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www.deltalivingmagazine.com
April – June 2014
By Walter Ruehlig
walter.ruehlig@gmail.com
I
've always been one to go kicking and scream-
ing down Technology Way. Mind you, at one
point my wife had to threaten divorce if we didn't get
cell phones. In the end, I figuredVerizon’s customer
support was cheaper than marriage counseling.
I'm becoming a late convert, though, to the Tab-
ernacle of theWired. Just this weekend, my son pre-
sented me with a Kindle eBook reader and I actually
didn't hide in the attic to delay his instructions.
Truth is, any anxieties would have been unfound-
ed. Kindle is as easy as pie to operate with instruc-
tional screens as simple as hitting the French fries
button on the fast food place registers.
As for actual reading, it's a breeze. Choose from
eight font sizes and six font styles and a range of an
adjustable light meter allowing even broad daylight
use.To boot, carrying cases come for the clumsy.
Best yet, for fitful readers like me, working on
several books at a time, welcome to choice Seventh
Heaven. If you don't want to buy a book, generally
sold 50 to 60% off publisher price, with some as low
as $3.00, you can choose from the classics.Anything
before 1925 is in the public domain, shorn copy-
right.That's …ready for this … two million choices;
enough to keep you reading through the lifetime of
several couches and rocking chairs.
Then there’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library
where you can get one book a month and access
most of the NewYorkTimes best-seller list and some
350,000 titles.
The Contra Costa County Library System got
on board big-time. In 2013, 153,531 books were
downloaded, a 75% increase over 2012. Since there
is an on-going issue with some publishers about
too easy access, hence fees of as much as $100.00
per book. Contra Costa County Library and Califa
created enki Library; an e-book platform in which
30-plus California public libraries buys, not rents, the
content.The collection, from mostly smaller publish-
ers, (though McGraw Hill recently joined) is over
18,000.Access to the e-books is a finger-tip away.
"Popular" books can also be obtained through
vendors such as OverDrive.com, which specializes
in bestsellers, fiction and non-fiction, audio-books,
and also has a smattering of music and video titles.
Another library vendor,Axis 360, specializes in visual
content, such as children's books, cooking and craft
books. Gale Virtual Reference Library is an ency-
clopedia lover's dream of 28 collections.This entire
library trove can be accessed on http://ccclib.org/.
Our Contra Costa County Library also offers
28,000 titles on Project Gutenberg. Any selection
you make doesn't go against your five e-book limit.
If you want to choose by academic interest, there are
also resources on the web like www.worldebookfair.
org, which has millions of titles stored under 25 sub-
jects. Examples are astronomy (17,361 titles), fine arts
(111,875), history (809,772), language (277,309), and
religion (122,509).
As a last resort, you can buy books for your col-
lection.My Kindle can store a thousand.Think about
that; you can go on vacation and bring your library
with you.No trees were cut down; you can integrate
audio and visual into the resources, and you have a
dictionary at hand to look up troublesome words.
Is all this to say that I have lost esteem for print-
ed books? By no means. I love the caress of a book.
Leather binding and cursive art is seductive and the
shopworn pages tempt you to curl up with them.
I love, too, the look of books placed throughout
a house and the comforting signal being surrounded
by old friends and world wisdom. In fact, for me the
best prescription of interior decorating is to build
more book shelves.
E-books, then, will never replace the printed
book. It is just another enduring friend.
My First Time Meeting Kindle
A new, trusted, eco-friend
April – June 2014
www.deltalivingmagazine.com
19