Tolkien on the Kindle

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

I use an iPad rather than a Kindle, but I have all four available Tolkien books on it. At home, I will certainly sit down with the physical books, but when we were in Florida for most of October, I was glad I could have all the books with me, and more, without needing to haul them in my luggage. The iPad will draw more power than devices like the Kindle because of the different display type (which can be read in the dark), but unless I have the contrast cranked up to the brightest it gets (which isn't necessary), I can go a solid ten hours or more of constant use before I need to recharge. It would go longer if I turned off a number of wifi features. Not as good as the e-paper low power draw, but not bad for something that can do nigh onto everything my laptop does.

I think that while I still enjoy the tactile experience of a physical book, I also enjoy some of the conveniences of an ebook. The ability to adjust the font size and contrast is a big benefit to someone as nearsighted as I am. And not needing a reading lamp is a plus for me. But everyone will gravitate to what they enjoy most, of course.

[Inziladun]

You can always look to me for Luddite tendencies, but I don't think I'll be getting an Kindle, or any sort of e-reader.
For one thing, I don't travel much, and when I do, it's only for a few days at most. It isn't difficult to stick my "destructible" Tolkien paperbacks in my luggage, and they don't take up much room. The expensive hardbacks stay on the bookshelf nearly all the time.
It looks to me as if the e-reader thing is the wave of the future, however. I've successfully resisted Facebook, Twitter, ipads, and smartphones, though, so I'm confident I'll withstand this also.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Kindles, as a whole seem to be wondrous devices, and I think that I would take great use out of one. Personally, I do love my books. And if a few trees die for my reading pleasure, too bad, they will plant more. Don't take me wrong, I love trees, but books are an important cornerstone to society. Physical books require trees to die. . . . Anyway, back to my point, I think that a Kindle would be very handy for travel. I can take as many as ten books on a trip. In fact, when Lauri and I went to Britain this spring I packed probably seven books (and lugged them on and off trains and walked through cities with them). Though this may have built my arm strength, I hardly think it was good for my back. If I had a Kindle I would have a lot less luggage when I travel and I would be able to take so many more books with me. When I was travelling in October the man sitting next to me on one of my flights showed me his Kindle and he had so many books on it. It was fascinating.

I think that Kindles and other e-books are a great idea, and though I do not believe that physical books should be replaced by digital copies, I do think that digital libraries are both practical and useful for frequent travellers.

[Mister Underhill]

Ah, Ibrin, now we're getting somewhere! How about the actual quality of the e-editions? I've seen some pretty sloppy conversions of just regular books, like someone ran it through an automated program and human eyes never bothered to take a look at what was spat out.

My concern is that Tolkien, with all the diacriticals, maps, runes, drawings, and unusual formatting for poetry, tales of years, genealogies, and so forth could be a big fat mess unless HarperCollins put some effort into the conversion.

Inzila, I don't consider myself a Luddite, though I'm definitely a technological late-adopter and even then I will only get a gadget if I think I really need it. I can't justify a smart-phone, for instance, even though I want one. I probably wouldn't have even splurged on a Kindle myself, but I'll take one as a gift.

TGEW, I'm like you -- I seem to always pack a small library for trips. This will be a very cool alternative to that. Plus I'm the type who can find a few minutes to spend reading just about anywhere -- reception areas, check-out lines, whatever.

I agree about physical books. A Kindle can't really furnish a room, and it will be a sad day if, as some predict, brick-and-mortar bookstores go the way of, well, music stores.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I don't (yet) have an electronic reading device, but I think the aspect that would most appeal to me for research would be the possibility of searching for specific words. That would have made my work on the Middle-earth music book much easier!

[Mister Underhill]

Searchable text would definitely be a boon for us Tolkien nuts, Esty.

It looks like I will have to be the trailblazer here and report back. The interesting thing is that I'm already in the midst of my first re-read of LotR in years. I just hit "The Breaking of the Fellowship" last night. And coincidentally I'm planning a trip out of town on the eighth, so having LotR electronically available will work out nicely.

I've downloaded the available samples for LotR, UT, Sil, and TH. The early pages of UT are probably the most diacritical heavy of the lot, and they look pretty squared away in the samples, so fingers crossed they've done a good job on the conversions.

I'll pick up LotR in the next day or two and report how it turns out.

[davem]

This review of the Kindle ed. is not very positive:

This review is about the Kindle version of LoTR, and doesn't have much to say about the quality of the book - though the fact that this is probably the sixth edition I've bought probably tells you what I think about that.
The disappointment here is the huge number of misprints in this edition. It's especially galling when you read the forward about how much care was taken to produce a definitive text for the anniversary edition.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RVDWA...wasThisHelpful

I suppose anyone who is interested could download the Kindle program to their PC http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.h...pf_rd_i=468294 & then try the sample chapters.

I've seen e versions of the texts (TH, LotR, Sil, CoH ) before (a friend of Kate's who's blind had access to (legal) scanning software & I had a chance to access them.) The e-texts are fine for searching the text, but I certainly wouldn't want to read the story in that format.

[LadyBrooke]

I got a Kindle for Christmas too. My thoughts:

Positives
1.) So far I only have one Tolkien books on my Kindle (LotR) because I'm still waiting for my parents to pay me back some money they borrowed. And here's the biggest reason why I'm glad I have LotR on my Kindle; I live in the middle of nowhere and ride the school bus. My driveway is a quarter mile long and because of the classes I'm taking this semester I have six novels to read this semester at least three of which have to carted around each day including LotR. Then I have my college econ book and my European history textbook. There is no way I could carry that much every day and still be able to fit three to a seat on the bus and not break my back.

2.) There are a lot of free books available. I'm a poor high school student and no matter how much I wish I could afford to buy every book I want, I can't. I love a lot of classics and they're free. Plus you can catch deals on new books when Amazon runs promotions.

3.)Surprisingly there is a map in LotR.

4.) Also surprisingly you can turn on text to speech in it. While I hate the voice and it does pronounce some of the words Tolkien made up wrong, it is nice to be able to do something else and hear it in the background. Plus its cheaper then buying the actual cds of it being read.

Negatives
1.) The prices. I hate paying the same price for the Kindle version of LotR that I do the printed.

2.) The books I really wish were on the Kindle (H.O.M.E) aren't. Out of all the books, these are the ones that I could see myself using the highlighting and search features the most in because I hate going through the entirety of say Wars of the Jewels to find one small sentence about a feature of Elven life. Plus the publishers could (and hopefully would) be able to sell these books for less then the $19 dollars some of them go for now.

[davem]

I'm very close to buying one - I love the idea of so many out of copyright books being available free of charge - even some which as far as I know are out of print & which I've wanted to read for a long while (like John Leland's Itinerary - free on the Open Library site http://openlibrary.org/ ). Plus, you can download the free Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/ program, which will let you organise & most importantly convert any ebook file type (including pdf's) into the .mobi type that the Kindle reads.

Also, you can get this dead cool 'Tolkienesque' cover for it from Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...pf_rd_i=468294

However, a couple of negatives - first, according to the Kindle agreement on the Amazon site you don't actually 'own' the Kindle books you buy - you just purchase a licence to read them on the device. Which means they can be deleted whenever Amazon decide, that you can't sell them on or give them away (as you can with a real book), & finally reading the one star reviews it seems that some people are having major problems with the screen packing up, the thing re-starting or freezing & having to be replaced - one guy on his fourth replacement. Looking into it, the problem seems to be to do with the cheaper Amazon own brand case (the one without the built in light). Oh, & it seems that the Kindle software allows Amazon to read the whole contents of your Kindle every time you connect to the network - so watch what you put on there

There - all that with only one slight Tolkien reference to avoid being completely off topic!

I may take the leap soon - & I may put some Tolkien on there to try the experience, but I still can't help feel that out of all the books out there Tolkien's may be least 'right' for the format...

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

2.) The books I really wish were on the Kindle (H.O.M.E) aren't. Out of all the books, these are the ones that I could see myself using the highlighting and search features the most in because I hate going through the entirety of say Wars of the Jewels to find one small sentence about a feature of Elven life. Plus the publishers could (and hopefully would) be able to sell these books for less then the $19 dollars some of them go for now.

They will all be issued by the end of October - I ordered my kindle today and looked... might not get them all instantly as I have them all in paperback but I probably will in time.... ideally I think I will end up with a set of Tolkien hardbacks for home and Kindle versions for having on hand at all times!!! I do love and respect books but my some books are as essential as toothbrushes and used so constantly that they last about as long!!! My third paperback Lotr is beginning to disintegrate...