Don ’t read this: What Kindle’s most-highlighted passages tell us about popular taste

Thu Jun 24 14:15:09 UTC 2010

Frank,

Thanks for that report on the Kindle e-reader.  First you were overwhelmingly negative, then, after a few day's use, you became overwhelmingly positive.  Maybe that's a lesson there for truespel phonetics.  

Like the Kindle first it looks pig ugly (sorry pigs).  It looks dumbed down.  Who needs it when alternative phonetics are everywhere.  Yet with truespel a US 3rd grader can learn phonetics and speak words, even other languages, phonetically correctly in an hour or two.  Capitalization and punctuation are maintained, and no special symbols are used, so even copy/paste works for computer.  

Phonetics made simple enough for kids as well as adults!  Utility is beauty.

Tom Zurinskas, 

see truespel.com phonetic spelling

Spoken tutorials at tinyurl.com/yh46rge and tinyurl.com/yls55da

> Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 07:48:11 +0200
> From: paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU
> Subject: Re: Don’t read this: What Kindle’s most-highlighted passages tell us about popular taste
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Paul Frank <paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU>
> Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re=3A_Don=E2=80=99t_read_this=3A_What_Kindle=E2=80=99s_
> most=2Dhighligh?=
> =?UTF-8?Q?ted_passages_tell_us_about_popular_taste?=
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Thanks for the article Dennis. Here's what I jotted down on May 21, a
> few days after I got my Kindle:
> 
> My Kindle review
> 
> Here's my quick and dirty and unabashedly biased review of the Kindle.
> I have been using a Kindle DX for several days. I've been reading
> books for four decades, and I happen to own more than 6000 printed
> books. My initial feelings about the Kindle were overwhelmingly
> negative, though I liked a few things right off the bat. After a few
> days, my feelings about the Kindle are overwhelmingly positive. First
> the negative, then the positive:
> 
> Design: To say that the Kindle is pig-ugly is an insult to pigs, a
> cute and much-maligned animal. An Apple product it ain't. But the
> Kindle's design is functional and it's very easy to navigate books and
> newspapers on the Kindle. At first I thought that newspapers were a
> hassle to read, especially compared with browsing a print newspaper at
> the kitchen table. But once I got the hang of it, I reluctantly
> changed my mind. Now I prefer reading newspapers on this device.
> 
> Display: For the first few hours, I thought the display was much too
> dark, so much so that I would never want to read long books and
> newspapers on it. In fact, I was ready to throw the thing out (I'm not
> someone who hesitates to throw things out). But after a few hours, I
> got used to the display and now I like it a lot. The display is not
> backlit, which means that you can read in bright sunlight, even
> outdoors. Yesterday, I read the Washington Post on an outdoor
> restaurant terrace. You don't touch the display to operate the Kindle,
> which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, because it doesn't get
> smudged with fingerprints. The text, or e-ink print, is sharp and you
> can make the font much larger than the print in printed books. In
> recent months, I've tried reading several e-books off my top-of-the
> line iMac as well as off a good laptop, with several e-book software
> programs, including the Kindle software (which is available for PCs
> and Macs). For me, there's no comparison. I simply cannot read and
> enjoy reading a 900-page book from a backlit computer screen, no
> matter how good the resolution. And it's not for lack of trying. On
> the Kindle, on the other hand, I seem to read more and faster than
> with a big paperback on my lap. Over the past couple of days, during
> which I've read and done many other things, I've read 63% of Bird and
> Sherwin's biography of Oppenheimer. Incidentally, with the Kindle you
> don't think of how many pages you've read; instead, you think of what
> percentage of a book you've read. The paper edition of this
> Oppenheimer biography (which I recommend) is 736 pages long, which
> doesn't tell us anything useful about how long the book is. Pages of
> books, without specifying the character count, don't really mean
> anything, as any freelance translator will tell you.
> 
> Size: the 9.7" Kindle DX is the perfect size for reading books. I
> don't think I would want anything smaller, or bigger. Its weight, 540
> grams, feels good in my hands or on my lap. The device also feels
> solid and it's easy to handle.
> 
> Downloading books and newspapers: very quick and easy here in
> Switzerland and presumably everywhere in the digitized world. The
> 736-page biography I mentioned earlier took less than 30 seconds to
> download. Newspapers for which you have a subscription are downloaded
> automatically as soon as you turn on the wireless download function
> (called Whispernet), which works like a cellphone. But most of the
> time, I have the Whispernet function turned off, to save battery life
> and to avoid the real and imagined harmful effects of electromagnetic
> radiation. I'm currently trying out free two-week subscriptions to the
> New York Times, the Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, El Pais,
> Le Monde, La Stampa, and the Independent. (La Stampa and the
> Independent are the worst of the lot; El Pais the best in my biased
> opinion. The Corriere della Sera is not available. The Financial Times
> is available but I prefer the New York Times.)
> 
> Battery: With the Kindle, you can read non-stop for four days without
> having to recharge your battery, which means that you only have to
> charge it once a week if you're a voracious reader and have other
> things to do (job, family, butterfly collection...). That's much
> longer than any laptop or than, say, the iPad (which Apple claims has
> a battery life of 10 hours).
> 
> The internets:* The Kindle has a basic web browser, but I haven't
> wanted to surf the internet, or read any blogs or newspapers on the
> internet, either via my Kindle of any of my computers since I got the
> Kindle, because I'm enjoying reading real books and newspapers so
> much.
> 
> Books: My fear is that I won't want to read paper books anymore. I
> have several thousand paper books in my library which I've yet to
> read. Old geezer though I am, I find myself reading long books for
> hours and hours on the Kindle, and enjoying it more than on paper. A
> lot of books I'm interested in, including university press books with
> a sinological bent, are _not_ available from the Kindle online store.
> But what is available is impressive: more than half a million
> bestsellers and in-print books, for about 10 bucks U.S. a pop, and
> almost 2 million out-of-print books, for a song.
> 
> Conclusion: I think I will spend much less time reading paper books
> and surfing the internets from now on. On a philosophical note, I
> would add that e-books are no further removed from a writer's mind and
> hand than printed books. When books began to be printed on an
> industrial scale, people complained about that too. The 11th-century
> scholar Zhu Xi lamented: "The reason people today read sloppily is
> that there are a great many printed texts... It would seem that the
> ancients had no written texts, so only if they had memorized a work
> from beginning to end would they get it. Those studying a text would
> memorize it completely and afterwards receive instruction on it from a
> teacher... For people today, even copying down a text has become
> bothersome. Therefore their reading is sloppy." Zhu Xi may have had
> a point. But books printed on paper could not be wished away once they
> were widely available.
> 
> And here's what I wrote on May 27:
> 
> Kindle redux
> 
> I wrote this Kindle review a few days ago:
> 
> http://chroniconmundi.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-kindle-review.html
> 
> A strange thing has happened since then. My Kindle is gone. It's disappeared.
> 
> This is a good thing. After a few hiccups, mainly caused by impatience
> when navigating the device, which can cause it to freeze, I've learned
> to operate it without being aware I'm doing it. And I'm no longer
> aware the device is there. It's just me and the text I happen to be
> reading. I've long paid a lot of money for paper subscriptions to
> newspapers and magazines. After more than a week with the Kindle, I
> can say that I definitely prefer reading newspapers on the Kindle,
> whether I'm in a train, in the kitchen, or in bed -- and books too.
> I'm subscribed to the New York Times, El Pais, the Frankfurter
> Allgemeine, La Stampa (the best that's available from Italy,
> unfortunately), and O Globo (unfortunately no Folha or Jornal do
> Brasil, but I love the Portuguese language) -- for around 1000 bucks a
> year, which I think is very reasonable. I ought to subscribe to Le
> Monde, but I don't particularly enjoy reading French, possibly because
> I'm surrounded by the language. In addition, I'm reading a biography
> and a novel at the same time (an old habit of mine). As a result, I'm
> spending very little time on the internet, except when I have to for
> work, I no longer watch TV or DVDs, and I'm turning down most
> freelance work. For the first time in a decade, I can see myself
> living without the internet altogether (except when translating).
> 
> It's a good thing I have a day job where I have to show up every day,
> because I'm seriously addicted to the Kindle.
> 
> My Kindle has disappeared and that's the best compliment I can give
> it. I am a little worried that I'll never read a paper book again,
> which would be bad because many university press books are not
> available in the Kindle store. I'm also concerned that so far there's
> no Chinese content. But I don't think I'll miss blogs and the rest of
> the internet for entertainment.
> 
> Paul
> 
> Paul Frank
> Translator
> German, French, Italian > English
> Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
> paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
> 
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