Yesterday I had a schedule gap before meeting up with the spouse and, for whatever reason, made the boneheaded mistake of leaving my Kindle at home. I’ll spare you the ad nauseum of how much I love the Kindle but I guess I just forgot to put it in my bag. I was looking at about an hour to kill so I decided to finally download the Kindle app for my Droid Eris.

Within about a minute, I was logged in and reading Feed (by Devon Monk). Dude. FUCKING AWESOME. 1. Do I love tinyscreen? No. Changeable fonts help but I don’t really love the backlight. 2. Nope. That pretty much covers it.

I spent the hour soaking up zombie-hunting goodness and then read some more on the Eris at work today during my lunch break. The best part is that when I got home tonight, I turned on my Kindle and syched it and then picked up EXACTLY where I’d left off on my phone.

In short, I love technology. The Kindle is still my favorite reading option but the Droid app is wicked handy in a pinch. Very nice option.

Related, Feed is ENGROSSING. It started a little slow but within a couple of pages I was hooked. I’m about halfway through it now and can’t wait to read the rest. Though there will be a break for a new ep of The Closer.

Right now I’m geeking out in my basement while my Kindle software updates and I avoid packing my clothes. Before I go to bed I have to have all my clothing packed and pretty much be ready to go as soon as I get home from work.

Packing list:

roadsnacks

music – update mini-player

clothes:

1. shorts because it will be hotter than the third circle of hell, plus humidity

2. skirt for wedding

3. nicer shorts for reception

4. black flats, green chucks

5. one pair of jeans because seriously, it’s MY vacation

6. toiletry kit

7. sox

8. one sweater, one jacket

9. one purse

10. metric asston of t-shirts in varying degrees of niceness

The most important thing has already been accomplished: loading a Dunkin Donuts locator onto my droid.

1. The iPad is designed to entertain your finger, an e-reader to entertain your eye.

2. The Kindle isn’t a superior reading experience, it’s a superior delivery experience.

These things are tied in my mind because the iPad was billed as a Kindle-killer. Admittedly I am a non-Apple geek (They make nice stuff but it’s wicked expensive. I’m looking for the alternative that fits my budget.) but I wasn’t all that interested in the iPad. I HAVE a Kindle (which I love and will get to in a minute) and a Droid Eris by HTC. From what I’ve seen, my Eris does all the stuff that an iPhone does – at least the stuff that I WANT it to, as I’ve got no interest in watching TV/movies on my phone – and cost a fraction of the price. Not only that, but Verizon never drops my calls. Never. And I live in the Timbuck-3 mountains.

So if I’ve got a touchscreen phone and all the apps I can stand and an mp3 player that holds a ton of music and movies, as well as an e-reader that checks my email and surfs the web – the iPad is obsolete FOR ME. I get that there are people who want everything in the same gadget but I really don’t. I like having a separate mp3 player because it means I’m less likely to break it – my phone has to withstand a lot of abuse. My phone is built for portability and wicked web access, so I don’t need a laptop hardly ever – unless I really want one.

All of this brings me to the Kindle. Yes, it’s a superior delivery system. I can get a book (including a whole mess of FREE books) from pretty much anywhere, anytime. I’d argue about it not being a superior reading experience though, and for a couple of reasons. It’s much a lighter than a regular book. It’s far more portable and allows me to do everything a regular text would do (bookmarks, notes) as well as things it can’t (email, web). Not only that but I can carry up to 1,500 books around all the time. I’ve got 207 on there currently and I love that if my attention wanders, I can just hit the Home button and switch to something else. On a plane or roadtrip, this portability is invaluable. It’s great for waiting rooms, lunch breaks and coffee stops.

As to the experience – I know that Spouse loves the fact that he can increase the text size whenever he wants. It makes reading in low light easier. The auto text-reader is also nice, if a bit robotic.

I don’t miss turning pages. It always surprises me that I really ENJOY reading on the Kindle. I’m an English major. I’ve been reading voraciously since the age of 3. I LOVE books. Yet I find that I don’t miss the feel of paper in my hands or even the smell of the pages – things I would have sworn at one point were integral to my reading experience. In fact, when I HAVE to read a paper text now (for classes) I find I’m annoyed with how cumbersome and unwieldly they are. I don’t like having to lug them around and having to flip back and forth rather than just click a bookmark is irritating. The lack of backlight makes my Kindle page just as easy to read as a printed page, but better for the environment.

So yeah – when people talk to me about how they love books and can’t POSSIBLY like an e-reader, I call bullshit. Read a book on a Kindle and if you’re not converted, I’ll believe you. I just don’t think it’ll happen.

Tonight’s dinner is London Broil with Roast Potatoes. Husband hasn’t been feeling well and came home early, so I made these cheesy pastry appetizers as well. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart’s Halloween magazine this year (great stuff!) and just opted to make the big rectangle (albeit sliced bar-style) without digging out a cookie cutter. I’ve never made a London Broil before so I’m interested to see how it turns out.

I also installed Calibre to help manage my Kindle – it lets me mark things as read and add my own tags. Not only that, it will automatically search out news feeds and add them to the Kindle so that I don’t have to subscribe through Amazon. Alas, I should know better than to not read the instructions. I simply uploaded all my new metadata to the Kindle, which added all my books a second time (grr) and then when I took off the ones I hadn’t recently updated, it lost my place in East of Eden. Whoops. I suspect all my bookmarks are gone as well, but as I don’t make them very often it’s no big loss.

I continue to love that Kindle is offering free books because I’ve found great stuff that I’d otherwise never have stumbled on in a bookstore