I have written about my conversion to ebooks and the Kindle before. That post can be read here.
I had a moment last night that I feel compelled to share. My Kindle was one of the first things I bought after moving to Korea, the first major purchase and, arguably, the wisest expenditure I've made in the last two and a half years. In that time, I have been all ebook, having read approximately 30 books between my Kindle and iPad. One of the major considerations in adapting to this new way of reading was minding the battery. If I had a free day to lounge at a cafe, I would always make sure to charge my device(s) the evening before, especially as my Kindle's charge capacity has dwindled. The battery used to be a rock star. In fact, about two years ago, I read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo on a single charge.
Recently, however, I borrowed How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche from my friend Zach. The book is a hardback and I haven't read a physical book since I bought my Kindle in late 2010. I had some free time today so last night, as I was planning my day, I thought I should charge the book so it would be full and ready to rock n' roll once I got to Angel-In-Us Coffee. After deducting that neither my iPad nor my Kindle USB cables would work on the book, I slapped my forehead; I was trying to figure out which of my USB cables would charge this hardback book. For shame.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Charging a Hardback - My Shame as an English Major and Computer Nerd
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Max R&B - a novel, my novel
I am pleased to announce the publication of my novel, Max R&B.
Max Arenbee is a young Minnesotan man on the verge of disillusionment. Armed with a cookie-cutter bachelor's degree, a casual girlfriend, a pot stash and a job at one of the decreasing number of local record stores surviving the blitz of download culture, he finds himself restless and longing for fulfillment. Rarely without a song in his head, Max’s true passion, music, helps him cope with his day to day; within song lyrics he attempts to capture and understand his own thoughts, situations and inner turmoil as he struggles to gain an idea of who he is and what he really wants out of his life. Through music he escapes in daydreams to other cities and locales, anywhere, in fact, but Minneapolis. The grind seems hopeless, but when Max meets the beautiful Isabella, recently returned home from Peace Corps service in Namibia, his life and perceptions will be fundamentally changed.
Weaving a modern tale of the detachment and instability felt by many young Americans, with a clear love for the power of music to communicate across time and space, Stanhill brings Minnesota and its beating, seasonal heart to life. It is a story that explores the desire for love and belonging, and one man’s discovery of where home truly lies.
Max R&B is now available in three ebook formats for USD$.99 (USD&2.99 outside the U.S. and Canada).
Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook
Apple iBookstore
Over the last year I have worked and reworked the novel, my brother Colin Stanhill edited it, my friend Kyle Raum designed a beautiful cover for the novel and Zach MacDonald provided excellent feedback with peer reviews. I could not have accomplished this level of publication, quality and pride without them.
As always, if you read the novel, please write a review (good and bad welcome but please be constructive) on the website from which you purchased the work. Happy reading!
Free PDF
Free PDF!? That's right! While I encourage readers to read the novel on either the Kindle or the Nook because the formatting makes them much easier and convenient to read, I am putting the text, in its original format, up for free. If you have an ereader, please consider supporting the months of time and effort I put into this project and put $.99 towards a cup of coffee for me :-)
Monday, January 17, 2011
How I learned to stop worrying and love the eReader
3rd Generation Kindle
As most of you know either by being a friend, relative or acquaintance of mine or by the amount of geeky tech posts that appear on my blog, I do not eschew technology and am oftentimes an early-adopter of anything I can afford. However, the eReader represented a hurdle over which I was not yet committed to jump. I graduated with a double major in English lit and history and have a rich appreciation for books. I do not quite border on bibliophilia (Colin!) but I love the weight, smell and intimacy of a book. Having backpacked a number of times, there is a bond of companionship which grows between the dead weight and the reader. I have unpacked clothes and other items to get the weight of luggage down to cart around books here and there and I have never regretted it.
Needless to say I was leery of electronic formatted books for a number of reasons. The biggest speculation of mine concerned battery life, "the day my book tells me it's dead and I can't read it when I wish is the day I give up on life," I recall telling a friend. Secondly, I benefited enormously from the book exchange that took place while I was in the Peace Corps, which made books more valuable than, say cheese or peanut butter. Books are, while travelling, a currency in and of themselves. So the obvious issue of transferability presentes itself immediately to a) those who don't have an eReader and b) the books which have encryption so they are not transferrable anyway.
There were some obvious benefits that finally made up my mind to try out the Amazon Kindle, third generation. Living in Korea with, for lack of a better description, a
lack
of English books made the idea of having a library of thousands of titles from which to choose very appealing. I knew my parents and brother would appreciate it, not having to ship me books upon request. Moreover, having any of those titles within 60 seconds of purchase made planning out what I would read months in advance a thing of the past.
I looked into the Amazon Kindle simply because a friend of mine here in Korea has one and I got a hands-on as well as it being the only reader that enables purchasing books abroad. The Kindle I bought has both 3G and wifi. The 3G works in over 100 countries, including South Korea and I suppose North Korea if you stand close enough to the DMZ. Regardless, the Kindle is the obvious choice for the international traveler.
The battery life has bowled me over. Advertised as having a battery life of one month, I felt reassured that it wouldn't die on me at any given moment. On the contrary, I read the unabridged entirety of
The Count of Monte Cristo
, a 1,300 page tome, on one battery charge. Good enough for me.
And finally, as for the portability of the book files themselves, there is a simple hack. Within the limits of the DMCA, one can run a python script to unlock their legally purchased books. This does not solve the issue of passing on books to someone who does not have an eReader, but it makes the prospect (which I do not condone for legal reasons) of sharing a book with a friend with an eReader much easier. There is
that can open the unlocked books on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPod, Android, Blackberry, et. all and allow someone to read the book on any of the supported devices, for those without an eReader.
For the easy-to-follow step-by-step guide to unlocking the book files, please see below.
Unlocking Kindle Books
If you wish to exercise your rights within the DMCA and unlock the DRM copy protection of your Kindle books to read on other devices, please refer to this very helpful website. It is difficult to amass the software required for the project so I have collected the publicly available software into one convenient package at this link. It is important to follow the steps mentioned in the above-linked article, however they do fail to mention that you need the beta version of the Kindle software for PC. Once installed, it is imperative that you open the application, go to the settings and turn off automatic updates as more recent versions of this software break the unlocking script. If you choose to download the software from my link, you can ignore the site's directions on finding and installing everything.
Update: There is a great Google Chrome utility that sends an article from your browser to your kindle in one click, reformatted to compliment the screen of the kindle. I just installed it and it's pretty slick!