Category Archives: readin’ and writin’

The New Kindle is Coming!, and the Best Cover for Kindle 2

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 29, 2010 – 4:30 pm
Filed under readin' and writin', stuff i like
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My friend Jeff pointed me to Engadget’s article on the new Kindle today, and it got me thinking about how my Kindle has been so life-changing and will only be more life-changing for other people now that it’s available in different colors, has an even faster refresh rate, and is selling for $139.

Have you looked at my Shelfari shelf recently? It’s exploding. Now that I’m never without a book, I’m flying through them like never before. Even crappy books like the Sarah Silverman one. Even books I thought would be crappy but turned out to be engrossing, like Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures. If I get 20 pages into a book and don’t care about it yet, I don’t have to wait until I’m home or at the library to get something else; I just click over to my home screen and choose another one. There’s literally nothing I miss about real books.

I assume you’ll all run out and buy the new version when it’s released on August 27th, but in case you decide to buy the Kindle 2 on eBay for even cheaper, let me recommend the cover that I have. I shopped around for days and finally decided on the TrendyDigital MaxGuard Leather Cover in purple. It’s so sleek and feels so good in my hands with its leather shell and soft suede-like interior. The Kindle slides into its pocket and fits so snugly that it doesn’t need any elastic bands or metal prongs to hold it in. The magnetic closure makes this great little snapping sound when you flip it closed that sounds so smart I can’t help but feel as if everyone on the train has heard it and is envious of me.

I’ll tell you who I’m envious of, though: these people who carry their Kindles without any case at all. I see them on the train with their 1/3rd-inch-thick readers, and I think, How rich must you be to not care about scratching that thing up? I’ll bet they’re all reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, too.

(Okay, fine, I read it and didn’t hate it.)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Reading at the Gym

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 9, 2010 – 1:30 pm
Filed under readin' and writin'
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I only downloaded Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running because of its super-romantic-but-maybe-only-to-me title. I figured it was figurative, because obviously a book about running would never actually be called This is Totally a Book About Running. But it really is a memoir about training your body for marathons and how that relates to training your mind for writing, and I decided to go ahead with it because I like Murakami so well.

It’s fine reading it on the subway and all, but where I’m really getting the most joy out of it is in the gym. I used to seriously dread waking up at 5:45 to go to the basement of Kamran’s building, and I tried hard to make it more tolerable with books and movies, but I always bounced around too much to concentrate on tiny text, and I always got too easily bored with intense indie plotlines. But now that I can pump up the text size on my Kindle, going to the gym seems like a small sacrifice for having quiet time to read (because obviously I would never wake up before 6 just to challenge my intellect), and it makes me feel so much less hateful toward the elliptical machine when the person I’m reading about is working hard, too.

The first book I read in the gym on my Kindle was Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and I actually found myself wanting to hike the Appalachian Trail while I read it. And now I actually find myself wanting to run while reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. This morning, I went an extra .3 miles just because Murakami told me my muscles will cooperate with me if I push them harder little by little. Before, I would purposely go .3 miles less every day just to spite Kamran and his desire for me to love working out.

So, now that I’m on this activity-themed book kick, anything you’d recommend?

The Best Thing About “Eclipse” (and the Most Annoying)

Posted by plumpdumpling on July 2, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, i used to be so cool, my uber-confrontational personality, readin' and writin', there's a difference between films and movies, why i'm better than everyone else
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I was surprised to learn, upon reading them, that though the writing is as awful as I would’ve imagined, the plot of the Twilight series is actually pretty clever. Unlike, say, “Lost”, all of the loose ends eventually tie up, and the things you never thought would matter suddenly do. There are no red herrings nor MacGuffins in them.

Yet they still totally annoy me simply because their author, Stephenie Meyer, has to thank the band Muse in each of them. In all of the novels’ afterwords, right alongside appreciation of her editor and agent, she’ll say things like, “And thanks also to my favourite band, the very aptly named Muse, for providing a saga’s worth of inspiration.” And then I will claw her eyes out.

It’s not even that I don’t like Muse. I actually really liked them in NINETEEN-NINETY-NINE when I was listening to them. But I just can’t handle some kids’-book-writin’, middle-aged Mormon thinking she’s all cool for liking one pop-alt band. It’s like moviestars thinking anyone cares about their political activism. And you know she’s just doing it in some used-to-be-unpopular girl’s attempt to befriend the band she loves.

I went to see Eclipse last night with my friend Ash, though, and aside from a couple of actually-hilarious moments, what I was surprised by most was the soundtrack. It does not suck. In fact, it includes The Bravery, the amazing Ohio band The Black Keys, and my favourite band right now, Band of Horses. And the music is used really well. The first time you see, Jacob, for instance, the camera moves in on his face as a grinding bluesy song starts, and it’s this total moment. How annoying is that?

I can console myself with the fact that I know it wasn’t Stephenie Meyer choosing the music and how it’s used, but I can still continue to hate her for all of her Muse-suck-upping. Mostly because I know I’d do exactly the same thing if I was in her shoes.

Except with a better band.

5 Ways My Kindle Surprised Me

Posted by plumpdumpling on April 6, 2010 – 3:45 pm
Filed under readin' and writin', stuff i like
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Now that the iPad has been released, several people have asked me if I wish I would’ve waited another week to buy my Kindle.

And my answer is always, “Are you kidding?” The iPad is great-looking and probably fun to use, but it’s not an e-reader. The Kindle is actually everything I hoped it’d be and more, for half the price of even the cheapest iPad (and almost $600 cheaper than the most expensive one). I feel like I didn’t know half of what it was capable of before I bought it, and I wouldn’t have hesitated as long as I did had I known what I was in store for.

• Built-In Dictionary: A small button on the front acts as a mouse that allows you to scroll around pages. When you rest the cursor beside any word, a text bubble pops up at the bottom of the page with the definition. I always thought I was a smartypants who was soooo good at figuring out words from their context clues, but it turns out that no, no, I am not.

• Free Wireless 3G Internet Access: Why is this not the main point they’re using to sell the Kindle other than, you know, the whole being-able-to-read-books-on-it thing? The Amazon store is of course built right in, but Google and Wikipedia searches are, too, and I was even able to view this very blog on it. It was the text version, like you might see on a BlackBerry, but still. Dedicated wireless!

• Highlighting and Notes: I used to carry around miniature sticky notes to plop down all over my book pages, but the Kindle not only lets you highlight the text itself, it also lets you type notes on the page you’re reading. It collects your highlights and notes in a file that lists them and includes a small excerpt from each one so you can find what you’re looking for at a glance. When you plug your Kindle into your computer’s USB port, you can copy the file from your Kindle to your computer and edit it from there. GENIUS.

• Text-to-Speech: Yeah, it reads to you. I’m not talking about playing audiobooks on it. I’m talking about a male or female voice (that’s not too robotic) that recites the text for you while you eat a sandwich with one hand and wipe your butt with the other. I will never use this, but I’m pleased with its existence nonetheless.

• MP3s: It plays them. While you read, on the subway, with the gangster-looking guy next to you listening to some sappy Beyoncé that you can be so thankful you don’t have to hear.

I don’t need a free hand on the train to flip the page, I don’t have to lug five paperbacks on the plane with me every time I visit my family, and I can catch up on (for free!) all of the classics I should’ve read in college but was too busy being a band groupie to take time for.

There’s one negative: the Kindle can read PDFs, but it can’t read them as well as the ebooks you buy from Amazon.com. Meaning that you can’t highlight or write notes in them. NOT A FAN. Luckily, there’s a free program called MobiPocket Creator that lets you convert your PDFs into a format the Kindle likes and can highlight/notate.

Of course, maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and all of these things were clear to everyone else. Anyway, are you convinced yet?

Read These New Blogs Now

Posted by plumpdumpling on February 11, 2010 – 2:35 pm
Filed under readin' and writin'
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I know this sounds cheesy, but aside from actually needing to write in order to keep all of my feelings from bursting out of me at inopportune times, I like the community that a blog creates. I like having a few people who I can rely on to find something to say about everything I post and who can rely on me to do the same. (i.e. Tracey and Bachelor Girl)

A lot of blogs that I like end up failing, and I think it’s because they never develop a community of people who make them feel as if it’s important that they keep writing. (Not that I think I’m curing cancer here.) Mostly it’s because they never make an effort to reach out to other bloggers, maybe because most writers are insecure yet narcissistic.

What I’m leading up to is that there are a few blogs that I recently started reading and that I’d really, really love you to read, too. Because I like nothing more than to see your comments on other blogs and to publicly mock you for them.

• Feast on Scraps, Tracey’s idea/inspiration blog that’s loosely related to our forays into scrapbooking but is mostly just pretty stuff she likes

• Good Hair, Kim Luck, Kim’s blog about how Jesus has given her great hair but absolutely nothing else good in life

• Sandy Olive, Sandy’s blog about . . . you know, stuff . . . and I’m not even sure why it’s good, but it is, and it’s often very heartfelt

Feel free to comment with any blogs you think are worthwhile, too.