Editor of The Times Ray Hartley has an Amazon Kindle – the ebook reader that is now shipped directly to SA – and has also done some deep thinking on how the device, which can carry hundreds of books, differs from
In a word, the Kindle darkens a book’s built-in social component, says Hartley, making opaque what was once a conversation starter. Yet this hasn’t prevented him from using his device. Here’s Hartley on the new home theatre for text:
was walking around Exclusive Books when the truth about Amazon’s Kindle hit me.
All around me were ensembles of newly released books arranged seductively on counter tops.
In my bag was my Kindle, capable of downloading all the words around me and presenting them one page at a time at the click of a button.
It is self-evident that books and Kindles are worlds apart.
A book occupies space. At a glance you have a sense of its heft. Then there is the cover.
I’m ashamed to say it, but I have always judged a book by its cover.
There have been exceptions where the cover has not mattered and these have usually been non-fiction titles.
But when it comes to fiction, a book’s cover sets the tone, initiates the sequence of imagining and instantly reminds you of context when you return to it after a break.
A Kindle, by contrast, is a utilitarian masterpiece.
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