e-reader – Life In A Word

Adventures in Library-ing

Early each calendar year I look back on the previous year’s expenses to discover areas in the family budget where I can trim. The price of food, gasoline, and other “have-to-have’s” always seems to go up, so I search for items that are not so “have-to-have” to balance things out. A good example is books. I read two or three a month on my Kindle e-Reader. At say, $14.99 a pop that’d be over $500 I could carve out of annual expenses… if I could only get those same books at no cost. But where-oh-where could I possibly find books for free?

You bibliophiles out there (and the rest of you, for that matter) are laughing as I’m about to describe going to the library as an adventure, but here’s the thing. I’ve been e-reading on my Amazon Kindle for so long that the idea of holding a book and turning its pages – let alone checking one out of a library – has become, well, novel again.

I wouldn’t have reached this crossroads were it not for a particular book. Amazon described Frank Delaney’s The Matchmaker of Kenmare just the way I’d hope: an intriguing WWII-era work of fiction. So I went to “try a sample”(where Amazon allows you the first several pages of the book for free) and – horror of horrors – it’s not available in digital format. WHAT? No e-Version? You’re saying, Amazon, I have to shell out $24.99 for the hard copy if I want to read it?

A book for $10 doesn’t make me pause but one for $25 sure does. Hence began my library adventure. The last time I spent meaningful time in one was in college (and I don’t want to tell you how long ago that was). The library experience is probably different in every way now, starting online. When I “checked out” my library’s website (ha) I discovered I could get a digital library card almost immediately. With the digital card I could reserve and check out books from the comfort of my home computer. Hurrah, free books here I come!

Oh how I wish it were that easy. Turns out, my library’s software is not compatible with an Amazon Kindle. No digital books for me, sigh. And besides, physical books – like the one I wanted – require a physical library card. So with no other excuse to avoid it, I got in my car and headed off to my local branch. Guess what? Parking at the library is free. Entering the building itself is free (no cover charge!). Getting a library card is free. Even the library bathrooms can be used without having to check out a book first.

Yes, this is my tax dollars at work of course, but the illusion of all this free stuff is fun while it lasts. And boy howdy, libraries aren’t what they used to be. Ours has all these rooms and services and people, as if the surrounding shelves of books are merely a carry-over from past generations. You can sit down to public-access computers, attend a lecture, host a meeting, rent DVDs, buy coffee, and even spend time in a room of books dedicated to the history of the surrounding county. Maybe this is all review for you, but it’s a little overwhelming for an e-reader who’s navigating libraries of the new world.

Our secondary (and ancient) library branch

There’s more to this adventure in library-ing than I have time for today (including the over-the-river and through-the woods visit to a different and decidedly ancient branch in my library’s network), but let’s close the book on this topic with a “laugh’s on me” conclusion. As I was researching for this blog post I went to the Amazon page for my Matchmaker… novel again. Go figure; it’s available in digital format after all, and even in paperback. How did I miss these options the first time around? Must be the library gods telling me to go old-school and get a physical copy for free.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #4

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Click the photo for a more detailed view

As Notre-Dame de Paris rises slowly from its foundations, I often picture a congregation of parishioners down there at ground level, sitting quietly in the pews. Startled by the snap of a LEGO block above them, they gaze skyward, see my giant fingers, and wonder, “OMG is that the hand of God?” No, no, little ones, it’s just Dave, working through Bag 7… of 34 bags of pieces.

Today almost included the long-awaited moment where I realize with mock horror that LEGO left a piece out of one of their model sets. I churned through my piles of pieces, endlessly stirring and turning them over and over, but to no avail. A piece was missing, and that sick-to-your-stomach feeling settled in deep, the way you reach the end of a jigsaw puzzle minus one piece. Then, to my utter amazement, I spied it out of the corner of my eye. The tiny traitor was still in Bag 7. Wow. Good thing that plastic bag wasn’t already relegated to the trash, huh?

On the other hand, with more excitement than it probably deserved, today we began construction of Notre-Dame’s signature flying buttresses. At first I was disappointed in the LEGO pieces, because I thought they looked a little, well, “underfed”. Then I remembered; we’re only beginning the structure of the buttresses. The finished look you see on the outside of Notre-Dame is supported by a complex of arches and columns well below it. Here I thought my “God’s hand” was already working at roof level but in fact, we’re only about halfway up the structure.

Running build time: 3 hrs. 32 min.

Total leftover pieces: 16

A Tale of Unwell Words

The symptoms started ten days ago. I was lying in bed, beginning Chapter 42 of Ruta Sepetys’ captivating WWII novel Between Shades of Gray when suddenly, a lower-case “a” popped out through my e-reader’s glass and just sat there on the surface. I casually brushed it away. Not two pages later, an entire “the” surfaced and slid sickeningly down the screen. I flicked that away too. But then a whole sentence coughed up and I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer. A terrible thought entered my mind. Crud, my Kindle has COVID.

It’s not like my e-reader hasn’t been sick before. One time it suffered a full reboot during the tense climax of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train. Another time it simply powered down amid the juicy bits of an Alessandra Torre novel (which turned out to be a warning to me to stop wasting time on trashy novels). But this recent bout had the makings of something more serious. My Kindle has always been perfectly healthy. I don’t even put a cover on it. As for spitting up words and sentences? Never.

Just to be safe, I got out of bed and quarantined my reader to the bathroom, closing the door softly behind me. I didn’t want any of the real books on my bedroom shelves to get infected. Early the next morning, I went to open the door to check on my little e-guy. Only I couldn’t because the door wouldn’t budge. I leaned in with a shoulder and it finally gave in, just enough so I could slip through. Imagine my disgust when I saw the mess before me. My e-reader barfed up at least four dozen books, piled all over the floor. The poor thing’s screen looked paler than a Brightness of 2 and was uncomfortably warm to the touch. The only image it could display was an Amazon Smile (encouraging, until I realized I was looking at it upside down).

It was time for professional help. I threw on my clothes, tucked my e-reader-patient into the leftover cover of a previous model, and headed to the car. But where to go? Of course! A brick-and-mortar Amazon Bookstore! As soon as I walked through the door, an eager young lady (right-side-up Amazon smile on her nametag) came forward to assist. I choked back tears as I explained the misery of the night before. She opened my Kindle’s cover gently, took a knowing peek at the dimming screen, and said, “Okay, let me just confirm your extended warranty.” I told her she wouldn’t find one, to which her whole demeanor changed. Suddenly she didn’t want to help me at all, and backed away slowly. I felt so… so… uninsured. Last resort, she pointed me to a nearby display of gleaming new Kindles and said, “You’d be better off junking yours and buying a new one.”

I got out of there as fast as I could. I mean, what sort of cruel, heartless person works at Amazon? Junk mine and buy a new one? Sorry, but all I could picture was my little e-reader flung carelessly into their alley dumpster; bookworms crawling all over it. It felt like a scene from a modern-day Fahrenheit 451.

Without insurance, my only other option was the free-clinic library down the street. A librarian is more of a specialist than an Amazon Bookstore employee anyway. But the regulations on the library’s front door made me pause. Yes, I keep my Kindle socially distanced from real books. Yes, my Kindle wears a mask outside of the house (even if it’s an older cover). But was my e-reader vaccinated? Heck if I knew. I couldn’t tell you the last time it went through a software update. So I could see how this was going to go down already. The librarian would check Settings and inform me my Kindle was several versions behind on its operating system. There’d be nothing she could do for me. Dejected, I drove back to my house.

It’s been a few days now and my Kindle is still listless (er, book-less) but at least it seems more chipper after a dose of power. It’s keeping down a few partial reads I’ve uploaded through “try a free sample”, as well as a Clippings doc in its library. But don’t assume we’re out of the woods just yet. I’m not ready to purchase any new books after that nightmare in the bathroom. I also neglected to mention my Kindle threw up its dictionary the night after I went to Amazon. Talk about a loss for words. I mean, dictionaries are bigger than almost any book, and a rich indulgence besides. There’s nothing left in your stomach after you’ve lost your dictionary.

I’m gonna go glass-half-full here and say my little e-guy’s gonna be okay. He’s up to a Brightness of 4 today. He’s holding a fairly focused, slightly bold version of the Palatino font. He retained my Ruta Sepetys novel and I’ve read some chapters without further hurled words. I even cleaned up the mess of “read” books he left behind in the bathroom. So learn from my experience, will you? Use an e-reader cover. Get a fresh software update. Keep the power boosted. And for gosh sakes; keep a reasonable distance from the hardcovers and paperbacks. E-readers are more susceptible to the bad stuff than you think.

Note: This is a work of fiction, pure and simple. Find nothing between the lines.

Lego Grand Piano – Update #1

The concert has begun! (my hesitant warm-up was captured in the post Let’s Make Music!) Bag #1 – of 21 bags of pieces – assembles to this rather odd shape. Imagine the keyboard running down the left side of the light-colored section, top left to bottom right.

There were a couple of tense moments when I couldn’t find the right pieces because I’d already assembled them in the wrong places. Unassemble. Redo. All good.

Running build time: 60 minutes. Musical accompaniment: Dvorak’s New World Symphony. Leftover pieces: 1

Tingling the Spines

When Amazon began opening bookstores a couple years back, I wondered why an uber-successful online enterprise would turn to brick-and-mortar, especially after sales of more than fifty million Kindle e-readers through its website. Turns out Amazon’s walk-in shopping experience is worth the walls. It’s retail at its most relaxing – and it has a place in the equation. As CEO Miriam Sontz (Powell’s Books in Portland, OR) puts it, “something special occurs in a physical bookstore that is not replicable online”.

I’ve been to an Amazon Books just once (fewer than twenty locations in the U.S.), but vividly remember what made my shopping experience so compelling. First, the manager greeted me with, “Welcome to Amazon, and what was the last book you read?” When I told him (Kristin Hannah’s “The Nightingale”), he replied, “Oh, that’s a wonderful book. Wasn’t it so interesting to read an account of the war in France instead of in Germany? Have a look on Aisle 3 – you’ll find some other great WWII fiction.”

As I indeed had a look on Aisle 3, the manager moved on to other customers, prompting similar conversations. Suddenly I realized the whole interaction was intentional. Personalize/focus my shopping experience by discovering what I’m reading. Pique my curiosity by allowing me to overhear what other people are reading. A + B = Increase the odds I’ll make a purchase.

What really sets Amazon Books apart from the others is the displays. The books are laid flat and on angled shelves, so you’re looking right at the cover as you’re standing in the aisle. Below each book, an easy-to-read card delivers a crisp synopsis of the book, as well as a smattering of the ratings and reviews you’d find online. Think about that tactic. You peruse the entire colorful cover. You take in the book title and author without cocking your head ninety degrees to the left or right. And you know a little about the book (and whether it’s a recommended read) without turning a single page. It’s almost like those moments in front of paintings in an art gallery. “Displayed flat” sounds counter-intuitive in the per-square-foot world of retail, but damned if it isn’t a great way to shop.

Amazon isn’t the only spine-tingler these days. In a truly baffling trend, interior decorators and collectors are shelving books with the spines… facing the walls. That’s right: take a book off the shelf, turn it all the way around, and place it back on the shelf. Why? Because “eggshell” – the typical color of the pages themselves – is aesthetically pleasing, instead of that rainbow of bright, colorful book jackets. The linen texture is uniform, blending more confidently with whatever else is going on in the room. Really? Is this Feng shui on steroids?

Alas, as the Wall Street Journal reports, backward-bookshelving is no fad, . You can purchase books on the cheap specifically for this approach. Check out the goods at booksbythefoot.com. BBTF sells you reclaimed books, covers removed, of various shapes and sizes, and yes; purchased “by the foot”. You can even purchase your tomes in a color scheme (i.e. “burgundy wine” or “earth tones”). Arrange them any way you want: facing in or out, flat or standing up, in piles or as standalones. Any way you stack ’em they’ll look fully nondescript, suggesting you’d never go so far as to – gasp! – read them. As Chuck Roberts (BBTF President) puts it, “Some people don’t want to have the literature as a distraction… they want books as objects on a shelf.” You mean, like lobotomizing the intellectual meaning from the aesthetic? Weird, just weird.

Or maybe not. Now that I think about it, I own the complete works of Charles Dickens, painstakingly acquired years ago, one book at a time through the Franklin Press or some other mail-order rag. My Dickens collection (above photo) sits neatly on the shelf gathering dust, just waiting for me to crack the first spine or read the first page. But no matter; don’t they look pretty?

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

certitude

Several posts ago I told the woe-is-me story of leaving my Kindle e-reader in an airplane seat pocket. Much to my chagrin I wrote, this was the second time in two years; exiting a plane without my prized portable technological wonder. In the post I made two predictions about the eventual destination of my e-reader. The first was into the hands of the Delta employee who cleans the plane. The second was into the hands of the next traveler who reached into my seat pocket (“Congratulations! You’ve just won an Amazon Kindle!”) So one or the other of these scenarios was the end of the line for my e-reader. I drew those conclusions as if they were fact. I wrote with certitude.

Here then, “the rest of the story”. On the eventual destination of my e-reader I was wrong – way wrong. In what I would label a small miracle, my Kindle ended up… in my own hands. The perseverance of DALLIRT (Delta Air Lines Lost Item Recovery Team) won the day. Perhaps my Kindle was found immediately or perhaps it traveled on to one or more exotic destinations. Either way, a human took pity on me and made things right. Imagine my disbelief (and chagrin) when I received an email from DALLFC (Delta Air Lines Lost & Found Central) that began “Dear David Wilson: We are happy to tell you that we have located an item that closely matches the description of your reported lost item”. Twelve dollars and seventy-seven cents of postage and three days later, my Kindle was dropped on my doorstep. No damage. No note. Everything intact.

I must own up to one other aspect of this story. A day or two after I filed the lost item report with Delta, I promptly logged onto Amazon and bought another Kindle. That’s right; before I gave Delta’s process a chance, I purchased a new e-reader. I even upgraded to a newer version (“Voyage” – oooo). That’s certitude in a nutshell. Zero faith in the alternative.

14 - certitude

I suppose the lost dollars to Amazon represents my penance (another good word for my blog) for not trusting a process designed to correct my mistakes. But to further cleanse my guilt, I sent DALCC (Delta Air Lines Customer Care) a glowing email, complimenting them on their lost item recovery process. And they wrote right back, beginning with the following line: “It’s so easy to leave something important behind while flying”. Gee, thanks for making me feel better. Except I did it twice.

My son will probably inherit my recovered Kindle. Yes I should probably keep it because things happen in threes but I’ll take my chances. I’ll trust the process. And I’ll certainly consider Delta Airlines the next time I fly.

chagrin

A year or so ago I left my Kindle e-reader in an airplane seat pocket when I deplaned. Those seat pockets contain just a few things – an in-flight magazine, a plastic card that describes safety features, and the timeless airsickness bag. So there’s plenty of room to lose an e-reader in there. Does that sound like an excuse? Well imagine my utter frustration and disappointment – my chagrin – when I did it AGAIN this past weekend. Same drill. I stowed my Kindle in the seat pocket along with some magazines before takeoff. I did all of my reading in-flight. And then in my haste to deplane, I took the magazines and left the Kindle.

There’s an interesting dance you do when you realize you’ve left something on an airplane. It typically begins when you’re unpacking your bags. You take out the clothes and bathroom stuff and then you get down to the little things. About that time you start to wonder when a particular item will surface. Laptop – check. iPod – check. Kindle – oh no, not again. You double-check (okay, you triple-check) your suitcase and your carry-on. You tear your car apart to make sure it didn’t slip between the seats on the way home. And then after you’ve bounced around the bedroom cursing at the walls, you resign yourself to the fact that your Kindle is now in the hands of Delta Airlines. Or one of its enterprising employees.

Delta has a promising process to claim “lost articles”. You go on-line and fill out an official-looking form. You describe the lost article to prove it’s yours. And then you wait. And wait. After three days I got an email reply. It started positively enough. “Dear Mr. Wilson: The search continues… “. But the paragraphs that followed are collectively referred to as “form letter”. It was painfully obvious Delta was not going to drop everything to unearth my Kindle.

My theory on the current whereabouts of my Kindle has two endings. In one, a Delta “cleaner” finds my Kindle and pockets it; or gifts it to his/her child; or stocks the nice little black market he/she has going on the side. In the other, Delta doesn’t have enough employees to clean the seat pockets after every trip so my Kindle just continues on to the next destination. To the person who got my seat after me, I say “you’re welcome”.

Here’s a great invention inspired by my Kindle-down experience. It’s a wireless “leash”: a band that goes around your wrist with a removable Velcro button that can be attached to small personal items (i.e. Kindles). When the wrist band and the Velcro button are far enough apart, the band beeps and you realize something is not right. Not bad, huh?

In my defense for having abandoned my Kindle twice, a laptop is too big for the seat pocket so at least a portion would be visible. iPods and mobile phones are too small to risk putting in the seat pocket and forgetting about. But a Kindle? The perfect size. Small enough and flat enough to disappear into seat pocket oblivion.

This story will have an ending, happy or not. Remember, according to Delta, “the search continues”…