An 18 month moleskine

I had a bit of a shock recently when I realised that my trusty old Wizard of Oz organiser was ending in July.  I’m usually really delighted to buy new organisers because you know, notebook fetish and what not… but I’m also a little sad at the demise of the Wizard planner because it was really beautiful and suited my purpose nicely.

I got it from a shop in Parkway Parade which I believe is called Sationery Island and it’s one of those planners (you’ll get a similar kind from Artbox) which allows you to put in any date and any month and any year.  It came with some really cute stickers and I am, if anything, a sucker for massively cute stickers. The beautiful paintings and Wizard of Oz quotes really sold me too - I'm a massive fan of the movie and the songs and I used an undergraduate essay as an excuse to watch it something like 50 times.

If you’re interested, both Stationery Island and Artbox will have amazing organisers like this and they’ll all be colourful and exciting and will any luck, you can put any month in as well.

I was ready for a bit of a change though, and stuck for what to do about being abandoned by my planner in July, when completely by coincidence, I strolled into Waterstones and found this:

I've wanted to try moleskine organisers for ages, but pocketsized is way too small for a notebook freak like me.  But a moleskine organiser that runs from July 2011 to December 2012 that's medium-sized?  Sign me up!  What really sold me is the fact that it’s a softcover mole and I’ve been DYING to try one of those for ages because they look a lot lighter and more flexible than the hardcover moles. 

(A caveat – I’ve heard some not so nice things about the durability of the softcovers, so I’ll let you know how it goes after some use.)

I bought the moleskine wrapped in plastic without really knowing what was going to be inside apart from a week every two pages, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a whole bunch of different things, all of which are very useful.

These time zones for instance, are helpful for someone like me who is occasionally living in three at once.

And I really really loved the idea of this ruler because I don’t carry a ruler around anymore and I think this will come in handy!

There’s also a month kind of calendar in the front that you can use for quick appointments or birthdays and so on.  (Update:  There are stickers in the back that I didn’t see earlier!  Little red, green and grey stickers to mark dates!  I’ll show them in the review proper.)

The actual organiser pages are great, my handwriting is tiny, so they’re the perfect size, and the lined page on the right is great for making notes about the week in particular.  For instance, this week I’m travelling, so it has my packing list on it. 

That’s all I’ve got for now, but I’ll do a detailed review of this moley after I’ve used it a bit in case you’re interested in getting one.  For now though, I have to say that I’m pretty satisfied with it so far.

PS  As you’re reading this, I’m probably chilling in the land of the brave.  Hope you enjoyed it though, and I’ll see you soon!

Notebook jonesing

I've been on a massive stationery geek kick lately.  One reason for this might be that I'm slowly getting my writing process in order.  (I know that sounds terribly fartsy and pretentious, but to be honest, I'm not capable of being very fartsy and am just trying to get a system going so that I can write consistently and know where I'm going with it.)

I love looking into people's notebooks and getting a glimpse into not just their thoughts but how they organise them, and so I thought I would share my system with you a little bit.  Ever since I read this piece called The Three Notebooks Every Writer Should Keep, I've been trying to adhere to their recommendations.

These are the three tools I use for writing (not counting my personal diary and organiser and so on, of course).  I use my laptop to do a writer's exercise called "Morning Pages" which was recommended by a classmate of mine.  Basically every morning, as soon as I wake up, I roll over, boot up and write two pages of stream-of-consciousness rubbish.  It's taking a lot of getting used to because I have to delay the start of my day by about twenty minutes, typing furiously in bed, but I'm hoping to get some interesting ideas from it and I can already see that morning thoughts are less guarded and more free flowing than thoughts you'll have throughout the day.

I use the Snoopy moleskine as a notebook on the go.  I pop it in my handbag and scribble down things that come to mind.  It's recommended that the moment you hit upon an idea, you scribble it down so that you don't forget it.  I do think this is great advice as I'll often think of an interesting storyline as I'm walking down the road and then five minutes later, to my great frustration, it will have slipped away.  Unfortunately, this can also make you look all stuck up and fartsy, whipping out a pretentious notebook to write pretentious things in front of friends, but hey, if it helps me keep my ideas, I'll do it.

Above is an idiotic drawing I did to try and figure out what "Ninety-nine times as high as the moon" physically meant.  Not much maths smarts there I have to say.

I'd earlier posted about my Snoopy moleskine here, but believe it or not, neglected to look into the back pocket until recently (some moleskine user I am!) and found these adorable stickers!  HUZZAH!

The "World's Storyteller" notebook was a present from my mother who got it from the BBC (long story).  It is one of THE MOST AMAZING notebooks I have ever owned and unfortunately I don't know if I will ever be able to get my hands on a similar one.  Never have I seen a free notebook with such beautiful paper in it.  There is a lovely light grey grid across the paper which is so hefty and creamy and thick that I wouldn't be surprised if it was 100gsm or more.  My moleskines have nothing on this beauty.

My only issue is the spiral which makes it very hard to write on the facing pages, so like a true notebook nerd, I'm using up all the left-hand side pages till I get to the back (I'm a leftie), then flipping it upside down and going back to front.  Hey, I never claimed to be sane.

I'm using this one as my proper writer's notebook.  Above, is an example of a fun character sketch I'm doing for one of the characters I'm writing right now.  The purple ink represents physical traits and the blue ink personality traits.  I'm not neat in person but in my notebooks, I'm downright anal as you can probably tell.

The post-its are how I storyboard right now.  It's a good system so far because I can move things around without them flapping around on the wall in front of me.

Another reason for my recent jonesing streak might be that people keep sending wonderful things my way, for example, this beautiful notebook with gold animals inlaid into the cover from one of my best friends, Becky. I especially like the greyhounds and the very intelligent looking foxes on the bottom of the book.  I once ran into a fox on a country road (literally) and it looked just as intelligent as all that.

Becky and I have known each other for over ten years and she never fails to pick beautiful things out that absolutely suit my tastes.  This notebook didn't just come with the lovely owl-printed pages, but also a handwritten message (with Secondary School glitter pens no less!) that made my heart flutter just a little bit.  Thank you my dear, sweet, partner in crime!


I thought I would end this post with something crazy. 

If you, my friend reading this, are as addicted to stationery and writing as I am, I am about to provide you with some Grade A smack.

Over the past few days, I have been bookmarking sites which I can turn to for inspiration and an energy boost.  I know it sounds crazy but when I'm flagging a bit on the writing front, there's nothing like looking at some paraphernalia to wake me up again.  If I sound insane right now, please pretend you haven't read this post and scroll right on to the next one.  Thank you.

1) Notebook Stories

This is a great aggregator site (shut up, spell check, "aggregator" is totally a word) which continues to review notebooks and ink that are coming out on the market.  More than that, however, it's a site with heart - it has regular features on notebook addicts, tells stories about the notebooks of famous people and tries its best to field questions from the paper fiend populace.

2) Doodler's Anonymous

I cannot explain to you how fast this site makes my heart race.  But maybe I can demonstrate:

All picture from http://www.doodlersanonymous.com/

This site basically features everyone from amateur doodlers to full blown artists, some of whom blow my mind.  I love the last picture in particular, drawn by an outstanding cartoonist called Jim Bradshaw.  I love notebooks that look like this, well-filled, wonderfully drawn and, dare I admit it, still with some semblance of method in the madness.  If you are even the slightest bit interested in art, check it out.

3)  The Well Appointed Desk

 All pictures from http://wellappointeddesk.tumblr.com/

This website is like the Ikea of stationery.  One look at some of the beautifully put together workstations, novelty notebooks and writing implements and I feel like getting down to work right away.  If you visit their site, please, please do yourself a favour and click on the archive link in the left sidebar.  They are put together in a way that is, no other way to describe it, delicious. 

You'll find everything from tools of the trade to the people who ply it here.

4)  Anna Rusakova's moleskine

This is one of the many artists I have discovered from The Well Appointed Desk.  I love notebooks (OBVIOUSLY) and there is nothing I love more than seeing them well-used, well-loved and filled with talent this way.  I really enjoy Rusakova's fine, sensitive drawings that manage to be both precise and quirky.  If you like the example above, go ahead and click on her link.  You have an afternoon of oohing and aahing ahead of you.

I've got several other sites in mind, but I thought that was what I would share for now.  If you have any suggestions for similar sites, I would LOVE to hear them.  Please feel free to share! 

What I'm reading, 21/02/2011 and what are YOU reading?

*Note: In hastily grabbing photos of book covers for this post, I stupidly forgot which URLs they came from and since anyone book cover may have a bajillion pictures online, I cannae find which ones they are.  For this, I'm horribly sorry, but none of them were taken by me at all.

Since I got into school, I've been trying to go into reading overdrive.  What is frowned upon in the working world as possibly frivolous and taking time away from work or reading *important* things like the newspapers and official documents is lauded and rewarded here.  ("Lauded and rewarded"!  Try saying that five times fast.)

I already do a fair amount of reading from the syllabus, so in my spare time, I try for a bigger range of books that still capture my interest.  It's not exactly a very intellectual list, indeed, my reading tastes tend to hover in the Young Adult category and I suspect they will for a long time yet.  Who cares?! 

I just thought I'd introduce (or talk about, if you already knew them) three books I'm reading now or have recently finished.  And in the spirit of exchange, I would ask:

Do you guys have any books at all that you would like to recommend? 

I am open to trying almost anything!  Anyroad:

1)  Confessions of a Conjuror, Derren Brown (just finished)

I have recently become obsessed with Derren Brown (if you don't share this proclivity, feel free to scroll away right now).  I think a lot of my love for him lies in the fact that I am uber interested in psychology and anything that has to do with debunking woo and/or the making of "fake" woo (does that sentence make any sense at all?).

So Derren's methods of cold-reading, supposed mind-reading, hypnosis and so on are deeply, deeply interesting to me in how they are possibly done and what this says about human psychology.  He is one performer who has perfected his technique to a fascinating degree and his performances never fail to thrill me.  (That he is rather good-looking doesn't hurt.)

Another huge chunk of my love for him is something completely different: apart from being hugely talented, he is hugely funny.  I am a sucker for funny.  I will go all lengths for funny (ask the D).  And when I read Derren's first book, Tricks of the Mind, purely in a testing the water kind of way, I discovered that not only is he extremely intelligent, but he has an engaging sense of humour which waves pretty close to my length.

Confessions is no different.  It isn't about how he does what he does (you're better off reading Tricks for that and see if you don't come away amazed and jumping to try "hypnosis") but more like little anecdotes about his life and his observations of people.  The latter is completely fascinating.  As someone who people watches obsessively and tries very hard to understand what makes them tick, I found myself nodding in agreement and wonder with several of his observations including things like extremely detailed accounts of how people behave in lifts, how people behave with strangers, how people are enamoured with what comes off their bodies.  And I feel there's no surprise that he's so good at what he does, he has to know human reaction and thinking pretty well to do it.

The book is written in a meandering, stream of consciousness way which can be quite heavy, so if you're not a Derren fan and you don't care to know how he thinks, don't read it.  I, conversely, was quite excited by his accounts of lots of different kinds of human behaviour in instances in his life where he observed himself performing said idiosyncracies and the book just made me aware of a whole microcosm of the thoughts and semiotics we employ. 

Derren seems to know what his fans want more of and has set out to provide us with just that.

2) The White Queen, Philippa Gregory (about 78% in)

I watched The Other Boleyn girl with a friend or summat (Diothman, was it you??) a little while ago and I wasn't particularly swayed by the story or the execution (of the story, not Anne Boleyn) but on a youtube recommendation, I decided to pick up The White Queen.

This book gives me mixed feelings.  To start with, the writing style is not the best - I could do without a lot of the repetitions and reiterations, such as the oft repeated fact that the King's brother George is a turncoat, a phrase which must've appeared 30 times by now.  The story is also occasionally plodding and meandering and you feel like one war blends into another with the descriptions and thoughts of each feeling quite similar. 

That said, I should now probably tell you about the story.  It's a historical novel in 15th century England which follows a woman called Elizabeth Grey whose family once supported the Lancastrian side in the War of the Roses (if you don't know what that is, don't worry, I didn't either).  She is seen by the York King Edward (this is after the Lancestrian King Henry is toppled) and it's basically about their marriage, their rise to power and the ensuing fight for them to keep the throne.

Despite all this book's faults, one thing it had going for it is that the history of England is absolutely enthralling.  There's so much plotting and intrigue and murdering and drama that you can't help but wonder if it's all made up.  I'd always wanted to know more about Inklund (seeing as I'm now here) and this book made understanding the War of the Roses a piece of cake.  Probably not entirely accurate, but in essence, there.

One of it's main faults is that I don't quite care for the heroine, Elizabeth, in fact, she is quite nasty and I find myself hoping she'll be quickly done away with and I feel the same about many of the characters.  What keeps me turning the page is wanting desperately to know how it all ends because the story takes so many twists and turns. 

I'm not done with it yet, so the best may be yet to come (grammar, grammar) but for now, my summary is: if you want a book with characters that you are going to love and care for and beautiful literature, this isn't it.  If you want an easy-reading historical novel with plenty of spice and intrigue and you're really interested to understand the War of the Roses, then dig right in!

3) Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (about 50% in as it's a whacking great book)

I am a short story lover.  Particularly, I am a weird short story lover.  I love, love, love Roald Dahl's short stories.  I cannot imagine how a writer has so much skill that he can write an entire story that keeps you on tenterhooks the whole time and then introduce the most major plot element in the FREAKIN' LAST LINE that turns the story a whole different way and that you never ever saw coming (SEE The Way Up To Heaven in Kiss Kiss).  (I enjoy Jeffrey Archer's short stories for the same-ish reason but to a lesser extent.)

Kim Spyke recommended this and when I heard that Neil Gaiman (of Coraline and Neverwhere genius) and Al Sarrantonio had teamed up to put together an Anthology of short stories that seemed to include weird fiction in one way or another, I jumped at it.  Nothing is more satisfying than a beautifully crafted, often horrifying and titillating work of fiction that you can read in one sitting and that stays with you.  And this book promises over 20 such pieces.

Well, okay.  Let's say that about half of them (so far) really are that good.  In my opinion, there are some that have good ideas in theory but are not terribly well written (Wildfire in Manhattan), some that are completely forgettable (Juvenal Nyx) and some which just confound me as to why they are there because... they don't seem like complete stories and you're kind of left asking: what's the point (Goblin Lake)?   (I should point out at this juncture that opinions will likely vary widely on this and you may love the stories I didn't and vice versa, so you should really give them all a chance because my thoughts are obviously not definitive.)

The book is well worth it, though, just for the stories that work.  Gaiman's own piece The Truth Is A Cave In Black Mountains is quite wonderful and chilling, written in his typical old-fashioned story-telling style.  Joyce Carol Oates, whom I have never read, turns out this marvellous piece - "Fossil Figures" about two not-quite-normal brothers.  There's one by Jodi Picoult called "Weights and Measures" which I found absolutely heart-breaking.  I read it to Anjuly and Shriya when we were stranded in Paris and they agreed.  And the opener, Roddy Doyle's intriguing "Blood" is enough to make you want to keep going through the rest of the stories.  (Also "The Stars Are Falling" is rather wonderful.)

All in, I think the magic of a book like this is you can pick it up when you want, stop when you want and skip around as you want for each little piece and wading through all the ones you don't like will inevitably lead you to some that you do and that will stay with you - as shivery, creepy little short stories are wont to do - for a long, long time.  

If you're still with me, please tell me, because I'm always looking out for more: What are you guys reading right now and/or do you have any reading recommendations?

I'm thinking of going next for The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal... I'll let you know!

What's in my bag: School Edition

You probably know by now I'm obsessed with knowing what people carry in their bags so I hope you will excuse this School Edition of what's in my bag.  In particular, I get very excited about knowing what people carry to school.  It guarantees stationery, notebooks and exciting things to read.  (Unless you're doing International Relations like some of my school mates and reading books called "States and Markets" and the like.)

This gigantic Longchamp Pliage actually belongs to my mother, but she lent it to me for use here because it's strong, doesn't get dirty easily and carries a TON.

Behold, exhibit A:

This is more or less what I carry to school every Monday.  If it looks like it weighs a ton, I assure you, it really does.

1)  Hello Kitty pencil case  (Oh, I know, I never thought the day would come)

2) Room keys

3)  Nokia E71 phone

4)  Plaid pyjama shorts.  There's a really good reason for this, I do a workout of sorts on Monday that requires me to wear short, comfy shorts, so I bought these cheapo pyjama bottoms (they have fey little frills on them) for a few quid and just throw them on to workout in.  People have actually complemented me on my workout STYLE.  I know, true story.

5)  Two berets.  Another good reason, my crazy, wonderful class is working on a project where we get one of our classmates to wear as many weird hats as possible and take pictures of him.  I've just realised they are all as nutty as I am.

6)  Radley wallet.

7)  Smint.

8)  iPod

9)  Boring black umbrella.  I had a hot pink candy striped one and left it in Costcutter like a clown.  But the weather here is so wacko, I needed another one.

10)  Kindle in my Tokidoki pouch (it fits perfectly!!)

11)  Little plastic folder with my classmates' stories in it.  Some of the work submitted in this class is truly phenomenal and I'm grateful for the chance to read and talk about it all the time.  Also, this folder has got a Japanese animation story going on on it, about two rabbits who open a restaurant to feed hungry squirrels.  It cracks me up!

12)  Envelope with some bank letters in it.  Don't ask.

13)  Spotted black pouch and black mesh pouch with various toiletries.

14)  A'zone testpad all the way from Singapore.  I am so freakin' fussy about the kind of paper I write on, I brought my own from home.  It's thick, and smooth and the lines are clearly printed on.

15)  Wizard of Oz organiser

16)  Snoopy moleskine which we all know about by now.

Not pictured here were my camera and a couple of books by V. S. Pritchett that I had to return to the library.  I usually throw a sandwich in before class and stagger painfully there (there is no public transportation in the Uni so I walk everywhere, which I love!).

What about you?  What do you carry in your bags for school and are they anywhere near as heavy as mine?

Can you Kindle it?

Warning:  Picture and geek heavy!  If this is too long for you, scroll down to the bottom for summary (of sorts).  This is my first review, so bear with me!

If I didn't tell you otherwise, you would swear this was a piece of paper.  That smooth, neutral cream-grey base, the words printed on top.

Of course, it isn't!  This is what words look like on the Kindle, E Ink from the future.  And this is the E-reader's greatest strength.  

Since I got my Kindle last week, I've been dying to take it out and give it a, well, a read, but reading for school and other work created a slight delay.  However, lots of people have been asking me questions, from what a Kindle is, to whether it's really as good as the powers that be say, so I thought I would give it a detailed review, particularly for people who may be considering buying it.

What: 

This is a Kindle.  It's an E reader developed by Amazon, similar to other E-readers like the Kobo.  It is six inches in length, and here it is compared to the size of one of my moleskine Cahiers (the largest sized one).  It's really thin (as thin or thinner than my mobile phone) weighs less than a small gnome.

It has a battery life of ONE MONTH.  Yeah.  Seriously.  The magic of not needing light or to do other jiggery pokery.  And in between reading, if you leave it alone for ten minutes, it goes to sleep, leaving a screen saver.  You also have the option of turning it off entirely.

Oh, and it comes in black and white.

How it works:  

 The magic of the Kindle is that it's not backlit like a computer or iPad or even mobile phone screen.  You can work by the light of your computer if the room lights are off, but with the Kindle you need a light source, just like reading a book. 

So E Ink looks like words on paper (almost, paper is white and the Kindle's background is a very very very light grey) and when you press a button, the ink briefly "rearranges" itself into the new words.  It is as if there are little pixies living in the machine that hold up flashcards to make a whole picture.  The Kindle:  Like pixieland National Day Parade, if you will.

ANYROAD.

For the purpose of this review, I decided to use a copy of Roald Dahl's the BFG.  (Can everyone remember what an OUTSTANDING book that was?  I started reading it and four chapters in I was laughing out loud, hard.  The parts where the BFG tells Sophie "Your head is full of squashed flies" and "Your parents must be jipping and skumping around the house" got me especially.  For one, that is the way Mel Fitz and I talk to each other.  If you're reading this, your head is full of squashed flies, Smelly!)

These two buttons on the sides are to turn the pages backwards and forwards.

 

Here is what the page looks like as it's turning.  It does a quick flash to black as the E ink arranges, but from the way the words overlap, you can tell it happens really quickly.  Someone said it's quicker than the actual turning of a page and I have to agree.  The black screen is annoying, but it happens so fast you soon stop noticing.

I've been told repeatedly that the Kindle is not for viewing images and I agree that if you need to look at lots of PDFs or graphic novels, the iPad is a better bet and the Kindle is mainly for words.  

BUT.  For what it is, the quality of the Kindle is really not that bad when it comes to drawings.  I mean you can clearly see that this is a close up shot of Quentin Blake's rendering of Sophie in bed, right down to the streak of moonlight falling on her face.  Colour me pleasantly surprised!

Here is another of the BFG's cavern.

Also on the subject of graphics, the Kindle does a really cool thing when it goes to sleep.  (Forgive the shine in the following few pictures, this was before I had peeled off the shiny plastic on top)

Yep.  It has innumerable cool little screen savers.  Not too shabby!

Another useful feature is the ability to change the style and size of the font when you read (great for people like me who like my fonts sans serif sometimes).  So far, we've been viewing it at the font I like to read, I guess the equivalent of a 12 point on a word processing document.

For example, here is the font at a size on the larger end of the scale.  It's about five to seven words a line, absolutely huge.  The spacing is also gigantic - about 1.5 line spacing.  You'd barely get two paragraphs in the screen like this, but it's good for the long-sighted.

Here it is with a slightly smaller font, about six to eight words per line, and I also squished the line spacing down for demonstration.  Cool huh?

The last interesting thing is the keyboard.  (Note the monitor on top of it which tells me I have read seven per cent of the book)

It's Qwerty, and you can actually choose to stop at points in the story and enter your own notes about the text if you like.  I did kinda faff around with this, but to be frank, I couldn't give a flying rat's ass.  I don't really need to enter notes into the device and if I really did, I would rather write them down in a seperate notebook anyway.  So some people may care about this, but I'm going to blow right past it.  WHATEVS. 

The only useful thing for me is that you can use it to type product names in the Amazon Kindle store, which I'll get to in a minute.

Here is my Kindle's home screen.  They programmed it at Amazon so that when it came to me it would say "Shuli's Kindle"!!

As you can see, I can categorise my books, which I have so far in Free Books and Weird Fiction.  The titles below are those I haven't catalogued.  The Kindle also came with the dictionary, which you can use to look up books. 

As you can see, if I press the right arrow on the book The BFG, I get the whole list of options.  I can go to the beginning of the book, go to the last page read (like a bookmark) or go to a specific page number.

Since the screen is smooth, there is the tiny issue of glare.  Tiny because they have resolved it much more from earlier models.  If you put a lamp directly behind you, or above the screen, you will get glare, example below.

You can see it happening at the top, and yes, that is annoying, but it really didn't bother me any other time because it's so easily remedied by changing the angle slight.  In fact, you can see I didn't get glare in any of the other pictures.

How you buy books: 

This is the thing most people seem concerned about.  So let me break it down for you. 

You can get two types Kindles.  One with 3G and Wi-Fi, and one with Wi-Fi only, but no 3G.  The Wi-Fi only Kindle is cheaper (109pounds) than the one with both 3G and Wi-Fi (149pounds) but that means you can only access the Amazon store on the Kindle when there is a Wi-Fi network.  If you are mostly at home, that's fine.

If you want to buy books from anywhere, the one with 3G is your man.  The real beauty of this is the 3G payment is ONE TIME ONLY.  There are no data charge bills sent to you afterwards, unlike, say, the iPhone.  (So I got this one!)

There is a third way to buy books, and if you are Singaporean, you are going to have to use this.  You buy the books and put them on your computer, and then you just transfer them to the Kindle using the USB cable, much like you would songs from iTunes.  This is because the Kindle Whispernet or whatever network from Amazon doesn't operate in Singapore.

On the one hand, yes this is a bit of a pain.  On the other, you do it with iTunes, don't you, and it doesn't take that long.  I tried it from my Mac today, and it worked like a charm.  So yes, the Kindle will work in Singapore, but the WAY you buy books will be affected.

OKAY!  SUMMARY TIME!


Pros:

-  In case you cannot tell, it's extremely user-friendly.  I am the least techno-savvy person and I started using it correctly the moment it arrived.

-  Very light, thin and E Ink magic!!  No backlight.  This, to me, is a massive benefit compared to the iPad.

-  Can store up to 3,500 books.  Just process that in your head for a minute.  Yep.  I thought so.  All your book are in ONE PLACE.  If you get bored, just pick another, and another, and another...

-  Page turning function is easy to use.  You can go to the last page read, like a bookmark which the device remembers for you.

- The font (upgraded from the previous model) is crisp, clear and easy to use.  You can customise it to your liking.

-  It doesn't deal TOO badly with pictures or diagrams.

-  If you get the 3G (and you live in the US or UK) you can buy books anywhere at anytime.

-  Kindle books are always cheaper than real books.  The BFG on Kindle cost me about 5pounds.  This is about 1.50pounds cheaper than ordering the real book off Amazon AND it arrived instantaneously.

-  The library of free books.  Kindle has over 500 free books (I checked) and most of them are classics, so you get lots of read without paying.  For example, I have, for free, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Mill on the Floss, The Fall of the House of Usher, Treasure Island, Dracula, Alice in Wonderland, Tristram Shandy and so on.  Fun for hours!

-  You can sync it with five other devices.  My neighbour Afua has done this, so she can read her Kindle books on her laptop, on her iPad and on her mobile phone.



Cons:

-  You obviously can't flip quickly through pages going back and forth at will like in a real book.

-  The number of Kindle books you can get is limited right now.  The library of Kindle books numbers about 700,000 at present and this will cover most of your favourites like Twilight, Da Vinci Code, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo kind of stuff.  HOWEVER.  Lots of books have yet to be converted and make agreements with Amazon.  Harry Potter.  Little House on the Prairie.  Golden Compass.  That kind of stuff. 

So I strongly urge you to go online to the Kindle store before buying it and checking what books you can and cannot get.  For me, some of the books for class reading are too obscure, but I did manage to get the books that were recommended to me in my genre, so it's all good.  For example, a lot of Neil Gaiman is available on Kindle.  Graphic novels are coming too, the sixth Scott Pilgrim is available.  So it's good for collecting the works of one author or a series.

The good news is, this is probably only a matter of time - more books are being converted to Kindle books every day.

-  If you live in Singapore, buying one is going to be a hassle.  And it will come up to come ridiculous price with V Post shipping.  I recommend that you get a friend overseas to get it for you, and bring it when they come and see you.  Also, since you don't need the 3G, it'll only be 109pounds, which is pretty good if you ask me.  You can buy 15 free books and cover the cost price already.

- The lack of 3G in Singapore may be a bit frustrating to some.

-  It is not a real book.  At the end of the day, I bought this because I'm studying overseas and there is NO WAY I could ship all the books recommended to me home.  Also, I will be spending a lot of my time on trains, planes and buses, so this is a great and not heavy way to combine my books in one place.  But, it is not a book.  It doesn't smell nice, there is no pretty spine or cover, and the pages don't bear the marks of time.  It will not fill up your bookshelf. 

Conclusion (at bloody last):

Here's my two cents.  I love the Kindle.  I honestly didn't think I would, because I'm a huge skeptic, but so far, I love it.  I have managed to find a significant amount of books, and even if not all the ones I want, it is cutting my tree-killing and weight load by AT LEAST 50 per cent.

I don't love it more than books AT ALL, but that's okay, because in the situation that I am now, it's much more practical and nature-friendly.  It's also a great book substitute for when you just cannot have that many books with you.  And if you're in class, and the teacher goes "look this and this up", you can buy the book on the spot instead of going to bookstores a 30 minute bus ride away.

So if you need to cut down on taking up shelf-space, paper, weight in your bag, baggage weight on planes and trains and ships or just squeezing a large part of your bookshelf into one device, the Kindle is for you.  It will never be the same as an actual book or takeover your use of actual books, ever, but it sure is a good complement.


PS  I hope this was helpful especially to those people who were considering it and don't know the first thing about it.  If you did like it and want more reviews on reading/writing type stuff like notebooks or pens or websites or whatever, let me know!  :)