Light My Kindle

Despite rampant speculation about a new Kindle before the holiday season and a bigger Kindle designed for college students to replace their heavy textbooks with, Amazon spokesman Craig Berman confirmed there will not be a new Kindle in 2008.

He spoke to The New York Times and said,

Don’t believe everything you read. There’s a lot of rumor and speculation about the Kindle. One thing I can tell you for sure is that there will be no new version of the Kindle this year. A new version is possible sometime next year at the earliest.

Kindle owners can breathe a sigh of relief knowing their fancy new technology won’t be replaced for at least another four or five months.

Paul Biba, a former Sony Reader owner and writer for TeleRead.org, recently got a Kindle to replace his broken Sony Reader. He has been enjoying it and says,

Changing font sizes is fast. As a matter of fact the whole machine is very fast compared to the Sony. Makes the Sony look like a real slowpoke.

He also says,

Overall, I am far more impressed than I thought I would be. From the software side it is clear that Amazon has given the reader a great deal of thought compared to Sony. It seems to me that Sony designed the hardware and then just added some software to it, while Amazon tried to develop a fully integrated package.

To read more about how the Kindle compares to the Sony Reader, visit the original post on TeleRead.org.

There is an excellent thread on the Amazon.com Customer Discussions forum that has become a user-generated Kindle F.A.Q. There are answers to just about every question about the Kindle that you could imagine (including the identity of some of the authors on the screensaver), and if your question hasn’t been answered yet you can post it and you’re sure to get an accurate response from the very active forum members.

Check out the thread at the Amazon.com forum.

When you put your Kindle in sleep mode, a screensaver appears that can be anything from a Kindle tip or a picture of a classic author. Some Kindle users figured out how to add your own pictures to use as screensavers. The process is explained in great detail here and seems fairly simple. Just copy the files to your Kindle and then follow the simple steps for activating them as screensavers.

The writer of that blog (who incidentally has the last name Kindel) went one step further and added his name and contact information on top of the pictures before transferring them to the Kindle. That way, if his Kindle were ever lost and some kind person found it, they would be able to contact him to return it.

The Kindle Daily blog (which appears to only be available through the built-in Kindle store on the Kindle) announced that Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels are now available on the Kindle. All of them.

As someone who has never read the Bond novels, and only got into the Bond movies with the introduction of Daniel Craig as 007, I think this is very exciting. Now I’ll be able to read all of the novels conveniently on the Kindle.

Get your James Bond Kindle Editions today.

The number of third-party cases available for the Kindle is pretty impressive. This particular one has an interesting twist. Not only is it a nice looking leather case that can hold your Kindle and some SD cards, but it doubles as a Kindle stand to make reading hands-free.

Currently there’s only one review for the case on Amazon, but it’s a four-star review and the writer points out that the case is very secure and will also store the Mighty Bright light that many Kindle owners use.

You can get the Tuff-Luv Executive Leather Kindle case on Amazon.

One of the wonderful things about the Kindle is the ability to change the font size to your liking. This is useful for several reasons. One, if you’re used to reading large print books. Two, if you forget your reading glasses one day. Three, if you want to make the font small so as to avoid flipping pages so often.

Even more impressive is how easy it is to change the font. On your Kindle, there’s a small button on the bottom right-hand corner of the keyboard. It has two capital As on it - one small and one large. Press that to bring up the font change choices.

The font sizes are shown as 1 through 6, with your current font size displayed with an arrow next to it. Each size is shown in its actual size to make it easier for you to decide which you’d like. Just move the scroll wheel to the font of your choice and click. The screen will refresh and your new font size will be in effect. To change it again, repeat the process.

This was the first Vonnegut book I read, and I wasn’t prepared for the randomness. He has a wandering kind of writing style, which suited the plot of this book wonderfully. I picked it up originally because it was part of the “Lost” book club. While it’s easy to see where the “Lost” writers pulled inspiration from the book for several episodes (as well as an overall inspiration for non-linear storytelling), the book is fascinating on its own.

The book follows Billy Pilgrim in first person as he recounts his life – from his time in the war to making a living as an optometrist to living in a zoo on the alien planet of Tralfamadore. The story explores the concept of time and proposes that time isn’t linear and that moments exists forever. For example, you’re reading this review right now, but in another moment in time that still exists you’re experiencing your first day at school, or buying your first car, or grocery shopping last week. It’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around, but it makes for an astoundingly entertaining book.

We follow Billy as he slips in and out of different periods of his life – one moment he’s in the war and the next he’s preparing for his daughter’s wedding. He travels through full decades, countries, and even planets.

The writing style is very simple, but effective for the purpose of the book. It was entertaining, even though it could be confusing at times. My only real complaint is that it ended very abruptly. There was no wrap-up, per se. That may be a characteristic of Vonnegut’s work that I’ll just have to get used to, or it might have been a plot device (ie: the book never really ended because in some moment of time I’m still reading the book).

I would definitely recommend it to those who actually enjoyed the books they made you read in high school. This is definitely one I wish my English teacher had put on our summer reading list.

You can get Slaughterhouse Five for your Kindle, or in paperback at Amazon. If you’d like to know more about how it relates to the TV show “Lost” you can check out the “Lost” Book Club Official Website.

A company called Vizu has an interesting Kindle travel package that includes a soft-cover travel case, a silicone cover for the Kindle itself, and a screen protector. The case is sturdy-looking and comes in black, pink, or blue (You can see the black one at left).

The case has a zipper top for the Kindle storage and then a small zippered pocket on the front which looks as if it could store headphones (for listening to audiobooks) or maybe even the Kindle charger if you didn’t want it to lay flat.

You can get one on Amazon.

Amazon and Chase are running a promotion on the front page of Amazon.com today (as seen in the screenshot above) where you can save $100 on a new Kindle by signing up for (or using, presumably) the Amazon Visa card. That brings the price down to a very reasonable $259.

Click here to get your Kindle and take advantage of $100 off! That’s $100 more you can spend on Kindle books (roughly ten books at the full $9.99 price point).