Comments on: Would Anne Fadiman buy a Kindle?

By: PiterKokoniz

PiterKokoniz — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:54:18 +0000

Hi !!!! ;)
I am Piter Kokoniz. oOnly want to tell, that I like your blog very much!
And want to ask you: will you continue to post in this blog in future?
Sorry for my bad english:)
Thank you:)
Your Piter Kokoniz, from Latvia

By: Mordaxus

Mordaxus — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:50:30 +0000

@Nicko: An old friend of mine at one point used a filing system that filed the books by the color of the spine in spectral order.
The great thing about this system is that it is incredibly offensive to anyone schooled in library arts while being amazingly effective. Most of us retain some sort of visual image of the book we read, even after decades. It’s easy to find a book in the library from that.
Yes, it becomes an obstacle to people who are looking for a book without having seen it, but that may be as much a feature as a bug.
There are of course a number of other drawbacks. In her case, the biggest drawback was the huge smear of yellow from all those Tor paperbacks. This necessitated a secondary filing system, which was, as I remember, a simple alphabetical ordering of whatever was on the spine.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:26:49 +0000

This is somewhat tangential, but all this talk of books makes me want to throw in a word about LibraryThing. It rules.

By: Nicko

Nicko — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:59:37 +0000

I have friends in Cambridge who co-mingled their libraries after they married and, for a few years thereafter, periodically would reorganise their books under different sorting systems in order to try to satisfy both of their particular models of how the books should be sorted. A couple of years ago they settled on a compromise and now have all their books sorted under the Dewey Decimal Classification around three walls of the living room. The only problem with this is that his collection of histories of Germany, 1920-1950, complete with several with swastikas emblazoned on their spines, are at eye level immediately in front of you as you enter the room!

By: phik

phik — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 22:13:35 +0000

Honestly, it is so trivial to remove the DRM from Mobipocket books — which comprise at least 95% of the Kindle arsenal, in my experience — that it’s become a total non-issue for me. I don’t even think about it any more.
I don’t like supporting the DRM business model, but I do like supporting the business model of sane e-book pricing and widespread availability.
I can sleep at night. :)