What I Think Of My iPhone Kindle App

I downloaded the Kindle App on my iPhone because it was free. That’s the only price I’ll pay for apps on my way-too-addictive little toy, I mean, productivity and communication tool. As a software person, and a writer, I’ve been intrigued by the digital book readers. But I’m also inherently cheap, and not particularly stuck on getting the new technology today when it’s most expensive when I could wait a year or two and get it way cheaper – if it’s still around.

I know, I know. Yes, I own an iPhone, which goes against what I just exclaimed in the previous paragraph. But I could, conceivably, as a self-employed software developer, do some iPhone App development, which would make this a reasonable business expense. And actually, when I develop my web-based business, I will need to build an app to go with it, so it’s not completely off base.

But anyhow, back to the point. I wanted to try out the free Kindle App as a possible precursor to perhaps acquiring a full-size Kindle (iPad, or Sony Reader, whatever) in the future. Try Before You Buy was my strategy. And so, I downloaded a classic, something free. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” in fact.

I’m a fan of Lauren Willig, who writes historical romance novels about flower-named spies (the Secret History of the Pink Carnation, the Masque of the Black Tulip, the Seduction of the Crimson Rose…you get my point). Well, I was entering one of the stories into my Visual Bookshelf in Facebook, and someone commented that the heroine of the story was the most Jane Austen-esque character yet. Which then, of course, made me realize that 1) I had somehow never managed to read any Jane Austen, and 2) I now wanted to.

Brief aside, I feel like I’m at a Readers Anonymous meeting right now, confessing what I, with a degree in English, am a fraud for never having read. Hi, I’m Nivi, and I never read Jane Austen. And since the first step to recovery is admission, I feel better now. Actually, we just have a simple two-step recovery process: admit what you haven’t read, and read it.

So, I decided to read “Pride and Prejudice.” Only, instead of getting it from the library, or buying a copy (when I have friends who have copies that I could borrow), I downloaded it, for free, to read on my iPhone.

Let’s start with the good:
1) It’s convenient. When I’m standing in the car line waiting to pick my kids up from school, I can read, without having to remember to grab a book.
2) It’s self-lit. I stayed up late a couple nights this week, lying in bed reading the novel with the lights turned off. This could be handy if I want to read without waking my sleeping husband. I’ll have to report back on this.
3) The story is just as engrossing. Even without the feel of paper (which is, I must say, intoxicating), I was hooked; one night, I stayed up late. The next night, I went to bed early, forgoing television for the screen of the Kindle Reader. That’s something only a well-written story can do.
4) My bookshelves aren’t getting too crowded again, and I don’t have to weed out books I’m not likely to read again. Yet. I’m sure digitally I’d reach the storage limit eventually, but not a concern now.
5) It’d definitely be easier to keep track of my books. Very convenient – until it crashes. Or there’s a power outage and its battery runs out.

So it seems, then, that I’m pro-digital book reader. Well, to be fair and balanced, here is the list of the bad:
1) In the iPhone Kindle app, “Pride and Prejudice” has 4,584 pages. So going back to re-read my favorite scenes kind of sucks. Especially when I’m not in the habit of bookmarking pages that I may one day want to look back at. And at the end of the story, there were definitely a couple scenes I would have liked to re-read.
2) I can’t add comments in the margins. I know I wouldn’t do that with a borrowed book, but I own this now. I downloaded it, and it can now reside in my permanent literary collection, so if I want to write my opinion about something in the margins that I could look back at years in the future and ponder (or laugh at past-me about), I should be able to! Think about it: how different would “The Half Blood Prince” have been if the Potions book were digital? It would totally kill the story!
3) You can’t see the time on the iPhone from within the Kindle app. Yes, I can tap the screen and see it, and tap again to go back to full screen, but somehow that’s not good enough to keep me from staying up too late. I don’t want to have to set the alarm for myself whenever I start reading. Glancing at the time now and then would have helped me go to bed before 12:15 earlier this week! I mean, seriously, like I’m going to tap the screen to check the time (or even turn around to look at my alarm clock) when Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are at each other’s throats at Roslings. (see, I can’t even quickly turn back and find the name of the place! Argh! Make that 4))
5) And here’s the big one. I can’t pace myself. I lose the emotional comfort of a book.
I recently read a book called “The Demon King”, by Cinda Williams Chima, an excellent Young Adult fantasy novelist. I had no idea whether this book was part of a series or a standalone book (I should have known, but didn’t). But I found that as the number of remaining pages started to dwindle, I was actually hoping for a sequel, because with how everything had been set up, it would have been a shame – nay, a tragic shame – to tie up all the loose ends nice and neatly and end it within the confines of the remaining pages. The story just had so much potential, and I would have been disappointed if it didn’t bother trying to reach it. So I was pleased, when I reached the last page, to learn that the story wasn’t over, that there would be a sequel (FYI, I just learned that said sequel, “The Exiled Queen”, will be coming at the end of September 2010! I’m as excited about that as the next Harry Potter movie!).
Contrast this with “Pride and Prejudice,” where, although the story itself had obviously ended, and at the right time, I still found the last page, with its two lines, quite jarring. I wasn’t prepared for it to end. This has nothing to do with the story itself. But having spent a lifetime watching the progress of my bookmark as it traveled down the depth of the book, I was let down by the lack of that experience (because, again, while I can tap the screen and see the little progress bar at the bottom of the screen, that’s really not the same. That experience is more akin to waiting for a file to download or following the progress of an installation of a computer application, not exactly the mental place I want to be when I’m reading a book).

So in the end, I’m not completely sold either way. I’m not, by any means, giving up my paperbacks. My husband believes they’re not long in this world (not just mine, but all print books). I disagree. But, I do like catching up on the classics conveniently, and always having a book handy. And it is a much better time-waster than, say, playing mindless games on the iPhone. But perhaps printed paper is my opiate. And until I can break my addiction, I’m not going to drop money on a full-size digital book reader (because frankly, I don’t need something else to keep track of).