Kindle - Location, Location, Location

Thanks are due to my friend Lora for sharing yesterday's big news in the electronic reading world via Twitter feed. I know that GBC K1m and I both share excitement that real page numbers will finally enter the Kindle world. While Amazon has a nice spin in their user guide that:

Locations are the digital answer to page numbers. Since you can change the text size on Kindle, the page numbers would change too, but with locations, you can be confident that you return to the same place every time regardless of the text size you prefer. [Note: Kindle's User Guide does not have page numbers either so this quote could not be properly referenced.]

While I salute the engineer's logic who developed this methodology, if s/he thinks that I can remember I finished last night's book at "Locations 5840-55," s/he gave me too much credit (and I am a numbers gal). So thank you Amazon, and thank you to the hundreds of people who actually used the user feedback email address to prompt the change.

Other items which I think could be improved:

1) Allowing the dictionary to be used on one-half of a hyphenated word (half, e.g.), particularly for those of us reading old Victorian novels

2) Beginning a book on the front cover rather than "Chapter 1". I am, after all, a traditionalist with books and I do like to read all the notes at the beginning. I also want a view of the cover, albeit electronic greyscale.

Not Your Easter Bonnet

Some of my favorite evenings are dinner parties. The combination of an eclectic crowd, a nice meal, bottles of reading water, and conversation ranging from the intensely geeky to the best of current events reminded me of some of our best GBC evenings. One of the highlights of last night's event was the discovery of a new book genre: "bonnet books." (These Amish romances gained their nickname due to the frequency of young women in bonnets on the front cover.) A search this morning led me to articles in Time, WSJ, and Newsweek which explored the more recent popularity growth and highlighted one of the genre's leading writers, Cindy Woodsmall. With my interest in the odd and unusual, my curiosity is piqued; I may just have to add one of these titles to my list.

Just That the Time Was Wrong...or Right?

Did you ever pick up a book intending to give it to someone else and then never seeing the person and/or deciding that the Universe intended that the book might perhaps instead be meant for you?

No. Just me? I mean, just my friend?

And so it is with The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin. The note to the reader ends with "Whenever you read this, and wherever you are, you are in the right place to begin." Perhaps it is the combination of lack of sleep, excessive caffeine, and endorphin high from my morning yoga sun salutations, but this statement resonated with me. I have long been a fan of Wordsworth's "To begin, begin" and Rubin's statement combines the right amount of philosophy and action that appeals to an engineer.

So the book will stay on my, rather my friend's shelf and be queued up for the next read.

Followed by a Moon Shadow

I have had a few days this winter where I felt as if I was trapped in Groundhog Day. In the film, Bill Murray lives the worst day of his life over and over and over again. Despite the dreary synopsis, it is a hopeful comedy for any of you who haven't seen it (meaning those of you born in the 80s). Our protagonist Phil questions why he could not have re-lived the amazing day in the Virgin Islands rather than the cold Punxsutawney in which he now appears to be destined. (It is never the great ones which repeat.) The film is filled with nice one-liners and one of the better performances by Andie McDowell (especially compared to the other film where she quotes weather - "is it raining?").

And so when I have these days that run into weeks and I feel stuck in a place that "can't spell espresso or cappuccino," I think of the film and the concept of bettering oneself each day. Oh, and I always drink to world peace.