Books

I finally bought a Kindle

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After much trepidation, I’ve finally gone and done it. The 10th generation Kindle makes both the first e-ink device I’ve ever owned, and the first Kindle I’ve actually bought.

A good number of years ago I ended up “Winning” an HDX 7 from a developer raffle that a certain audio company was doing at the time. But I’ve never had one of their dedicated e-readers, and the only Amazonion devices I’ve bought over the years have been their Fire TV boxes, a product I’ve come to enjoy.
For me the HDX7 was both surprising and novel. On one hand, it was pretty much free; on the other it was pretty cool. The device’s battery life and performance was spectacular for its day. Comparable hardware for the day would have been a Nexus 4, if you traded all the Googly services for battery life that was more like a week of mixed us / when the heck did I even plug this thing in, kind of idle time.
Back then my content was more mixed. Amazon Kindle, Google Play, and various odds and ends made up my repository of books. I have gigs of files on my private server from back when I was a heavy use of Calibre. I’ve made pretty good use of the lit’ HDX for reading over the years.
Amazon would go on to become the dominate source of e-books over the decade. But still I never bought one of their readers. In fact, I posted nearly a decade ago about how unlikely me and an e-reader were. That was before tablets came to dominate my computing life. So even after the Tabletination I never really saw the point in a purpose built e-reader versus a standard tablet.
At best: my freebie HDX has always been an auxiliary device. A device that I would mostly use for reading books, many of them converted via Calibre, or passing an insomniac night. Typically I’ve stuck to my regular tablets, since last year: an iPad, and much the earlier decade Android tablets from Samsung and Asus. Even for reading, I’ve usually used a regular tablet about 80% of the time; maybe more.
Lately, I’ve been using the HDX more as a book reader because of its small size. Something that is pretty damned perfect for reading. The folks that designed that generation put much TLC into its build, IMHO.
My iPad is rather large and I’ve always valued the little Kindle Fire’s superb build for reading. Thus not a big surprise when the device still works (hehe). Yes, I preferred paperbacks over hardcovers to the face back when I still had shelf space. After seven years though: the battery life under load isn’t as Hercules strength as it once was, and honestly there are more than a few “Yeaaah pal, your software is so frakkin’ old this ain’t supported no more”. Considering the age, I of course have no right to complain. Especially when it’s a really nice device that I didn’t pay a dime for, lol.
In fact in the past couple years it has spent some time as a clock or a photoframe. Being repurposed for reading once in a while, or to curiously see if the old thing was still turning on.
I’ve recently given some mind to whether or not to trade it in towards some regular tablet purchase, or to buy a modern Fire just for the non-reading parts. But I’ve not seen too much of a point to trading it in. Unless it’s a killer deal, like Samsung / Best Buy sometimes run, it’s too damned old to be worth much to anyone shy of being an alarm clock that reads books. Likewise, I don’t really care much about Amazon’s app store, so much as it can be convenient to read Wikipedia on a 7″ device.
Well, after a while of thinkin’ on it: I finally caved in, and bought a Kindle. So far, I rather like it.
I remember being tempted back when the 3rd generation came out with an accessible price. Think folks call that the “Keyboard” now. It helps that for some years now: the basic Kindle has been pretty cheap. Even more so with another year older, coming up soon.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be dead a few thousand years before I catch up on my reading backlog.
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Passing thought: it’s kind of sad The Outlaw King trilogy never ended up a TV mini series, or a feature length film. And probably never will 😕.

The whirlwind in the thorn tree, Law of the wolf, and Ten thousand devils made a rather good set of stories. Both when I read it years ago, and as I reread it, I enjoy this tale.

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Possible signs that I have strange, or at least varied tastes: when my debate of what to cycle back to reading includes:

  • Cow boys, writers, cyborgs, and interdimensional adventure.
  • Gothic love-horror, and a side of witches and gaslighting.
  • Horn dog comedy with a side of heart rending drama.
Also on that note: 
  • The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree is an excellent series of novels, enough so that started reading it a second time. Enough years have passed for details to start to fizzle.
  • The House in Fata Morgana is one of the better executed long form visual novels, but it’s story has plenty of twisted shit.
  • Edelweiss is both a hilarious visual novel, and one that may leave a lasting impression on your tear ducts.
I’m also pretty sure that combing reading, and snacking, would cause massive death glares from the hounds…lol.
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https://www.humblebundle.com/books/oreilly-classics-oreilly-books

While I can’t speak for the reference books, O’Reilly technical books are usually worth the money. Two on this list that I can vouch for are Programming Perl, as I own a hard copy of a previous edition, and Java in a Nutshell which is a rather good book for getting up to speed on the language.

I remember buying the Camel book for about $56 nearly a decade ago. Came for a means of thinking through the documentation that didn’t require alt+tab, stayed for the wonderful wit, anecdotes, and stories. If you’re serious about Perl, you probably should own a copy or three.

Java in a Nutshell, I had checked out from the public library over a decade ago wanting to brush up on how the language has evolved since my study, and really found its explanations wonderful. Especially if you’ve ever wondered why the answer to Generics in Java is so often no. The only Java  book on my shelf, by contrast was written while JDK had yet to reach a 1.0 release. Needless to say, I had needed updating, lol.

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Thus far, I’ve found Hulu’s Halloween suggestions mostly a positive. A broad mixture of horror films, largely from the ‘70s to the ‘90s and beyond for some more recent films. Both familiar films and ones I hadn’t gotten around to yet.

This afternoon, I’m going with something I haven’t seen in a few years: the second version of The Haunting.
Personally, I think the film more or less deserves the critical panning it received, it’s a film you watch for the effects not because it’s an essential anything. For me, it’s probably the last movie that ever scared me. I remember watching it on a rather long break many years ago and then having to go move furniture, and being a bit unnerved. I mean, it’s basically a house that comes alive and eats people as far as the special effects go. What’s not unnerving about that concept? Since then tidbits of Hill House have haunted my dreams over the past few decades: enough to no longer be scary as it became a reoccurring setting for various nightmares.
On the flip side, I’ve never really cared much for the original film. It was very fateful to the novel in my honest opinion, but just not scary. As a horror film: it’s only scary in the sense of kids around a campfire kind of stories, not terrifying, well not when I first watched it fifty some years after the book was written. Perhaps because I view Eleanor’s part in the story more a cause for sadness than a vehicle for terror, which is kind of essential to the novel. Her torment and place in the world is the real terror, not the house or spooky occurrences. Meanwhile, as out of the wall as the ‘99 film is, it tries to rely largely on the horror of the situation rather than the characterizations. The two films have different takes, and the novel’s greater time for exposition means it can leverage a more psychological terror than the simple scares the ‘63 horror film could ablidge.
If you have some time, probably better to read the novel and ignore the rest, or just watch the ‘63 film if you want a decent abridged version of the story. Me? I watch the later film because I remember being like 12, and finding it disturbingly horror.
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I find out kind of odd, I’ve almost always read on a tablet in landscape if I was reading for a prolonged period. Yet settling in for an afternoon of reading, I find self happiest in landscape.

Wide screen 10” form factor has never been my bag. The 16:10 typically found is just crap in portrait, and out approximates a form that was really meant for landscape video. Now the 7” and 8” tablets I’ve owned were different stories: despite the meh aspect ratio they’re usually sizes on par with a paperback. In fact I’d say the old “Thor” model HDX 7 was about the perfect size for reading.
Standard 9.7” on the other hand is like the perfect all purpose form factor, thanks to the greater squareness of the 4:3 aspect. Thus I’d still read novels in portrait mode and do everything else in landscape or portrait as I prefer.
The standard 11” of the iPad Pro, I’m finding it easier to focus on reading in landscape mode. Conveniently it creates a very book like pages side by side effect on the perspective. Much like how you might focus on an open book.
Kinda odd to me because of how similar the sizes are. Nerine’s screen is the size of Scarlett; such that if you just put bezels around the Tab S3 and make the screen that much bigger, you’ve essentially got the iPad Pro 11 right there. That is to say, it’s what happens if you take the most perfect multi purpose  size and blow it up about as big as you can make a tablet that’s going to be used often with one hand but most frequently with two hands.
Anyhow, back to my book 😜.

The downside to talking about books

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Ahh, nuts. The downside to talking about books is when you find yourself torn about what to read.

I don’t really re-read books very often. My long term memory tends to be better than most, despite my short term memory being more like reading a password, swivelling my chair, and having already forgotten it, lol. The things that stick in my memory tend to stick very long in my memory. When I re-read a book it tends to be because I’m starting to find specific details harder to remember.

Two good ideas for re-reading come to mind. Well, technically three but that’s a horse of a different color.

One is Speaker for the Dead and Ender’s Game. I first came across Ender’s game about a decade ago, and rather enjoyed that how it portrayed its children’s way of problem solving reflected my own childhood and peers. What really stuck with me about Ender’s childhood though was the side story of his siblings. The books were written at a point where for most people, the concept of usenet and BBS’s would have been foreign. Yet their activities as Locke and Demosthenes fortel of a world like my own where things like Facebook, blogs, and comments on news sites had become part of our real life. Plus there’s the fact that the ending screw, was pretty spectacular; Ender’s fate is far from returning home to a ticker tape parade.

The real draw for me however was Speaker. It’s dialog heavy with its drama and mystery as we’re integrated into Novinha’s family and the community on Lusitania. How Ender has coped with being forced into genocide and the excellent characters, rather than cardboard we’re presented with are a pleasure. But what’s really stuck with me is the piggies truly are an alien species different from our own, one which makes a strong contrast along side the Buggers and humanity. While most critters populating science fiction are enough like us, the Pequenios are very much “Xeno“– aliens, strangers. And I really liked that. The series’ concept of utlaenning, fraemling, ramen, and varelse is particularly fitting to that tale, pretty much: those close to us, those familiar to us, and what the heck are you?

Second on my temptation is S.A. Hunt’s The Outlaw King trilogy. Can’t recall if I first came across it by the recommendation of folks on Google Plus, or through a Humble book bundle I bought. But I remember it as good stuff. The Whirlwind in the Thorn Tree helped splice me into it: interesting characters, a nice setting (I like watching westerns), and a fantasy world that makes you wonder how it came into being. I think by the time I finished Law of the Wolf, my response to Ten Thousand Devils was “Shuddup and take my money!”. I had come expecting pulp fiction and found enough depth that it left me wishing for more.

Third is Dune, but I know rather than revisit that old friend, I should pick up where I left off at in Messiah some years back. I think I’ve read Dune at least twice in the past twenty years, maybe even three times. It remains one of my favourite books. Also among the few that I have both a physical copy and an electronic copy.

For a long time, Dune was a curious film. One night when I was a kid, I watched maybe half of it with my mother. It’s probably a poor selection for a late night movie when you consider the cut was about three hours long, and you probably need to watch the film twice to understand it. But I enjoyed it.

Quite a few years later, my mother lent me her copy of the book, and when I saw how many appendices full of information about the world there were: I knew that I was going to enjoy the book. And then I realized the film cut out at least half of the content, in fact you’re probably getting just the most vital ~30% of it when you watch the ’84 film. That’s when I came to understand what the word abridgement meant.

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CNN: Libraries are fighting to preserve your right to borrow e-books.

Generally my habits with e-books lean towards purchases more so than lending: but even so, I find the option of checking out an electronic copy useful once in awhile. In my neck of the woods that usually takes the form of OverDrive.

I imagine that as time goes on the issue will only get worse.

E-books are not going away, and most of us don’t want public libraries to go away either. Eventually, I expect the amount of books only available in digital form will go up over the decades not down. Authors and publishers still need to make coin but I don’t think that being a dick about it will help anyone, least of all in the long run: the one being a dick.

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Going by my place this far, probably ~140 some pages into That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Vol. 1 (light novel), I can’t help but think there’s still hope for me yet.

When I was a kid, I was the kind that could binge read Dune and its appendexes with Glee. As an adult I find that I don’t tend to consume many books. Much inverted as well, in that as a kid there was always a shortage of novels to read and as an adult my reading list is never zeroed.

Over the past lustrum I’ve generally noticed a pattern of sorts. Where games, TV, or books tend to consume what passes for my leisure time in cyclic spells rather than simultaneously. E.g. for a few months you’re more likely to find me in front of a game than the others; for a few months you’re more likely to find me watching videos than the others; and so on.

For the most part that doesn’t tend to bother me much. My queues are always filled leaving me with the questions of what do I have time for and what do I want to do: not a lack of content. But how wacko the graph of my reading habits would look over the past twenty years or so is kind of worrisome.

Dangers++

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Sigh, floating around the Internet I find there are a lot more light novels translated then I had hoped. In fact there’s even a notable one who seems to have distribution with most major e-book and remaining channels for p-books. Which is kind of nice as I prefer have preferences when it comes to those e-book platforms.

Better or worse danger when a series you enjoyed is also available :/.

I am reminded that the upside to being a kid was always having time to read. The upside to being an adult is having money to buy a book every now and then without having to trade any in at the used bookstore (good luck finding those). The quasi constant is unless there is never enough storage space for physical books.

Sadly, one of my favourite stories originated as a LN series and to my knowledge has never been translated. The anime and manga adaptions did make it over the English, and I have both, but the original source material remains Japanese only and well beyond my parser level :'(.