In an early blog post, I had lamented the lack of content I was finding for my eBook reader and some of the problems I had with the Kindle/ Amazon pairing. As I was writing up that blog post (handwritten, ludditely, a few weeks before), I received an email from Indigo/ Chapters announcing the new Kobo reader and Kobo bookstore. The Kobo e-reader is selling for $149 Canadian and looks pretty nice (though I've not actually seen one). Like the Sony eBook reader, it also supports a range of documents from a range of sources. If I'd not got the Sony I would seriously have considered a Kobo. Check it out if you're thinking about getting an eBook reader. Perhaps the best part of the email was that it announced the Kobo book store with lots of interesting titles; some free but most under $15 and lots under $10 (The Help, by the way, is $9.99). From Kobo, you have the option of downloading the books to a range of formats (smartphone, desktop, a number of eBook readers) and it's incredibly easy to do.
Because I really wanted to get the sense of what reading a compelling novel was like on the eBook reader, I decided I'd buy a mystery. I picked Alan Bradley's Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (and loved it). I believe I bought it on Saturday, read 50 pages moments after downloading it, read it almost all day Sunday, almost missed my bus stop on Monday and then finished it today very discretely in a place that I shall not name (although I think you might be able to piece it together if you read the next blog in the series).
What's it like reading an eBook? Well, honestly, it's not much different than reading a print book only you press a button or swish across the screen when you want to turn a page. It's lovely to hold: the eBook reader's about the size of a smallish Penguin but more compact. With the cover I got with it, it's very much like reading a small hardcover book. Some added bonuses with the eBook are pretty obvious. There's a built-in dictionary: tapping on a word will give you the definition. It's also very searchable: if you can't remember who a character is, the search will take you to previous passages. It has adjustable font sizes: I'm ok with the default font but I can see how people would really like that option (Kobo, I see, offers you serif or sans serif font options which, as a fontophile, I find appealing). There are also some other weird added bonuses that I hadn't considered. For example, you can read a book while it's windy. I often wait for the bus by the river and in what seems at times to be a wind tunnel. Yesterday was incredibly windy and I was really happy to be able to read without my pages flying around (as happened the day before with Lucky Jim). Oddly, until yesterday, I had accepted not being able to read in the wind as a perfectly normal fact of life. Will my eBook reader make me cranky about such perfectly natural things now?
And, in spite of my previous post lamenting the absence of the social elements of print books, I discovered the delicious ability to be reading a novel in a place where you really shouldn't be reading a novel and getting away with it.
Some negatives? Honestly, there really aren't very many. I've been worried about batteries dying mid-book but the battery life seems really long. I've read the whole 272 page book and done a bunch of other things without charging the battery. One downside, I've mentioned before. I thought of two people who would really like the book but since neither of them have eBook readers, I'll not be loaning it to them. Other than that... hmm... you probably don't want to read eBooks in the bathtub. Right now I can't think of many drawbacks.
I'm not sure if this is particular to this eBook title but I noticed the very odd recurrence of typos involving words starting with Fl. Fled became fed, flattened fattened and then there was a particularly unfortunate passage with a flag. I don't know if this is just on the eBook version of this book or if it's in the print version too; either way, it's an odd thing to find so many typos of the same kind in a published book. I'm looking into this.
I was so hooked by this eBook (and how tiny the reader is) that I bought another mystery for my train trip later this week. I think I'll be particularly thrilled with it when I tuck it (not my usual three books) into my bookbag.
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