Can you stand another Kindle Post?

Just a couple of thoughts on my continued affair du Kindle.

1) It fell. A few weeks back, I was sitting on a high stool and it slipped out of my pocket: A good 4 foot fall onto hard tile. The back flew off, and it came apart a little, but a quick snap back into place and it's all fine. The only issue is a hairline crack on one of the buttons. This will sound crazy, but every day I notice that crack, I think "Hmmm, wonder why that hasn't healed yet?"

2) There's a specific sort of book that I like that has very little chance of being interesting to anyone else, and will be doomed to take up 1 inch of shelfspace for the rest of time. One such book was "DeLuxe - How Luxury Lost its Luster" - a detailed accounting of how the major Luxury brand conglomerates have pursued the middle market and how this cannibalism sows the seeds of their demise. Fun reading, but not essential, and probably not good enough for me to INSIST that someone else read.

So I ordered it and read it in the Kindle. I just finished it last night. Instead of a hunk of pulp, I just have a few bits and bytes of this book now, and the storage space is in no way onerous. Looking in my library room, there are dozens of books which I have enjoyed that I wish I could zap into ether in a similar manner.

3) 2-3 years back (not mentioned in the blog, I checked) I was trying to make my way through Neal Stephenson's ambitious trilogy which began with "The Quicksilver". These were 800-1000 page hardback tomes, which after 300 pages of the first one, I gave up in disgust: The author has a tendency toward circuitous writing, long cul-de-sacs of detail which can be a true delight... but in this particular case, I found myself desperately wishing he'd get TO THE POINT ALREADY.

In retrospect, I'm realizing that part of my annoyance was that these books were huge and heavy, and I was resenting the fact that not only was the story not moving quickly, but I was having trouble breathing while holding this gigantic brute of a book on my chest at night.

I have begun re-reading another Stephenson book in the Kindle (Interface - his techno thriller), and am delighting in each detour, each deeply imagined detail, and am inclined to turn a more sympathetic eye back to the trilogy... but only if I can download them into the Kindle: My svelte little reader will swallow those 30 pounds of ponderous book-age and serve it up one cheerful page at a time, never weighing more than its 8-10 ounces, never swelling the sides of my briefcase unnaturally.

Yes, I might finally read that series now that I have a technological means to do so that does not leave me literally breathless.