Review: Kindle Fire Book Experience

I like to read. To that end, I own a lot of books. My wife complains about the amount of space all my books consume in our home. Occasionally, this results in my having to clean out the shelves and remove the books I don't think I'll even read again. Trouble is, I think I'll always read them at some point in the future. Instead, I donate them to the local library. But then I get more books.

In the Star Trek original series episode Court Martial (1967), Jim Kirk is facing a general court martial for apparently sending a fellow officer to his death in a non-emergency situation (it's a trick, since the officer faked his own death to implicate Kirk as revenge for a problem that happened between them years before). Kirk's attorney is one Samuel T Cogley (played wonderfully by the late Elisha Cook Jr.) who has his own system of practicing law based on old fashioned, hardcopy books. When Cogley is explaining his system to Kirk, he asks, What's the matter? Don't you like books?" Kirk's reply is, "I like them just fine, but a computer takes less space." That's my theory behind reading on the Kindle Fire.

I'm actually a bit torn. Like Cogley, "I like books". I'm old enough to still think that a "real" book is better than an electronic copy, but I have to balance desire with practicality. The Kindle Fire will never be able to replace the feel or the smell of an old book, but the content and the magic will still be there on each page I swipe (instead of turn). The Kindle Fire has a 6.5 GB storage limit on its hard drive but Amazon offers free unlimited cloud storage for anything purchased at Amazon (you can store non-Amazon products in their cloud free too, but only up to 5 GB...to upgrade to 20 GB of storage for said-files costs $20.00 a year), so "book shelf" space doesn't seem to be a problem.

I was intriqued by Amazon's free lending library for Amazon Prime users. Since I have a month's free trial of Prime, potentially, I have access to thousands of library books which I can borrow from Amazon for free. This sounded fabulous, but there's a catch.

I fired up my Kindle (pun not intended) and on the main page, tapped "Books" and then "Store". On the Books page, there's menu on the right side and I tapped "Kindle Owner' Lending Library". A list of various categories (Fiction, Nonfiction, Comics & Graphic Novels, etc...) appeared. Once I made a selection (Fiction) I saw a list of books, some available through Prime for free, but nothing to indicate that they could be borrowed. I selected one at random and when the book's "details page" appeared, there indeed was a button that said "Borrow for Free". I scrolled down for awhile but didn't find anything that looked appealing (in spite of the number of books I own, I'm actually picky about what I read).

I decided to try "Comics & Graphic Novels" and received a bit of a shock. The "graphic" part has to do with sex. A huge percentage of this collection is virtual porn, with titles such as "Wicked Desires: Steamy Sex Stories Volume 1", "My Sister Bestfriend", and "Sex Messages, Social Networking, and BDSM". The actual comic books were neither DC nor Marvel and seemed to be rather seedy, off-brand tales from the 1950s and 60s. Anything worthwhile (Batman, Green Lantern, Watchmen) cost about $10.00 each. I also noticed DC but no Marvel titles, which was quite a let down.

I did discover one cool thing. Lots and lots of pre-1923 books that are out-of-copyright are available for free..not to borrow, but to own. I immediately downloaded a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and burned through the first two chapters. And at the risk of sounding like a TV commercial huckster, that's not all. Amazon also points you, via their website, to numerous library projects that offer over a million free titles. Projects such as archive.org and gutenberg.org, complete with instructions on how to access their content from Kindle Fire. I haven't tried this part out yet, but believe me, I will.

As with movies and TV shows, the number and type of books you can borrow or get for free through Amazon Prime or the Kindle Owner's lending library is limited. The comic book and graphic novel selection was particularly wanting and I was severely disappointed. I really think there needs to be an online archive project specifically for older comic books, since their physical copies won't last forever and the originals held by the publishers are reproduced and distributed at the mercy of those companies. I guess that's my problem, though and I suspect that availability of book and comic book titles is limited by licensing costs. Besides, Amazon and the various publishing houses have to make a buck somehow.

In spite of the roadblocks I encountered, I still discovered that I have access to a large selection of reading material. Not everything I want, but books that I can't find, even at my local lending library. Speaking of which, I can't wait to see how to actually borrow a digital book from my public library for Kindle Fire. In the meantime, I'm going to be happily making my way through Treasure Island. "Yo ho and a bottle of rum, mateys."

Oh, and if you liked this review, make sure to catch my other Kindle Fire review on my experiences with movies and TV shows.

Review: Kindle Fire Video Experience

Recently, I was given a Kindle Fire and after registering it and setting up WiFi at home, I decide to try it out. Since I've got a free month of Amazon Prime service with my new Kindle Fire, I thought I'd take the video experience for a spin last night. I found out that not all movies and TV shows are free with the Prime service (alas) but some really good ones are. All old Twilight Zone episodes are free with Amazon Prime. I watched the very first Twilight Zone ever, starring Earl Holliman (points if you know who that is without Googling). Steaming via WiFi was fast with no service interruptions, so I could really lose myself in the show. Image was crystal clear but you might want to keep low lighting in the room because reflections are a problem.

I made an interesting discovery watching that episode from 1959. It was filmed at the same Universal Studio backlot as the town square scenes from the Back to the Future (1985) films. The courthouse with the clocktower was a high school in the TV episode and Mel's diner (later a gym) was a police station. The incredible irony is Marty goes back to 1955 but the place existed for real as early as 1959 (and probably before). Great stuff for a trivia nerd like me. There's more tidbits I found in other episodes, but they're kind of obscure unless you're into old science fiction films.

The two other classic TZ episodes I watched starred the wonderful actors Burgess Meredith and Agnes Moorehead (one per each episode). Then I decided to watch the two-hour premiere episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I haven't seen in years. I really had a lot of fun with the scenes I remembered and particularly with the scenes I didn't (I completely forgot Patrick Stewart guess starred).

The 7 inch screen is a little small, but the video experience was still OK. Sound via ear buds worked fine. I did notice feeling a little vertigo when I moved the Kindle closer and then further away from my eyes during the shows. I don't recommend walking around while watching as it gets to be disorienting. I finally put it on the bed so I had a stable platform for the Kindle.

Searching for shows and films worked well, The search feature has an auto-complete, so you don't have to do a lot of typing. I did notice that auto-complete would generate search results (such as "return of the creature", which I mistakenly thought was Revenge of the Creature [1955]) that when selected, produce no actual result (the film doesn't exist in the Amazon archives, apparently).

I'm sure there's a reason for it, but I couldn't figure out why some shows were offered via Prime and others weren't (probably licensing, but who knows?). For instance, all old Twilight Zone episodes were available but no old Outer Limits shows were offered through Prime. Just for giggles, I tried to find the original premiere episode for Lost in Space but it's not available through Prime, either.

Except for the small screen size and the need to keep the Kindle Fire pretty still while viewing, I can't complain about my video experience. You can control the volume of the show and pause and play at will, just by tapping the screen to show the controls. Despite the limitations on selection, I still found plenty of interesting viewing choices. Very nice for my very first tablet experience. I'll have to try out the lending library next.

Oh. Does anyone know a good way to read comic books on a Kindle Fire? Just asking.

Using GIMP: Kindle Edition

It bothered me that all of my other books were available through Amazon except this one. Amazon is a nice place to point folks when they want to get a quick idea of my professionally published works. Finally, Amazon released the Kindle Edition of Using GIMP (July 2010). Now all the Amazon page lacks are a few reviews (sigh).