August 10, 2012

My New Reading Technologies

This summer, I've added two technological innovations to my reading life.

First, I received a hand-me-down Kindle. I've been reading ebooks on my phone for two years, and I was content enough with that system that I never bought myself a dedicated ereading device. But I sure wasn't going to say no to a free one!

I'm appreciating the Kindle's screen size, since a phone is a little smaller than I'd prefer for reading. The e-ink display is nice, but I don't find a backlit screen uncomfortable for my eyes, so that's not as significant a feature for me. Where the Kindle really outdoes the phone is in battery life, and that was especially important during my travels. If I know I'm going to be on the go all day and needing my phone for mapping and communication, I'm reluctant to use any of its battery on reading. With the Kindle, I can read for days without recharging.

I still don't see myself switching exclusively to ebooks anytime soon. I expect to continue in my habit of usually having (at least) one paper book and one ebook in progress. I'll probably get through ebooks faster now, though, if I'm not only reading on my phone during spare moments of waiting.

For my second reading life upgrade, I finally joined the book community site Goodreads after thinking about it for years (I really do everything at a glacial pace, huh?). I've been having fun organizing my virtual shelves and importing the reviews from this blog. I'll still post my book recommendations here, but look for me at Goodreads if you'd like to follow my reading progress in more excruciating detail.

I've added a Goodreads widget to the sidebar of my blog that displays the books I'm currently reading. I'm gradually adding more books to my Goodreads shelves. Eventually I'll have my whole to-read list in there, and we can see just how long it really is.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Patrick Somerville tells the strange and horrifying story of a bad review based on a serious misreading of his novel. His fictional character had to set the record straight.

5 comments:

Iphy said...

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I just finally setup LibraryThing. LOL.

Don't think it matters really, though. I mostly want it for personal stuff like having a list of all of my damned books and keeping my want to read lists and stuff. I'm not really looking for much in the way of Social from it. I think.

Lisa Eckstein said...

iphy: Oh dear. :) I haven't heard as much about LibraryThing, so I guess I probably know fewer people using it than Goodreads. But I did maybe have the impression that if you're only looking for a library management tool, LibraryThing might be superior, so if so, good choice for your purposes.

Henri Picciotto said...

I'm on GoodReads, but I don't read all that much. And you already can guess my ratings. :)

I had been thinking of _To the Lighthouse_ for my next phone reading, and _The City and the City_ (which you recommended to me) for my next normal book.

It turns out I can check ebooks out of the Berkeley Public Library! They have the latter book as an ebook, but not the former, so I might switch it around.

Karen said...

Yay, fun!! I quite like GoodReads AND Kindle, but you know that already. :)

Lisa Eckstein said...

Henri: I'm looking forward to discussing The City and The City with you. Cool about the library ebooks. I haven't tried doing that yet, but my library does offer ebook borrowing.

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