This is not news, the Kindle, and other eBook readers are more and more often you see around. On trains and planes, in the hands of young and old, the electronic book is a way of keeping alive the love for literature in the days of digital, but also tells a different technology from the one with which we are dealing every day. An ebook reader is – in the most successful cases – an example of how not always the latest innovation, the latest version or higher represent necessarily the best.
On paper, for example, the comparison between the Kindle and the iPad Paperwhite Air does not hold: he won the second on all fronts. Yet you try to read your book, not on the couch at home, but in the sea. Try to forget the charger before you leave, or accidentally dropping the tablet. At issue are two visions of technology: a quantitative (the GHz, the MB, the Megapixel) against a qualitative (what I really need?).
And so on with the Kindle. A choice of the last moment, when the backpack was already ready. Crammed right next to the iPad, albeit with the sneaking suspicion that remain unused, but at the bottom of the Paperwhite weighs only 200 grams and take it in your hand luggage is not a problem. A mini usb cable you will find anywhere in the house, the charger goes well the iPad.
Instead I turn it on, and I find all the books that I started reading on the iPad with the Kindle app then for some reason stopped. I do not need to remember where I had left them: with the reader and Amazon’s Whispersync technology are opened exactly at that point. The Kindle Paperwhite is backlit, but the sun light is not needed, so better to reduce to a minimum the battery to discharge too soon; may make sense to instead turn the shade, although the summer is at its maximum brilliance. I struggle a bit ‘to find my favorite character: always choose the Baskerville, that of the Adelphi books, but I read better with Cecilia Condensed; I experiment with line spacing and font size, I make the white margins and finally found the perfect combination. For me, of course, for my eyes.
What I have in front is a book I would miss the smell of paper and ink, if there was the breath of the sea and the wind carries the scent of the pines. The plastic of the Kindle is not nice to see how the aluminum of the iPad, but it inspires more confidence. Scratch is already in its fate, and this is enough to ward off worries and concerns. But I also like the leather, solid and a little ‘retro, which puts the device in standby when you close; makes it more often, and even more like a book. Pity about the plastic edge around the screen: white would simulate better the card, but then the player fouled immediately, and perhaps that is in anthracite gray.
I emphasize with my finger, I can not always center the sentence on the first try, but then I learn. The Kindle has its times, requires a minimum of calm and dedication, suggests that those who use its priorities: first read, then look up a word in the dictionary, highlight a phrase, share on social networks (but wifi is only in the bar and my Kindle does not have the built-in 3G). Put a bookmark is an easy gesture own com EDouble the corner I was doing to the pages, but X-Ray is a tool that only a digital book can have: indicates the recurrent words in the page, in the chapter, throughout the text, for research targeted. I do not ever get used to read “4585 position” instead of “page 389,” but I understand that it is not so important; I like to know at what point instead of the book arrived, with the percentage that a little ‘time to grow.
After the autobiography of Morrissey (a must for people like me who grew up with the songs of The Smiths), after the volume of Leander Kahney of Jonathan Ive (well documented but somehow a bit ‘disappointing), I need more books. I try to send mail to the Kindle for a pdf file from the iPad: everything ok, but I can not change the font or center the page on the screen. I give up and decide to focus on the classics. I hunt them at no cost: the offer is wide but not as much as I expected, the Amazon store several titles are present but for some reason not available ( The innocent of d’Annunzio, for example). Exhaust A Life Italo Svevo in fifteen seconds, start reading now and become my book of the summer, for a few days are in Trieste instead of on an island ‘ Aegean.
I’m going to Japan with a good English essay on the aesthetics of Zen, I’ll be in Greece with Symposium of Plato. I re-read the De Profundis Oscar Wilde: I have so many books in a small trinket, and look at the beach tourists exhausted by the heavy tomes of Wilbur Smith. And what a surprise then to find on a night of full moon i Songs of Leopardi, leaving the words ringing in the silence, free from comments and notes. I spent less than three euro for the complete works of Virginia Woolf in the original, so I read a bit ‘ The Waves ; the Recherche Proust was free but in the meantime the holidays are over.
The Kindle is not a perfect device. Sometimes it happens to me without wanting to turn the page, just by touching the screen, the store is not easy to find the titles of the Project Gutenberg and the classics out of copyright, I try in vain to read an epub file. In one case I was forced to restart because the download was interrupted and the unit seemed stuck. And I had to recharge the battery a few times, because I used it in the evening, turning on the backlight.
This version of the Kindle has arrived in Italy less than a year ago, in six generations has never betrayed its sole purpose, to be an easy and easy to read digital books. Each improvement has gone in this direction, each accessory function has been eliminated or confined in remote corners of the menu, which remains clear and simple. The most obvious comparison in the digital domain is the first iPod, which reproduced only music; only later was enhanced with other features, the address book to the games, to the ability to show photos and videos. Today it is known to history, swept away by the iPhone and other smartphones. In the world of technology, where normally we proceed to build a device like the Kindle is there to remind and designers who know how to say no is important, that what is not there is as important as what is there. Then, of course, the Paperwhite only costs ten euro less than the Kindle Fire, the Amazon tablet handyman.
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