Tolkien on the Kindle

[Laurelin the Younger]

As I mentioned upthread, it is strange to miss the heft of a physical book in your hand. Also, I have a habit that I guess I've never really noticed -- when I start to get tired while reading, I have a tendency to flip ahead to look for a good stopping place, like the next section break or the end of the chapter. It's much less natural to do that on the Kindle. Also, I like the smell of books. Particularly brand new ones and nice old musty ones. Ray Bradbury has a line in Something Wicked This Way Comes about the ancient mummy spice smell of libraries or something to that effect.

I'll always prefer a physical book over an electronic one, but I do love the Kindle as a supplement to my normal reading habits.

I think this is what makes me hesitant to get a Kindle. I really love my books, and I do hate how heavy they are when I travel. They are the most bulky and heavy thing I have to deal with when I move. But I can't get over how much I love them. I guess though, a Kindle would be great for a plane trip, etc. I never thought about it as a supplement rather than a replacement. Now I'm reconsidering it...

[davem]

We live in a utilitarian age. Books are seen as purely a medium for the text, & as the text is the only thing that has value it can therefore be presented in whatever form is cheapest & most convenient (an e-reader is the cheapest form from the point of view of the publisher, as it costs effectively nothing to transmit a file). This is what happened with recorded music - going to the store to buy an LP, bringing it home, switching on the record player, taking the disc out of the sleeve(s), putting it on the turntable, moving the arm & placing the needle in the groove & then sitting down to actually listen to the songs, in the intended order - that was all unnecessary nuisance, because all that really mattered was hearing the music.....except, for a great many of us, that ritual was part of the experience. Downloading individual songs, & having thousands of tracks available in your pocket to shuffle through has trivialised the way we experience music by making it too 'easy'. (not to mention the fact that the mp3 format is such terrible quality). Again, that's why I'm uncomfortable with having LotR as an e-book - it actually feels like trivialising the whole experience of reading it. Don't know if this makes sense, but I feel that if its inconvenient to read it - if I can't have it to hand at an instant's notice, if I have to wait till I get back home & set aside the time to read it properly, well, that's what it 'deserves'. It matters to me & therefore I owe it to myself, the text, & to the author to treat it like that.

That said, there are many books out there that I'd like to try out first & which may not be available in my local library, which may be out of print - or too expensive to buy even when they are out of copyright because of the type of editions they're available in. The real problem would only arise if we got to the point when e-books became the norm & real books went the way of the LP, only available in specialist shops at exorbitant prices. Till then, I'm happy to have a Kindle to hand for the trivial stuff & the stuff I can't get elsewhere.

[LadyBrooke]

I think part of people's reactions to the Kindle might be a generational thing. I'm seventeen so to me the idea of reading something that isn't a physical object isn't odd.

I think another reason that I'm glad that I have one is I don't have a local library. The nearest one is in the next town over and would cost $30 a year to join. If school's not in session I only have the books I won to read unless I can convince my parents to drive me 45 minutes away to the bookstore three towns over. And that bookstore's really only a hole in the wall popular books only store.

Bringing this back to Tolkien, has anybody downloaded any of the books besides LotR? I'm curious if they have more mistakes then LotR since they're less popular than it and therefore mistakes won't be as reported.

If anybody's curious here is current rankings on the Paid Kindle:
LotR#353
TH#404
Silm#2,824
FotR#3,353
TTT#6,562
RotK#6,921
CoH#14,750
UT#14,807
Legend of Sigurd and Gudran (how do we abbreviate that?)#43,458
Letter from Father Christmas(and this?) #44,603

The difference in rankings between FotR and TTT is curious. Are new Tolkien readers downloading FotR to see if the like it and then deciding they don't?

Also the book I think suffers the most by being put on the Kindle is Letters from Father Christmas which I downloaded the sample of because I was curious how they would adapt it. It just looks wrong.

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

I think part of people's reactions to the Kindle might be a generational thing. I'm seventeen so to me the idea of reading something that isn't a physical object isn't odd.

I'm younger than you, but I still think it's odd to read a book that isn't a physical book.

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

I'm younger than you, but I still think it's odd to read a book that isn't a physical book.

It's definitely a bit odd. I didn't mean to sound like it wasn't but -and this is more a vibe I'm getting on other websites - some people think that because it's different, it's automatically bad.

I'm never going to completely give up my physical books for my Kindle. I love the smell of books and anybody who knows me can tell that I frequently buy editions just based off the fact that the it has better illustrations then another edition like my copy of TH which is something you can't get on the Kindle. My desktop is currently housing my entire collection of Tolkien books so I can reference them while I'm writing my paper for European History. At the same time it's nice to be able to bookmark multiple sections in a book and make notes without having to physically write in my book or have a dozen bookmarks sticking out all over.

Some books just don't adapt well either. I mentioned above that the sample from Letters from Father Christmas just doesn't look right.

[Dilettante]

No one has yet mentioned that JRRT himself would likely be horrified by the idea of an e-reader. He didn't even like internal combustion engines, and barely read any "modern" literature, like anything written after 1066.

That being said, I too got a Kindle for Christmas. (The smaller 6" one) I was skeptical at first. I LOVE books. I love the smell, feeling the weight of one as I hold or carry it, the rustle of the pages. I get emotionally attached to my books, and have relationships with them.

However I LOVE my Kindle. I have a bad habit of reading several books at once, so being able to put numerous volumes on a small grey device rather than lug around a big bag of books has been a relief. Also, I can have audio books on it as well. So one can keep them and the reading books all in one place. And, the electronic ink really does look like the page of a book, so there is no glare. The battery life is also amazing. I use mine every day, haven't plugged it in for about a week, and it still has about 70% power.

Now, I have not put any Tolkien on my Kindle. Namely, because I already have all three LOTR in one beautiful red leather-bound volume. (Which has drawn some odd looks from coworkers when reading it in the break room.) I wanted to get Tales from the Perilous Realm on my Kindle, but it is not available in Kindle. (Also, if any of the illustrations are color, that will be a moot point with a black and white screen). I own on paper LOTR, The Hobbit, the Book of Lost Tales (1st or second edition, I can't remembe)r, Unfinished Tales (2nd edition) and The Tale of the Children of Hurin. I probably will in the future put something by Tolkien that I do not already own on my Kindle (I'm just going to dreadfully miss the Elvish and Runic title pages) provided there are no color illustrations.

Are the Elvish scripts and Runes included in the e-reader versions?

[davem]

Ok - admission - I recently bought LotR for my Kindle - can't see me buying anything else, but I couldn't help myself - I just felt it ought to be on there - plus, as a bit of a collector, & having over a dozen editions of LotR, from my original Allen & Unwin 3 vol slipcased paperback set from the mid 70's, through a first ed hardback set from 1966, the Alan Lee deluxe, 3 different 50th anniversary editions & a load of different p/b sets, I wanted to have the latest edition.

So, its nice to have it. That said, there are typos (Barad Dur becoming Barad Duen at one point - and as its a locked file you can't just overtype it. The maps are TERRIBLE - miniscule & completely unreadable (there is a 'zoom' function - which seems to magnify the map 1.1x & is therefore pointless as they're still unreadable). The Cirth & Tengwar are reproduced very well - which makes the typos especially annoying. A further annoyance if you're reading on your PC is that you can't rotate the maps so they appear side on. I'm not sure about the hyperlinks to the footnotes/apppendices - handy, but look 'wrong' in a novel.

I can't see me reading the book on the Kindle for the reasons given above, but its there as another edition.

(Oh, & on the Kindle only side of the subject, for those who don't know about it, download Project Gutenberg's 'Magic Catalogue' - appears as a 'book' on your kindle but is actually a collection of links to P.G.'s whole catalogue & one click loads them directly onto your Kindle - like the Kindle Store - so you don't have the hassle of DL-ing them to your computer & then transferring them over)