Tolkien on the Kindle

[Mister Underhill]

I've been meaning to follow up in this thread with some pics for comparison, but I've been lazy since I got back from my little jaunt out of town. If I can scare up the camera -- it's around here somewheres -- I'll put some up tomorrow, but since the thread is active, I'll post a few quick comments in the meantime.

I did pick up LotR. It's steep at $19 US, but on the other hand this edition seems much improved from the one referred to in some of the older customer reviews, like the one that davem linked. Regretfully I have spotted one typo, an iconic line too:

'I am Uglúk. command.' [sic]

Overall, though, the e-version seems pretty faithful. I'm in III.4: "Treebeard", so I've been through Elvish passages, verse and song, the inscription on the Ring, the drawing of the West-gate of Moria. Flipping to the indices, everything seems in order. As LadyBrooke has mentioned, there is indeed a map, and even the genealogies are five-by-five, so long as you don't mind squinting a bit at the tiny font. I'll post a more complete evaluation when I've gone all the way through, but so far it seems pretty ship-shape.

I must admit, I'm enjoying this gadget even more than I thought I would. Remember when you got your first mp3 player and realized you could carry around an entire music collection in one little gadget? Like that. The e-ink display is not far off from reading a printed page -- much easier on the eyes and just more book-like than a backlit computer screen. As an inveterate browser, I am loving the ability to hear about an interesting book and then be leafing through the first chapter or two literally within seconds.

The privacy concerns that davem notes seem to be, unfortunately, just a fact of modern life. Cameras peep at us from every corner of our environment, and computers quietly catalog our habits and proclivities and distribute them to the appropriate (or inappropriate, as the case may be) advertising lists. Realistically it doesn't seem likely that Amazon is going to recall my LotR anytime soon. Also realistically, if you are the type of person who is really worried about Amazon having control over what you've bought from them, it's easy enough to figure out how to "jailbreak" your files and make copies. Ahem! -- or so I've heard.

Calibre is a great program for managing your e-library and converting formats around -- even if you don't have an e-reader. I will note, however, that conversions -- especially, in my short experience, from PDF to Kindle-friendly MOBI -- can be clunky.

After researching, I bit the bullet and went with the Amazon cover. Unfortunately the device is not truly mobile unless you have some sort of cover to protect the screen. For me, the Amazon cover is perfect -- clean, simple, light. It holds the Kindle securely, yet it's easy to pop the gadget in or out. I've been using mine daily since Christmas and haven't seen any sign of the problems some people mention about rebooting and whatnot. I didn't go with the one with the built-in light, though. It's just a cover.

On the negative side, there is a temptation towards reading ADD. With all these books at your fingertips, a guy like me can hardly resist taking a sip of Seneca, a little jolt of Shakespeare, etc. I feel a bit like a kid in a candy shop and it's hard to stay focused on one thing.

Also, here's a weird thing, it's kind of odd sometimes that you don't have a sense of how long a book is in this electronic format. Kindle deals in "locations", which could translate to different numbers of "pages" depending on how large or small you set the font. I guess I'll get more of a feel for this over time, but right now it's strange. War and Peace feels much the same as Call of the Wild -- you read 'em both one screen of text at a time. It's disorienting not having that heft as part of the sensory experience of reading.

Okay, so that post turned out longer than I thought it would. I'll try to post some pics tomorrow for your edification.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Realistically it doesn't seem likely that Amazon is going to recall my LotR anytime soon. Also realistically, if you are the type of person who is really worried about Amazon having control over what you've bought from them, it's easy enough to figure out how to "jailbreak" your files and make copies. Ahem! -- or so I've heard.

Well, you'd think....

howsumever...

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/te.../18amazon.html

Which wouldn't affect me too much, as I can't think that even with a Kindle I'd buy new books - most of my reading choices are out of copyright anyway.

Of course, there are so many bootleg e-copies of Tolkien's books out there that people could convert via Calibre to the .mobi format that even if Amazon (or Harper Collins) were to withdraw the 'official' copies altogether they'd hardly disappear from Kindles - if only one knew someone with such versions ... (ahem...)

[Morthoron]

You see, this is the whole reason why I don't deal with Kindle or the plethora of e-book variants on the market. If I download a song or album from Amazon, it is mine, and I can dispense with it as I wish (just as if I purchased a music CD). I do not care for the thought of some Big Brother (a perfect allusion to the Orwellian nature of this thread) ready to pounce on my reading material.

Currently, if anyone wanted to take one of my books from my home without permission, they'd have to get past the owner -- holding a Browning BPS 12 gauge pump shotgun.

[LadyBrooke]

I guess I'm just so used to the fact that in this electronic age anything can vanish that it doesn't bother me that much. After using the school computers and having entire essays vanish, I'm not going to worry about Amazon removing my copy of LotR. Plus there are the free samples so I can figure out if I want to read The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun without actually buying it. On the other hand, I don't see myself taking my books off the top of my desktop any time soon.

[davem]

A few things interest me about the e-Tolkien's - both LotR & TH have appeared in different 'editions'. LotR has (it could be argued) three 'incarnations' - the first edition text was available between 1954/55 & (I think) about 1966, when Tolkien made a number of changes to the text as a result of the Ace Books controversy in order to allow him to renew/establish copyright for the work in the US. Then, in 2005, we got the '50th Anniversary edition', edited with a new index, by Hammond & Scull under the supervision of Christopher Tolkien. This contained 300-400 changes/amendments - mostly minor, but still.....all done after the author's death. (This came up in another thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...2&postcount=98

Now, I have all three versions in print books, but the only 'official' e-book version available is the 50th - & that, appearing after Tolkien's death, is the only one of the three that appeared without Tolkien's stamp of approval. The other thing about e-books is the ability of the publisher/copyright holder to further amend/'update' the texts - an e-text is not a fixed thing in the way a print book is - you connect your Kindle to Amazon & it could simply update your current text with an amended one. Argument for: typos could be fixed. Argument against: any changes the copyright holder decides on would be forced on you - after all, you don't 'own' the text, only the licence to read it on your device.

Now, my favourite version is the revised, Second Edition - in the main because that's the one I read first & the one I know best - therefore the changes (however 'minor' they may be claimed to be) in the 50th grate on me. But I can never read that edition on the Kindle (unless I break the law & get hold of one of the older bootleg Second Editions, convert it, & stick it on there myself ..... but of course, that could cause all kinds of problems of a legal nature. And, of course, as indicated by the Orwell books issue, one could see a situation where, if copyright law is changed in the future then books which are currently out of copyright could (if copyright is extended) suddenly become copyright again & vanish off your device. I read somewhere that the Disney corporation is among those working to extend copyright, as Walt died in 1966 & his work would enter the public domain in 2036. I still don;t know whether the changes made to LotR (added to any possible future changes we may see) have extended/renewed the copyright on LotR.

[Mister Underhill]

Everyone has to find their own level of (dis)comfort with the idea of e-readers and the ephemeral nature of digital content. If you think of a device as a replacement for your physical books, then some of these issues become more pressing. If, as I do, you view the device merely as a convenient adjunct to reading, it's pretty nifty. For instance, one additional thing I've found I can do is take out books (admittedly a small selection so far) from the library without actually having to go to the library. I like going to the library, but I'm also open to anything that will save me a trip out into LA traffic.

Anywho, here's -- finally -- the side-by-side look that I promised. This is an old mass-market edition of TT alongside the Kindle. The Kindle is set to the third smallest font size. You can also fiddle with the font (there's one called "Condensed" which crams considerably more print on a line without changing the actual font size), as well as the words-per-line (in this pic it's set to "Default" but there's also "Fewer" and "Fewest" if you want to create wider margins) and line spacing (mine is set to the max of three settings). I figure since page count isn't an issue, why not go with settings geared towards comfort, but if you prefer more words on the Kindle page, by turning the settings down you can actually get about a fourth again more words on the screen than on a paperback page and it's still readable.

[davem]

Well, after umming & ahhing for a few weeks I finally bought a Kindle (& the case I linked to earlier) So far I haven't read anything on it (I'm part way through a 'real' book, which I want to finish before going 'e'). I've downloaded a few books ready for when I get going (Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy', Tresselll's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' & Chesterton's 'The Flying Inn' - which probably reveals much about me...... And they were all free )

Anyway - I also downloaded the free sample of LotR from Amazon (Intro, Prologue, Shire map & first two chapters) to try it out, & I noticed something - I couldn't read it. It was nice & clear, well presented - perfectly up to the standard I'd expected. But I still couldn't read it.

The problem was, its not simply about the text, its about the experience. I've read other e-texts on computers & phones, but I've never (even though I've used an e-text of LotR to search & find quotes) tried reading it for pleasure off a screen. What I found was that I missed the weight, & the experience of turning the pages (specifically I missed the weight & the feel of the paper of the A&U Second Edition 3vol H/B set which is an essential part of my experience of Middle-earth). Kindle is brilliant for presenting the text of a book, but not the 'experience' of reading a book. I'll use the Kindle a lot (I suspect) - lots of free stuff, very convenient for holidays, etc, etc. But I doubt I'll ever be able to read any Tolkien on it.