But I feel only lukewarm about the cover. I find it really comfortable to read with the cover on, but I wish it did a better job of holding the Kindle in place. The little plastic piece on mine has smashed in on one side, making the Kindle tip to the right when I try to read–rather annoying! I did a cursory search on a replacement cover, but none of the ones I found were that inspiring. Oh how I wish they would make one that matched the covers of these Penguin classics!
Just a quick note to say I finished Wuthering Heights the other morning. What an odd, terrible book–but also great. I don’t think I’ve read a Gothic book before, and the scene where Catherine goes hysterical before her death is heart wrenching. I honestly felt myself become unhinged and flailing for her survival, unable to control my emotions. Later when Heathcliff keeps Cathy and Nelly hostage while Mr. Linton is dying, I found myself SO outraged, and yet I didn’t barr animosity towards Bronte, and kept reading feverishly til the end. I’m not sure what to make of Heathcliff and Catherine’s love…it makes me think about how hard it is to let go of the person that you love, and how easy it is for one deranged mind to ruin so many other lives. Overall, I can’t quite say that I liked it, but I do respect Bronte’s power to keep me enraptured while such spiteful evil raged over everyone. Have any of you read Wuthering Heights? What did you think?
So, I’ve had my Kindle for a while now and I still love it.I find I read a lot more, and better books (classics are so cheap!! 99 cents for most, and some free content as well). I’ve only bought one bestseller so far (9.99 for those…currently reading Brisingr by Christopher Paolini, which is right now average to good). Anyway, as awesome as the Kindle is, I think it has amazing potential in the next few versions. I anticipate that a lot of the products we use now will ultimately consolidate into fewer, more powerful tools that are easily adaptable for our needs (i.e. I’ve been advocating the “e-machine” for a long time…a transportable device that will serve as an iPod, phone, eReader, laptop, etc. that can dock into a more permanent station at home with more memory and space and all that…I really cannot wait until this day–I’m sure it is to come 
). So yes, the Kindle–unlimited possibilities, and I’ve been playing around with ideas of what could be improved, how the product could really be defined, etc. for a few weeks. Originally I was planning to ramp up my skills in Google SketchUp to make an illustration of my own, but after poking around on BlogKindle and other sites, I found a few illustrations that together formed my vision of Kindle 2.0. So, first, my inspiration!
In order for the Kindle to be successful in the academic market, it needs a bigger screen. Charts and diagrams in textbooks are vital to understanding the material, and making them into microscopic images destroys most of their value. Thus, you want a screen big enough to display textbooks, but small enough that it’s not overwhelming for the everyday reader on the bus. I really like the idea of a 360 degree folding device where you can open it up to show large pages in Portrait or Landscape, as well as two smaller portrait pages when the device is held horizontally. It should also be possible to fold the Kindle back onto itself, so you can read only one smaller portrait page, similar to the current format of the Kindle. After reading on it for a few books, I find that things are much simpler, and that one page is less overwhelming than all of the text of two pages side by side. I’d like the option of keeping this format. I also think the Kindle should be able to fold the other way, so that both sides of the screen face each other for safe storing. In general I find the next page and previous page buttons to be really useful. I am not bothered at all that they are easy to hit, and it makes one-handed, snuggled-up-in-bed reading both possible and enjoyable In terms of other smaller changes, it’d be nice if the keypad was part of a touch screen, similar to the iPhone, and it might be useful to include a stylus to more directly underline or choose words to look up in the dictionary. It’d also be nice to access the dictionary from the home screen, and search for words directly instead of first looking them up in a book, and then looking them up in the dictionary. I find that while I do look up definitions while reading, sometimes I later remember the word I “learned” but not the definition, so it’d be useful to double check more easily.
So all of these things would be awesome changes and could really make a superb eReader. But what would really be revolutionary would be to force the Kindle into a screen component of a DDM PC. I find the concept of DDM computers fascinating, and it would be a really cool way to tap into a completely new market. I kind of view it more like this, where the Kindle would be part of the laptop screen at home, and then could be taken wherever to read/listen to music/watch DVDs on the go (I know the scope of the Kindle is currently only books, but seriously, I wholeheartedly believe that we’ll eventually have one device to do it all). This would be great for families who have several Kindles, and could add/subtract to the main display of the family computer at home. But more realistically, I think increasingly family members each have their own laptop, so they would only add/take away from their own computer, which may actually work better for standard screen sizes and all).
So, what do you think? Is the Kindle the next iPhone? I say yes!
Edit: I also think it will be important to solve the following issue: now that people will buy fewer paper books, their libraries at home will be smaller, and it will be harder to show off what they’ve read to others. I also get a lot of comfort from being surrounded by all of the books I love, so that is lost as well. It’d be nice to allow some sort of “cover” that would display what you’re reading on the Kindle, though this isn’t a perfect solution. I can’t decide whether iPod-esque anonymity or public displays would be better…maybe the option to do either. Hmm…
“And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations–and absolutely nothing more. [...] In any case civilization has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide for yourselves.” [huh]
“And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive–in other words, only what is conducive to welfare–is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant , too, to smash things. I hold no brief for suffering nor for well-being either. I am standing for…my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary.” [even though I think this is pure drivel, it's fun to think about how utility captures all of these things...as long as one ENJOYS the suffering, well then it does increase his utility, or well-being.]
“But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind. Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember some of my early adventures. Till now I have always avoided them, even with a certain uneasiness. Now, when I am not only recalling them, but have actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the experiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and not take fright at the whole truth.” [and I read this AFTER that post I wrote about experimenting with being intentionally more open! Dostoevsky, get out of my head!]
“Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no one like me and I was unlike anyone else. I am alone and they are EVERYONE,” I thought–and pondered. From that it is evident that I was still a youngster.” [this spoke to my teenage self, when I thought I was entirely original and no one would understand me hehehe]
Finished Poor Folk a couple days ago on my Kindle (a birthday present that I love!!!!!). It was Dostoevsky’s first novel, written in the form of letters between two second cousins twice removed, Makar and Varvara (kind of a cool name, no?). At first I didn’t know they were cousins, and thought they were lovers–and certainly parts of it read like that. But more generally the story is their struggles to remain afloat despite illness and lack of work after the war. But it’s also a love story, as they’re always trying to take care of the other first, trying to spare what little they have for each other, and trying to delight the other as much as possible with fun money for tobacco or scraps of linen. It was desperate, flailing, and poignant–the ending rather shocked me–and the last few pages were my favorite part, when Makar describes his unwavering devotion to Varvara even after she is gone. I have always enjoyed love lost stories a la Romeo and Juliet, and this one was no exception.
Reading through it made me think about the process by which we learn to love someone, how long it takes, and what we learn about ourselves along the way. The beginning is where (I think) you learn the least, because you’re just so enamored by the fact that someone wants to know you, and have you all to themselves, to band together with you and conquer the world that everything else seems to fog over. It’s intense and familial as you start to cultivate that feeling that you just belong together, which is really nice. And eventually you start making choices that inevitably impact each other, sometimes not positively, and you start learning the things that aren’t so nice about the other person. You may wonder if there’s not someone better, though you doubt whether you are good enough to catch them even if they existed. One fear of mine is that after I get married I will get stuck on a path I didn’t intend to be on, and that then I’ll feel like I’ve made a mistake because I didn’t turn out to be the person I imagine becoming in the future. But I guess that’s when you need to rely on God to remain faithful by remembering that he always has your best interests at heart if you only trust and follow him. And so really learning to love another person is the natural reaction that flows out of that trust in God, which (at least for me) is a constant battle. I fully expect to get butterflies in my stomach, or feel that well known feeling of my chest tightening, when I am 80 and coming down to the breakfast table to greet my love, but I know there will also be times when I don’t get those sensations. But even when those feelings aren’t present, I’m looking forward to changing, as an individual, and as a couple. I think it’s really neat to watch people’s relationships evolve (I’m thinking now more about friends), and with time you can see that the vast majority become more honest, more supportive–which makes complete sense given that those two people have continually chosen to love each other, and that choice more fully permeates the heart. Anyway, a fun read to contemplate love, though I’ve completely ignored perhaps the biggest theme of poverty here, which is thought-provoking as well.
Finished The Idiot a while back but I never posted my favorite passage. I found this one to be much happier than Crime and Punishment, with some brief pictures of true joy, though the ending was still bleak. Throughout the whole book you are rooting for the prince to be able to enjoy happiness: to be respected and admired by his peers, to be confident in himself, to be loved by Aglaya…but in the end, he seems destined for a substandard life. Is it true that lack of shrewdness is a sign of weakness? The prince is supposed to be a depiction of a wholly good man, though I didn’t really find him to be so. There were certainly instances where I was downright angry at him because he clearly knew how he was impacting Aglaya’s feelings and yet he still went ahead and did the hurtful thing. And surely intelligence is a sign of goodness that he was rather lacking (at least formally). But overall I again resonated with Dostoevsky’s way of stealing my thoughts before I knew they existed, and portraying them in a way that makes a lot of sense to me. I like getting caught up in a world that seems exotic and utterly unlike my own, only to realize later that I’ve had the same thoughts, almost verbatim. Kind of neat. Anyway, here is my favorite passage
“Oh, you may be sure that Columbus was happy not when he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it; you may be sure that the highest moment of his happiness was, perhaps, exactly three days before the discovery of the New World, when the mutinous crew, in despair, nearly turned the ship around, back to Europe! The New World’s not what matters, though it were to fall off the face of the earth. Columbus died almost without seeing it; and, essentially, not knowing what he had discovered. It’s life that matters, nothing but life–the processes of its discovery, everlasting and perpetual, and not at all the discovery itself, at all!”
-Ippolit
I started writing this post a while ago, but have had it saved because I wanted to include some quotes I liked from the book. Anyway, finally finished Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Overall, I liked it, even if it was slow going in the beginning. Perhaps because I knew the basic gist of the novel before I read it, I knew that the murder was coming, so it felt like a long time before we got there. I feel like his rationale to kill her was a mix between heroism and a strange desire to do something so wrong it was inconceivable for him to do in the first place. The whole first part of the book, he kept questioning himself, “but will I actually do it?” as if he really just wanted to be able to answer “yes” to that question. Of course I think it started with him feeling guilty that his sister and mother were sacrificing for him so greatly, but in an attempt to even the score, he seemed to go a bit crazy. I also really enjoyed the end, where Sonia carries the cross through the town for him as he goes to admit his sins to the police. Oh, symbolism. Anyway, this review isn’t as eloquent as the one on The Awakening, but it’s late, and I’m really tired. I’ll just copy some tasty bits below.
Pyotr Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a gleam of desperate hop. “Can all that be really so irrevocably over? Is it no use to make another effort?” The thought of Dounia sent a voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that moment, and if it had been possible to slay Raskolnikov instantly by wishing it, Pyotr Petrovitch would promptly have uttered the wish.
“[Your article] was conceived on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ectasy and suppressed enthusiasm. And that proud soppressed enthusiasm in young people is dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary amateur, I am awfully fond of such essays, full of the heat of youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your article is absurd and fantastic, but there’s a transparent sincerity, a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It’s a gloomy article, but that’s what’s fine in it. I read your article and put it aside, thinking as I did so that ‘that man won’t go the common way.’”
“You can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife[...] There’s always a little corner which remains a secret to the world and is only known to those two.”
The ending:
“He thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.
Under his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically. The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without a word. Till now he had not opened it.
He did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: ‘Can her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at least…’
She too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken ill again. But she was so happy–and so unexpectedly happy–that she was almost frightened by her happiness. Seven years, only seven years [until he was released from prison]! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering.”
Randomly wandered onto Toast’s site the other day…very pretty in an understated way, with a slight vintage flair. I liked this dress:
Also found this book cover off of design*sponge, and fell in love with it immediately. I would love a cardigan or sheer sweater with this sort of heavy embroidery! So adorable for early fall and spring!
Well, I have a TON to post about over the next couple of days, but I don’t feel quite up to it right now. I had an enjoyable long weekend–perhaps too enjoyable, actually, as i was hoping to get back to work today, which never really happened. I’ve been reading Crime and Punishment over the past few days, which is engrossing but unsettling. I feel past emotions of embarrassment and humiliation well up in me as I read the passages of Raskolnikov’s agony over what he’s done wrong, which makes it a difficult book to read for long periods at a time. But it’s quite an interesting premise, and overall I’m enjoying the book. Whenever I finish it I’ll probably post again, though who knows when that’ll be because I have a very busy few weeks ahead of me! Looking forward to Drew’s visit, and the end of this quarter! Until later, be blessed!
Style by Shannon Fricke
