a Kindle. I use it mostly for reading up on classics I hadn’t got around to yet. I also find it useful for short reading sessions, especially poems.
And it gives me a fresh sense of stuff I’ve read many times before. I find reading Buk’s poems via the Kindle lets me see them from a new angle. Maybe I know the paper books too well, notes and all. Reading Buk afresh, on the Kindle, has let me discover poems I’ve overlooked before.
There is something of worth here. A Kindle is, in a way, more like the spoken word than text on paper. It makes reading something slightly different. More mobile perhaps. More off the cuff. Spontanious. I don’t think it will ever replace paper, but it gives you the possibility of reading text in a different way. One example: Now I can sit in a pitch dark room and read on the Kindle Paperwhite. You can’t do that with paper. Another important thing is that it is so damn easy to sample books via an e-reader. I like the local bookshop as much as anyone, but its simply easier to browse books lounging in your “La-Z-Boy with a tony cocktail in your hand”. And finding things long out of print is possible too. Very nice. And all of the classics are available without having to put up new shelves in your lounge. Collected works taking a minimum of space is nice. If Buk had been alive I could even slip Proust under his door now... ;-)
Anyway, after the newness of the medium wears away you discover the same old thing: The main problem is getting hold of good content to put on the hardware. “Shakespeare’s Complete Works” isn’t simply his Complete Works. A good version has to be easy to browse and search through. And like the three important rules in real estate, what’s most important with an e-book is: “proof reading – proof reading – proof reading.” Editing is just as important as it ever was.
So I thought I’d start a thread to share good e-book reads. Preferably free ones. Here’s a recent find:
– Fernando Pessoa: “35 Sonnets”
This is a typical Kindle-find. I’d heard the name Pessoa on and off for decades, but never got round to looking him up. But snap-crackle-pop: there were his 35 Sonnets on my Kindle - for free. Sonnets are not my usual thing, but something here drew me in. I think it’s the sense of lucidness here, combined with hint of something less lucid, that got me hooked. Yeah. Here’s a sample:
XIV.
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?
Why what it calls «worth» does the captive soul
Add to the small and from the large detract?
- Pessoa, Fernando António Nogueira. 35 Sonnets - Kindle Edition.
So: What are you e-reading, my e-reader really needs to know...
And it gives me a fresh sense of stuff I’ve read many times before. I find reading Buk’s poems via the Kindle lets me see them from a new angle. Maybe I know the paper books too well, notes and all. Reading Buk afresh, on the Kindle, has let me discover poems I’ve overlooked before.
There is something of worth here. A Kindle is, in a way, more like the spoken word than text on paper. It makes reading something slightly different. More mobile perhaps. More off the cuff. Spontanious. I don’t think it will ever replace paper, but it gives you the possibility of reading text in a different way. One example: Now I can sit in a pitch dark room and read on the Kindle Paperwhite. You can’t do that with paper. Another important thing is that it is so damn easy to sample books via an e-reader. I like the local bookshop as much as anyone, but its simply easier to browse books lounging in your “La-Z-Boy with a tony cocktail in your hand”. And finding things long out of print is possible too. Very nice. And all of the classics are available without having to put up new shelves in your lounge. Collected works taking a minimum of space is nice. If Buk had been alive I could even slip Proust under his door now... ;-)
Anyway, after the newness of the medium wears away you discover the same old thing: The main problem is getting hold of good content to put on the hardware. “Shakespeare’s Complete Works” isn’t simply his Complete Works. A good version has to be easy to browse and search through. And like the three important rules in real estate, what’s most important with an e-book is: “proof reading – proof reading – proof reading.” Editing is just as important as it ever was.
So I thought I’d start a thread to share good e-book reads. Preferably free ones. Here’s a recent find:
– Fernando Pessoa: “35 Sonnets”
This is a typical Kindle-find. I’d heard the name Pessoa on and off for decades, but never got round to looking him up. But snap-crackle-pop: there were his 35 Sonnets on my Kindle - for free. Sonnets are not my usual thing, but something here drew me in. I think it’s the sense of lucidness here, combined with hint of something less lucid, that got me hooked. Yeah. Here’s a sample:
XIV.
We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?
Why what it calls «worth» does the captive soul
Add to the small and from the large detract?
So, put of light's love wishing it night's stretch,
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.
- Pessoa, Fernando António Nogueira. 35 Sonnets - Kindle Edition.
So: What are you e-reading, my e-reader really needs to know...
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