Light My Kindle

Update 12/5/08: Unboxing pictures now available - Click here!

Amazon had a very special announcement for today, the birthday of fictional character Harry Potter and his creator J.K. Rowling. On December 4th, fans will be able to buy the story-within-a-story The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The book of fairy tales is featured as part of the storyline of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling hand-wrote a handful of copies to be auctioned off for charity back in December 2007 (Amazon purchased one of the original copies.). Fans were thrilled that she had actually thought about the content of the fairy tales, but sorely disappointed that few would ever have the chance to read them.

On December 4th, 2008, fans will be able to purchase either the Standard Edition or the Amazon-Exclusive Collector’s Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

The Standard Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard includes:

• All five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard
• A new introduction by J.K. Rowling
• Illustrations reproduced from the original handcrafted book
• Commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore

The absolutely gorgeous Amazon-Exclusive Collector’s Edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard (seen above) includes:

• All five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard
• Outer case disguised as a wizarding textbook from the Hogwarts library
• Exclusive reproduction of J.K. Rowling’s handwritten introduction
• 10 new illustrations by J.K. Rowling not included in the Standard Edition or the original handcrafted edition
• Velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling’s signature
• Metal skull, corners, and clasp
• Replica gemstones
• Emerald ribbon

The Standard Edition is only $8, and the beautiful Collector’s Edition is a fairly reasonable $100. Both are available for preorder now. You can get them on Amazon. No mention has been made of a Kindle version, but for a book with illustrations and such a beautiful collector’s edition, I doubt many would buy a Kindle version.

Julia Keller of The Chicago Tribune wrote a fantastic article about the connection readers feel with books, and why it’s so hard to abandon an unfinished book. She points out that turning off a TV show, walking out of a movie theater, and walking out of a play somehow make you feel less guilty than abandoning a book you just can’t get into.

I know exactly what she means. I have been trying to get into The Ruins on and off for about four months now. I never finished reading Stephen King’s The Stand because I read it when I was eleven-years-old and I was bored. I also never finished King’s short story The Sun Dog (from Four Past Midnight) because I was eleven-years-old and too scared to turn the next page. I never finished The Great Gatsby, even though it was assigned for my tenth-grade English class. And I have a biography of Dave Grohl (lead singer of Foo Fighters) that I put down three years ago and never bothered to pick back up.

All of them make me feel guilty. The author has her own list included in the article, and I’d bet every avid reader has a similar list of books they just couldn’t finish. She points out,

To abandon a book feels all wrong. If you do it, you look around warily, half-expecting to see your middle-school English teacher in the corner, giving you a gravely disappointed glare.

That’s only the half of it, really. While you do feel guilty in that “I didn’t do my homework” kind of way, not being able to finish a book has a stronger effect, at least on me. You know that elated feeling you get when you finish a good book? I get the exact opposite when I think of the books I never finished - I feel like I let myself down. The author seems to feel similarly:

Certain books just don’t grab you. So you let them go. But they never really go away, those cast-aside books, because their forlorn covers haunt your sleep. And sometimes, late at night, you could swear you hear them offering a sad little plea: “Can’t we try it just one more time?”

I have a hope that the Try a Sample feature of the Kindle Store will prevent me from starting books I don’t want to finish. At least I’ll be able to sample the writer’s style and a little of the story before spending money on a book.

You can read the entire article (which mentions the Kindle) on ChicagoTribune.com.

Best-seller Mitch Albom (Tuesdays With Morrie, The Five People You Meet In Heaven) has released a piece of material exclusively for the Kindle. Albom delivered the commencement speech at his nephew’s high school graduation recently and has made the entire speech available for download on the Kindle. All the proceeds from the speech will go to a charity to help the homeless started by Albom.

Amazon has more information, as well as a Q&A with the author, available on their site. The speech itself is available for only 99 cents. You can download the commencement speech from the Kindle Store. Albom’s other books are also available for the Kindle.

Mitch’s agent David Black explains the choice to make the speech available on the Kindle saying, “We thought doing it through the Kindle would be an exciting way to bring readers to Mitch and to his work. I think that Amazon has been wonderfully creative in developing new means of reaching readers and that’s an incredibly important element of the book business as it is evolving.” (You can read more about what this tactic could mean for the Kindle and publishers here.)

I downloaded the speech just a second ago, and will be reviewing it for this site soon.

I absolutely love the show How I Met Your Mother which tells the tale of how Ted Mosby meets his future wife and the mother of his children. The show stars Josh Radnor as Ted, but the scene-stealer is Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, Ted’s best friend (according to Barney).

Barney is a womanizer and kind of a jerk, but the fans love him. He’s entertaining and perfectly played by Neil Patrick Harris. He’s such a fan favorite, he even has a blog (written by show writer Matthew Kuhn).

Throughout several episodes Barney mentions a sacred “Bro Code” - the code by which bros (guy friends) live by. It includes the timeless “Bros before hos” as well as “A Bro may never pursue the mom of another Bro.” Well, the Bro Code is about to be published as a real book, currently being written by show creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, as well as the aformentioned Matthew Kuhn. The Chicago Tribune spoke to the creators who verified that the book was in the works and should be available in late November.

The important question to me, of course, is will there be a Kindle version? Secondary question, do you think Barney Stinson would own a Kindle?

As a fairly new fan of the show “Lost,” I’ve been going a little crazy without the show. I only started watching it a few months ago, starting with seasons 1, 2, and 3 on DVD, and then catching up with season 4 on my TiVo. In a short span of time I had watched all four seasons, and now I have to wait for January 2009 to see new episodes. What’s a girl to do?

Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the creators of “Lost,” have come up with a summer reading list for the fans. It’s called The Lost Book Club and features any book mentioned on the show, referenced by the show, or read by a character (most likely Sawyer) on the show. Most of which, I would guess, are available for the Kindle.

Titles include On the Road by Jack Kerouac, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and Carrie by Stephen King. Even more impressive is that you can sort the book list by season and even watch clips that show where in the episode the book was mentioned. There’s also a message board for the book club where you can discuss the books with other fans.

I’ll be starting my Lost Book Club experience with Slaughterhouse Five, a book I always intended to read. In fact, the list bears a striking resemblance to some of my high school summer reading lists. You can join The Lost Book Club here.

According to a WENN report from this morning, there are plans in the works to introduce an age-based rating system for books as there is for movies, TV, and video games.

Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy that the recent move The Golden Compass was based on, is fighting the plans. He says the rating system would be damaging to young readers.

I happen to agree. As someone who skipped straight from the kid-friendly Goosebumps series to the teen series Fear Street when I was only about 8- or 9-years-old, and then skipped right up to Stephen King novels at eleven, I believe my reading skills would have suffered if I was prevented from reading the books I chose. Granted, I pulled most of these books from my mother’s bookshelf or the library with her permission, but my point still stands. It’s hard enough to get children interested in reading in the first place. Preventing them access to certain content would only make things worse.

For example, what rating do you suppose the first Harry Potter novel would have had? Safe for all ages? How about the seventh Harry Potter novel? Surely it would at least get a PG-13-equivalent. How many of the devoted Harry Potter fans would be prevented from reading the last few installments until they were older?

Worse, what if this ratings system were to be applied to non-fiction books as well? Would children be prevented from learning about the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II because the content is too mature?

As an avid reader, I feel that a ratings system for books would be as bad as the banned books list we see every year. Of course young kids should read certain content (and sometimes I think I shouldn’t have been reading King novels at such an early age, but I turned out okay), but it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the library or the local Barnes & Noble to police what kids are reading.

What do you think - should publishers put ratings on books? Should there be laws that require bookstores and libraries to comply?

I am a huge fan of Stephen King’s writing. I’ve been reading his novels since I was eleven-years-old, far too young to be reading them, actually. I started with the novella The Langoliers and continued on with the rest of the Four Past Midnight compilation and on to Carrie, IT, and more recently Duma Key and Black House. His articles in Entertainment Weekly are always my favorite of the last page stories (although I’ve really been enjoying Diablo Cody’s contributions as well).

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see that Amazon has a dedicated Stephen King store. There’s a King discussion board, spotlights on some of his more recent novels, and even a video of King discussing the origins of Duma Key (”I started to imagine a little dead girl standing on that road–twin dead girls, with their hands linked. The image came from nowhere…”).

While there are links to Stephen King hardcovers, paperbacks (at a 4-for-3 deal), and audiobooks, there’s no dedicated link to buy Kindle versions of King’s novels. It’s a shame, because the first books I bought on the Kindle have been King books. The reason is simple - I know I’ll re-read them someday, so having them saved on the Kindle is great.

Click here to visit the Stephen King store or click here to search for Kindle versions of Stephen King books

I first read The Talisman when I was about 12 or 13-years old, about the same age as Jack Sawyer, the protagonist in the novel. The book fascinated me in ways that kids couldn’t imagine before Harry Potter. It had fantasy, danger, and an added element that I always loved in books as a kid – a young protagonist facing the world on his/her own. Books like The Talisman and A Wrinkle In Time made reading my number one childhood activity.

I decided to finally re-read The Talisman after I found a sequel while browsing the Kindle store. Naturally, I wanted to refresh my memory before diving back into Jack Sawyer’s story. The Talisman is a tale of a young man, a child really, on a dangerous mission. He sets out to find the talisman, a mysterious object on the opposite coast of the country. He travels in both the real world, and an alternate reality he calls The Territories. The Territories are an idyllic place – clean air, no cars, simple clothing and homes. The physical description of The Territories most resembles medieval times.

Jack’s mission is to get the talisman to heal both his mother (who is dying from cancer on the east coast) and Queen Laura, the ruler of The Territories (who is dying from some unknown Territories disease). We are with Jack every step of the way. He has help along the way from a handyman named Speedy, a wolf named Wolf, and others.

I absolutely love this book. I loved it as a child (reading Stephen King novels far too early for my age) and I loved it while reading it for a second time. It flawlessly moves from “the American Territories” to “The Territories” (as Jack calls them) and back. The imagery is so powerful that you almost start to believe in The Territories yourself. The length of the book isn’t a problem, and in fact once you near the end, you don’t want it to end. (Luckily there’s a sequel titled Black House.) I would absolutely read it again, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy/mystery novel. You can grab the paperback on Amazon, or get it for your Kindle at the Kindle store.