The Maths of Travel
For professional women who need to travel for business from time
to time, this may be a familiar equation. How do you optimise:
- A travel bag small enough to be allowed onto the plane, which
is essential for a fast getaway when you land
- But large enough to fit your work clothes for 2-3 days - since
as a woman you won't, for that duration, feel comfy having only one
suit/outfit , will you, even teamed with different tops…
- And the travel bag has to be large enough to carry all your
working papers
- And your laptop
- And large enough to squeeze in the blockbuster novel or
non-fiction tome you're half way through
- Oh, and you want a handbag that isn't so large it will cramp up
your shoulder to carry it any distance because we all know handbag
interiors suck in bric-a-brac as if they were black holes… but
modest-sized handbags can't handle overflow from the main
luggage.
Too often last year I found this maths puzzle impossible to
solve. The thing I tended to compromise on was the fat novel, which
made all the peri-takeoff and landing periods decidedly dull. It
also meant that by the time I was able to get back to my book, I'd
rather lost the thread of it. Does this sound familiar?
Enter E-book Readers
Eventually, I figured it out: get an e-book reader. A good
number of you may well be reading books on your android phones and
your iPads as well as your Kobos/ Kindles/ Sonys/ Nooks but when
you're a late adopter of technology, as I am, it can feel like a
leap of faith to turn to a gadget for a solution. However, it was a
leap I finally took with Santa's help.
My reader is only 0.75 cm thick - plus a centimetre for the
optional case (mine is red, of course) - so my reading material
will no longer be what breaks the zip on my carry bag. The
reader's physical size was crucial in my decision but I was looking
forward to several other benefits too.
Those of you who haven't entered the world of e-books yet may be
interested in my experiences to date. What follows won't be a
technical review, you can find those online. If you subscribe to
Consumer NZ, they reviewed e-book readers in May '11, otherwise
this US-based comparison
page is up to date and helpful, as is this UK-based one.
Cheaper books
For reference, I bought the entry level Kindle for $185 at Dick
Smith, the sole NZ distributor. Space-saving aside, these are
the benefits I expected when I first turned on my Kindle:
- Cheaper books
- Almost as wide a selection of books as are available in hard
form
- Easy to use
The first one receives a qualified "yes". E-books are cheaper
but not as much as I'd expected. Here's a comparison of the
delivered prices of a few books I've had recommended over the last
year or been interested to buy (1 NZD = 0.78 USD):
"Shadow of the Wind": novel by Carlos Zafon
- Amazon paperback: NZD 20.35
- Book Depository: NZD 16.24 (free
shipping)
- Amazon Kindle: NZD 12.80
"The Redbreast": a Harry Hole novel by Jo Nesbo
- Amazon paperback: NZD 19.20
- Book Depository: NZD 16.24 (free
shipping)
- Amazon Kindle: NZD 9.75
"The Marriage Plot": a novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
- Amazon paperback: NZD 19.20
- Book Depository: NZD 16.24 (free
shipping)
- Amazon Kindle: NZD 9.75
"Smokin' Seventeen": escapist frivolity from
Janet Evanovich
- Amazon paperback: NZD 17.90
- Book Depository: NZD 11.23 (free
shipping)
- Amazon Kindle: NZD 10.95
As you can see, the Kindle discount versus Amazon is a good
third to a half off. Versus the Book Depository it can be rather
less compelling.
Range
What about availability? This is probably my key disappointment.
There have been older, favourite books that I would have liked to
re-buy in e-book form and favourite series I discovered long ago
and was hoping to fill in the odd gap for... books like Lyall
Watson's Supernature (1974) and series like Elizabeth
Peter's Amelia Peabody adventures (Amelia is a wonderfully feisty
and feminist heroine, and utterly over the top).
Supernature was not in the Kindle store and the Peabody
series was full of gaps. I also looked for a brand new organisation
research book for Professionelle, and it, too, was not available in
Kindle. However, more mainstream business titles like Godin's
Tribes and Gladwell's Blink were there.
E-readers are generally bundled with particular sets of content
and for an area that one is good in, it will have a weakness
elsewhere. Thus Kindles go with Amazon, and seem well thought of in
terms of range of both free and premium ebooks, but Sony's reader
has a tie-in with libraries via Overdrive, which Kindles don't.
Professionelle readers will do their own research, I know, but this
is a factor to be aware of.
The Free Stuff
And what about those one million free books in Amazon's Kindle
store? They may be there but they are not easy to search and I have
not found a good catalogue for them elsewhere (can anyone
help)?
The first few search pages of the free e-books seem full of
Dickens, Austen and Conan Doyle, and look promising. Closer
inspection reveals that The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
are not a complete Omnibus-like edition as I'd hoped, but instead
radio recordings of 4 of the stories - not much use on my non-audio
enabled Kindle. Indeed, most of the free Conan Doyle entries seem
to be foreign language versions - can I tempt you with Der Hund
der Baskervilles, or an Etude en Rouge perhaps? The
best I found was a free The Lost World.
Ease of Use
Thumbs ups:
- It is soooo easy to buy a book (when you've found it, see
below). There's a big, black Buy button. Push it, job done in one
click. And a nice touch is that they have a link that immediately
appears on purchase asking if you made the purchase in error. I did
once, and the transaction was swiftly reversed
- It is soooo quick to deliver your book. Less than a minute. And
with Amazon at least, the book is also stored in your Kindle
account so you don't lose what you've bought if your Kindle
dies
- It is as easy to lose yourself in the e-book experience as it
is in a regular book. This had been my greatest concern beforehand.
A tip: start with a book from a familiar and favourite author and
you should find that makes for a gentle introduction
- You can bookmark pages, and the Kindle remembers the furthest
page you have reached. No more slips of paper falling out of
the book! You can also highlight and make notes on the book. If
you're going to do much of this though, say with non-fiction books,
you should consider a touch screen reader or one with a
mini-keyboard.
Grumbles:
- Getting it going the first time. Suggestion: follow the very
limited instructions that come in the box, which are designed to
get the Kindle charged. Go away and eat Christmas lunch. When you
come back you will see there is a screensaver picture on the
screen. Unplug the Kindle and push the little reset button next to
where the charger went in. None of the other buttons will achieve
anything. They don't tell you this... I had to fire up my laptop
and go searching for the answer
- Finding a book via the Kindle wireless browser. It's not the
tedious typing on the 5 way control button I mind - it was my
choice not to get a Kindle with a mini keyboard, after all - it's
that the searches don't seem to yield results. That could be
because the books I have searched for are not in the Kindle store
of course! Regardless, I have taken to browsing on my laptop.
Overall
Would I recommend an e-book reader? My answer is that if you
have another e-book reading device like an iPad available, I'd
start there and see how the searching/buying/price experience
strikes you. If, however, you are heading off on the boat or in the
campervan and want to take 3 or 4 novels to tide you over for a
couple of weeks, then this is a tidy solution (the battery will
last up to a month if you don't connect to the internet) plus
you'll have much better choice than Whitcoulls' paperback bargain
bins, and at roughly the same price.