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My favorite way to read books...

... is on sale!

I love my Kindle Paperwhite. I wish that I could afford to read every book that I read on the Kindle (but seeing as I read about 60 books a year, that might be a little pricey!)

Why do I love it?

• Re-sizeable text!  I have bad eyesight and this makes reading so much easier!
• My library supports Kindle!  That means lots of free books to read on the Kindle.  I can't get everything this way, but I am able to check out quite a few ebooks and save a ton of money.
• I can read outside!  I can't do that on my iPad, and I don't think I would really want to sit by a pool with my iPad anyway.
• The light!  It's super easy to adjust the light to make things easy to read -- day or night.  

if you are contemplating purchasing an eBook reader, I highly recommned the Kindle Paperwhite -- I really, truly love using mine.

Reading, Knitting, Planning

Reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin on my iPad.  Yes, the book is excellent, but I want to talk a bit about the method of delivery. 

Since I read quite a bit, I often get my books from the library which means they are good, old-fashioned, paper books.  Advantages:  Free, huge selection, tactile.  Disadvantages:  Longer books are heavy and awkward, some books have a 2 week limit, not all fonts are good for my terrible eyes. 

Then there is the Kindle.  When I got my Kindle, I loved it!  I could embiggen the font, carry lots of books around in a small package and those longer, heavier books were now easy to read.  Negative:  Costly, Amazon store on Kindle is awful.

Then for my birthday I received the iPad2.  (Cue chorus!)  At first I was worried that the backlit screen would strain my eyes which would have me running back to the Kindle.  After reading a good portion of this very long book night after night, I have to say that my fears were unfounded.  The Sepia option, easy contrast adjustment and multitude of fonts and sizes have made it easy to be comfortable reading on the iPad.  In fact, I like the iBooks app better than the Kindle app.  I think it could use some improvements (I have a tendency to accidentally flip forward several pages every now and again), but overall, it's quite nice.

Speaking of reading, I also finished Ape House by Sara Gruen which was pretty good, but nothig to get excited about.

SInce I've already blathered on for quite a while here, I'll leave the knitting and quilting for another day.

Since I'm into bringing you the Kindle updates...

Kindle Wi-Fi now only $139. If you've been waiting for the price drop -- now's your time to get one of these sweet e-book readers!

Sexy New Graphite Kindle

Okay, maybe it's just me, but I think this is one nice looking ebook reader. I guess I should have seen it coming with the Kindle 2 price drop, but I didn't. Glad to see Amazon is stepping up with this new Graphite Kindle DX. I was afraid they would lay down and die in the wake of the iPad -- being relegated to becoming a mere app.

Kindle Goodies

I love my Kindle.  Lately I've been playing around with my it a bit more and I've discovered some great functionality, and some fun hidden features.  I thought this might be of use to other Kindle owners, so here are some goodies:

Tips and Tricks for your Amazon Kindle:

• Play Mindsweeper -- just press Alt-Shift-M (Shift is the up arrow on the Kindle to the left of the Alt button).  I think you need to be on the "home" screen when you do this -- not in a book.
• Play GoMoku -- just press G when you are in Mindsweeper.  
• View photos on your Kindle (sure, they will be low res greyscale, but it's still sort of fun) -- create a pictures folder on the Kindle, put a folder (or many folders) in the pictures folder and add photos to it (them).  The folders inside the pictures folder will show up as 'books" which you can click on to view the photos.

Shortcuts:

• Alt-B -- Bookmark (on/off)
• Alt-Sym -- Turn on Text-to-speech (on/off)
• Alt-Home -- Go to Kindle Store

Want to view a book or other document on your Kindle?  Try converting it with Mobipocket Creator.

Do you know any Kindle tips?  I'd love to hear them!

Kindle 2 Price Drop

I may have mentioned that I received a Kindle 2 for my birthday this year -- and I absolutely love it. So I feel like I should mention that Amazon just dropped the price. No good for me, since I already have one, but if you've been thinking about getting one -- now may be the time!

Can I just say?

That I totally and completely love my Kindle .  Really.  I haven't read a regular book since I got it.  I'm completely in love and I'm 100% satisfied with my purchase.  If you are a reader and you have a tax refund check burning a hole in your pocket, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Currently reading Quicksilver -- a massive 960 page book that would be (at best) bulky to hold and (at worst) painful.  Books like this were made for the Kindle -- seriously.

Red Mars -- A free Kindle book I love!

Now here's a free book I can recommend with no reservations at all -- Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've read the entire martian trilogy, and while I was lucky to find an oversize used copy of Green Mars, I had to read Red Mars in Mass Market Paperback form which was very hard on my eyes.  (I think I checked Blue Mars out from the library.) I'm so glad to have this for the Kindle because I can see myself reading it again.

Don't have a Kindle? Well, if you have and iPod you can read it using the Kindle app. I've loaded the Kindle app on my iPod touch and it seems to work quite nicely.  (Although it doesn't really compare to the ease of reading on a Kindle in my opinion.)

You can read about free books and more on the Kindle Blog.

Free Books for the Kindle 2

So, you have a Kindle and you want some free books. Where do you go? Well, I suppose you could go straight to Project Gutenberg and download a book, then convert it and then load it onto your reader, but luckily the hard work has been done for you already. Thanks to a tip from Jenny I am using Feedbooks.

This was so much easier than I thought it would be. First you download the Kindle guide from the website. Then just put it in the "document" folder on your Kindle -- same thing as yesterday with the converted knitting pattern. Then you can click on the guide from your Kindle's homepage and you'll be taken to a website where you can easily download books.

I hope someone will find this helpful! I'll be doing some more file conversion and such in the coming weeks and I'll post tips as I come across them.

More on the Kindle -- How to View & Store Knitting Patterns

Since a lot of you either have the Kindle or are interested in learning more about it, I thought I would share my experiences. I've only had it since Friday afternoon and already I've downloaded books -- free and $$ -- and learned to convert .pdf files for viewing -- including knitting patterns!!

First let me talk a little about viewing knitting patterns. Since I have some patterns of my own, I decided to try converting and viewing one of them to see what would happen. I took the Booga Bag pattern and sent the .pdf off to Amazon. There are 2 options -- one that costs 10 cents and allows you to have it sent directly to your Kindle, and one that is free, but you have to copy the converted file onto the Kindle. I choose the free method.

All you need to do is send an email with an attachment that includes the file you want to covert. The email you send it to is [email protected] where YOUR_KINDLE_EMAIL is the email you set up when you register your Kindle. If you ever forget it, you just log into your Amazon account, go to your Kindle page and it's right there for you. After this -- in about 5 minutes -- you get an email back with a link to your file. Download it, plug in your kindle to your computer using the USB cable and move the file from your computer into your "documents" folder on the Kindle. Super easy!

Tomorrow I'll tell you about downloading free books -- also super easy and there are tons to choose from -- classics as well as some great CC licensed books.

Kindle Unboxed

What could be a better gift for a girl who loves to read and loves electronic gadgets than a Kindle ? 

It arrived safe and sound a few days after my birthday and I wasted no time opening it up.  I have to hand it to Amazon, the packaging was slick, protective and mostly recyclable.

I seriously felt like a kid at Christmas opening this package up!  Isn't she gorgeous?

I charged it right up, purchased my first book (only $6.04) and am already 25% through it.  I just keep saying "I love my Kindle!" over and over.  Seriously -- this is like a reading revolution.
More on Kindle soon!  And a big thank you to Pete & my Mom for bringing me and my Kindle together!