Tolkien on the Kindle

[Mister Underhill]

Guess what I got for Christmas?

Tolkien on an e-reader feels sketchy somehow. It doesn't seem to square with the illusion that, for instance, the LotR is the Red Book of Westmarch. With Tolkien more than other writers you feel like you should have a physical book -- a tome, a codex if you will -- in your hands.

On the other hand, e-editions save trees. Tolkien could hardly object to that. Not to mention that it would be pretty sweet to have at least the core texts (no HoME yet it looks like ) in a handy little gadget that I can cart around with me and whip out whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Does anyone have any Kindle editions of Tolkien? Any comments on them, or comments in general about reading Tolkien electronically?

[Nogrod]

As a new owner of a "smartphone" (htc) I'm interested in the batteries - the Achilles' heels of all electronic gadgets... How many hours (minutes) can you read it without reloading? My oldtime cellphone got on fairly nice for four-five days but my new one needs recharging every other day.

I mean one doesn't have to reload a book.

On the environmental note... what other environmental problems the expanded use of electricity - or making of these gadgets - creates? I'm not sure how fond the prof. would be.

[Mister Underhill]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

On the environmental note... what other environmental problems expanded use of electricity - or making of these gadgets - creates? I'm not sure how fond the prof. would be.

Shh! Save trees!

Battery-wise, I've been fooling with this thing since Christmas morning, including lots of wi-fi, which I think is where you can really burn up the batteries, and I'm still at over 50%. Supposedly you can get 10 or 15 days moderate use out of this thing before having to recharge, so it's not too bad.

[Galadriel55]

Personally, I prefer reading physical books. I don't know why, it's just... more real for me, I guess. Especially for Tokien (not that I ever tried reading Tolkien online ). As for saving trees, most of my books were either one of my family member's, or my friend's. You could call them second-hand, if you wish .

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Battery-wise, I've been fooling with this thing since Christmas morning, including lots of wi-fi, which I think is where you can really burn up the batteries, and I'm still at over 50%. Supposedly you can get 10 or 15 days moderate use out of this thing before having to recharge, so it's not too bad.

How can they do that on an e-reader (which means hours of use and a big lighted screen) but not on a ten (or five, anyway) times smaller 3G-phone?

I smell a conspiracy-theory here...

[Mister Underhill]

Actually the e-ink display is not like the screen on a regular smart-phone or an iPad or what have you. In fact you need to have some light on the screen to read it, just like a paper page. Just from a pure gadget perspective it's a fascinating device. However it works, it obviously uses less battery power.

Galadriel55, I prefer a physical book too, especially when it comes to Tolkien. But I have to say this thing is making me a believer. It's a great mobile alternative to lugging heavy books around when you're out of the house.

[Bêthberry]

Esty and I were discussing the pros and cons of kindles last fall. We wondered how large the screen is--it would seem to involve a fair bit of constant scrolling for those who read a page quickly. Does it?

[Mister Underhill]

Well there's two different versions. I got the smaller one, with a 6" diagonal screen. They also have a 9.7" screen, though of course it costs more and you start to lose some of the convenience of small size. Just holding it side-by-side with a typical paperback, I'd guess the 6" screen is roughly three-quarters the length of the paperback and about the same width.

For reading books, the screen size isn't a big issue, actually, since you don't scroll -- you press a button to "turn the page". There's a font button you can press to adjust the size that you're comfortable with reading, and then the text just reflows to fill the screen, so you can strike a balance between readability and however many times per minute you're flipping the page. I imagine this thing would be a big plus for those with fading eyesight who could use a larger font. The font size I find most comfortable has, I would guess, around 120 words on a page. Turning the page is very natural, just a button-click with your thumb, and doesn't feel like scrolling at all.

You can also read PDFs, but it's not quite as friendly. I have some screenplays on PDF, for instance, and the bigger screen would be nice. I either have to deal with a font-size that's maybe a step or two smaller than would really be preferable, or turn the display to landscape for a comfortable font size, in which case there is some scrolling involved.

You can do other stuff like blog reading and very basic web-browsing, but really it's a dedicated reading device and should be thought of as such.

Here are a few of the pluses so far:

• Library in your Kindle. There's sooo much public domain stuff around that you could read for years and never spend a dime. Twain, Shakespeare, Kipling, Dickens, Austen, Sherlock Holmes, etc have already found their way into my device.
• Searchable text!
• Instantly sample prospective reads. This is especially good this time of year when everyone's putting out their top-ten lists.
• On board dictionary. Put the cursor on a word and get a definition.

[Ibrîniðilpathânezel]

I use an iPad rather than a Kindle, but I have all four available Tolkien books on it. At home, I will certainly sit down with the physical books, but when we were in Florida for most of October, I was glad I could have all the books with me, and more, without needing to haul them in my luggage. The iPad will draw more power than devices like the Kindle because of the different display type (which can be read in the dark), but unless I have the contrast cranked up to the brightest it gets (which isn't necessary), I can go a solid ten hours or more of constant use before I need to recharge. It would go longer if I turned off a number of wifi features. Not as good as the e-paper low power draw, but not bad for something that can do nigh onto everything my laptop does.

I think that while I still enjoy the tactile experience of a physical book, I also enjoy some of the conveniences of an ebook. The ability to adjust the font size and contrast is a big benefit to someone as nearsighted as I am. And not needing a reading lamp is a plus for me. But everyone will gravitate to what they enjoy most, of course.

[Inziladun]

You can always look to me for Luddite tendencies, but I don't think I'll be getting an Kindle, or any sort of e-reader.
For one thing, I don't travel much, and when I do, it's only for a few days at most. It isn't difficult to stick my "destructible" Tolkien paperbacks in my luggage, and they don't take up much room. The expensive hardbacks stay on the bookshelf nearly all the time.
It looks to me as if the e-reader thing is the wave of the future, however. I've successfully resisted Facebook, Twitter, ipads, and smartphones, though, so I'm confident I'll withstand this also.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Kindles, as a whole seem to be wondrous devices, and I think that I would take great use out of one. Personally, I do love my books. And if a few trees die for my reading pleasure, too bad, they will plant more. Don't take me wrong, I love trees, but books are an important cornerstone to society. Physical books require trees to die. . . . Anyway, back to my point, I think that a Kindle would be very handy for travel. I can take as many as ten books on a trip. In fact, when Lauri and I went to Britain this spring I packed probably seven books (and lugged them on and off trains and walked through cities with them). Though this may have built my arm strength, I hardly think it was good for my back. If I had a Kindle I would have a lot less luggage when I travel and I would be able to take so many more books with me. When I was travelling in October the man sitting next to me on one of my flights showed me his Kindle and he had so many books on it. It was fascinating.

I think that Kindles and other e-books are a great idea, and though I do not believe that physical books should be replaced by digital copies, I do think that digital libraries are both practical and useful for frequent travellers.

[Mister Underhill]

Ah, Ibrin, now we're getting somewhere! How about the actual quality of the e-editions? I've seen some pretty sloppy conversions of just regular books, like someone ran it through an automated program and human eyes never bothered to take a look at what was spat out.

My concern is that Tolkien, with all the diacriticals, maps, runes, drawings, and unusual formatting for poetry, tales of years, genealogies, and so forth could be a big fat mess unless HarperCollins put some effort into the conversion.

Inzila, I don't consider myself a Luddite, though I'm definitely a technological late-adopter and even then I will only get a gadget if I think I really need it. I can't justify a smart-phone, for instance, even though I want one. I probably wouldn't have even splurged on a Kindle myself, but I'll take one as a gift.

TGEW, I'm like you -- I seem to always pack a small library for trips. This will be a very cool alternative to that. Plus I'm the type who can find a few minutes to spend reading just about anywhere -- reception areas, check-out lines, whatever.

I agree about physical books. A Kindle can't really furnish a room, and it will be a sad day if, as some predict, brick-and-mortar bookstores go the way of, well, music stores.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

I don't (yet) have an electronic reading device, but I think the aspect that would most appeal to me for research would be the possibility of searching for specific words. That would have made my work on the Middle-earth music book much easier!

[Mister Underhill]

Searchable text would definitely be a boon for us Tolkien nuts, Esty.

It looks like I will have to be the trailblazer here and report back. The interesting thing is that I'm already in the midst of my first re-read of LotR in years. I just hit "The Breaking of the Fellowship" last night. And coincidentally I'm planning a trip out of town on the eighth, so having LotR electronically available will work out nicely.

I've downloaded the available samples for LotR, UT, Sil, and TH. The early pages of UT are probably the most diacritical heavy of the lot, and they look pretty squared away in the samples, so fingers crossed they've done a good job on the conversions.

I'll pick up LotR in the next day or two and report how it turns out.

[davem]

This review of the Kindle ed. is not very positive:

This review is about the Kindle version of LoTR, and doesn't have much to say about the quality of the book - though the fact that this is probably the sixth edition I've bought probably tells you what I think about that.
The disappointment here is the huge number of misprints in this edition. It's especially galling when you read the forward about how much care was taken to produce a definitive text for the anniversary edition.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RVDWA...wasThisHelpful

I suppose anyone who is interested could download the Kindle program to their PC http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/feature.h...pf_rd_i=468294 & then try the sample chapters.

I've seen e versions of the texts (TH, LotR, Sil, CoH ) before (a friend of Kate's who's blind had access to (legal) scanning software & I had a chance to access them.) The e-texts are fine for searching the text, but I certainly wouldn't want to read the story in that format.

[LadyBrooke]

I got a Kindle for Christmas too. My thoughts:

Positives
1.) So far I only have one Tolkien books on my Kindle (LotR) because I'm still waiting for my parents to pay me back some money they borrowed. And here's the biggest reason why I'm glad I have LotR on my Kindle; I live in the middle of nowhere and ride the school bus. My driveway is a quarter mile long and because of the classes I'm taking this semester I have six novels to read this semester at least three of which have to carted around each day including LotR. Then I have my college econ book and my European history textbook. There is no way I could carry that much every day and still be able to fit three to a seat on the bus and not break my back.

2.) There are a lot of free books available. I'm a poor high school student and no matter how much I wish I could afford to buy every book I want, I can't. I love a lot of classics and they're free. Plus you can catch deals on new books when Amazon runs promotions.

3.)Surprisingly there is a map in LotR.

4.) Also surprisingly you can turn on text to speech in it. While I hate the voice and it does pronounce some of the words Tolkien made up wrong, it is nice to be able to do something else and hear it in the background. Plus its cheaper then buying the actual cds of it being read.

Negatives
1.) The prices. I hate paying the same price for the Kindle version of LotR that I do the printed.

2.) The books I really wish were on the Kindle (H.O.M.E) aren't. Out of all the books, these are the ones that I could see myself using the highlighting and search features the most in because I hate going through the entirety of say Wars of the Jewels to find one small sentence about a feature of Elven life. Plus the publishers could (and hopefully would) be able to sell these books for less then the $19 dollars some of them go for now.

[davem]

I'm very close to buying one - I love the idea of so many out of copyright books being available free of charge - even some which as far as I know are out of print & which I've wanted to read for a long while (like John Leland's Itinerary - free on the Open Library site http://openlibrary.org/ ). Plus, you can download the free Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/ program, which will let you organise & most importantly convert any ebook file type (including pdf's) into the .mobi type that the Kindle reads.

Also, you can get this dead cool 'Tolkienesque' cover for it from Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...pf_rd_i=468294

However, a couple of negatives - first, according to the Kindle agreement on the Amazon site you don't actually 'own' the Kindle books you buy - you just purchase a licence to read them on the device. Which means they can be deleted whenever Amazon decide, that you can't sell them on or give them away (as you can with a real book), & finally reading the one star reviews it seems that some people are having major problems with the screen packing up, the thing re-starting or freezing & having to be replaced - one guy on his fourth replacement. Looking into it, the problem seems to be to do with the cheaper Amazon own brand case (the one without the built in light). Oh, & it seems that the Kindle software allows Amazon to read the whole contents of your Kindle every time you connect to the network - so watch what you put on there

There - all that with only one slight Tolkien reference to avoid being completely off topic!

I may take the leap soon - & I may put some Tolkien on there to try the experience, but I still can't help feel that out of all the books out there Tolkien's may be least 'right' for the format...

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by davem

I may take the leap soon - & I may put some Tolkien on there to try the experience, but I still can't help feel that out of all the books out there Tolkien's may be least 'right' for the format...

I don't think the Kindle versions will ever be able to fully replace the paper versions of Tolkien's books - it comes nowhere near my Hobbit book for example with the illustrations. I mainly like it because it's light weight and I already have so many textbooks to carry and I don't have to worry about tripping because I can't see over the pile of books which was a problem last year.

I would suggest trying to see it and play around with it in person before buying it if you're not sure.

[Mister Underhill]

I've been meaning to follow up in this thread with some pics for comparison, but I've been lazy since I got back from my little jaunt out of town. If I can scare up the camera -- it's around here somewheres -- I'll put some up tomorrow, but since the thread is active, I'll post a few quick comments in the meantime.

I did pick up LotR. It's steep at $19 US, but on the other hand this edition seems much improved from the one referred to in some of the older customer reviews, like the one that davem linked. Regretfully I have spotted one typo, an iconic line too:

'I am Uglúk. command.' [sic]

Overall, though, the e-version seems pretty faithful. I'm in III.4: "Treebeard", so I've been through Elvish passages, verse and song, the inscription on the Ring, the drawing of the West-gate of Moria. Flipping to the indices, everything seems in order. As LadyBrooke has mentioned, there is indeed a map, and even the genealogies are five-by-five, so long as you don't mind squinting a bit at the tiny font. I'll post a more complete evaluation when I've gone all the way through, but so far it seems pretty ship-shape.

I must admit, I'm enjoying this gadget even more than I thought I would. Remember when you got your first mp3 player and realized you could carry around an entire music collection in one little gadget? Like that. The e-ink display is not far off from reading a printed page -- much easier on the eyes and just more book-like than a backlit computer screen. As an inveterate browser, I am loving the ability to hear about an interesting book and then be leafing through the first chapter or two literally within seconds.

The privacy concerns that davem notes seem to be, unfortunately, just a fact of modern life. Cameras peep at us from every corner of our environment, and computers quietly catalog our habits and proclivities and distribute them to the appropriate (or inappropriate, as the case may be) advertising lists. Realistically it doesn't seem likely that Amazon is going to recall my LotR anytime soon. Also realistically, if you are the type of person who is really worried about Amazon having control over what you've bought from them, it's easy enough to figure out how to "jailbreak" your files and make copies. Ahem! -- or so I've heard.

Calibre is a great program for managing your e-library and converting formats around -- even if you don't have an e-reader. I will note, however, that conversions -- especially, in my short experience, from PDF to Kindle-friendly MOBI -- can be clunky.

After researching, I bit the bullet and went with the Amazon cover. Unfortunately the device is not truly mobile unless you have some sort of cover to protect the screen. For me, the Amazon cover is perfect -- clean, simple, light. It holds the Kindle securely, yet it's easy to pop the gadget in or out. I've been using mine daily since Christmas and haven't seen any sign of the problems some people mention about rebooting and whatnot. I didn't go with the one with the built-in light, though. It's just a cover.

On the negative side, there is a temptation towards reading ADD. With all these books at your fingertips, a guy like me can hardly resist taking a sip of Seneca, a little jolt of Shakespeare, etc. I feel a bit like a kid in a candy shop and it's hard to stay focused on one thing.

Also, here's a weird thing, it's kind of odd sometimes that you don't have a sense of how long a book is in this electronic format. Kindle deals in "locations", which could translate to different numbers of "pages" depending on how large or small you set the font. I guess I'll get more of a feel for this over time, but right now it's strange. War and Peace feels much the same as Call of the Wild -- you read 'em both one screen of text at a time. It's disorienting not having that heft as part of the sensory experience of reading.

Okay, so that post turned out longer than I thought it would. I'll try to post some pics tomorrow for your edification.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Realistically it doesn't seem likely that Amazon is going to recall my LotR anytime soon. Also realistically, if you are the type of person who is really worried about Amazon having control over what you've bought from them, it's easy enough to figure out how to "jailbreak" your files and make copies. Ahem! -- or so I've heard.

Well, you'd think....

howsumever...

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/te.../18amazon.html

Which wouldn't affect me too much, as I can't think that even with a Kindle I'd buy new books - most of my reading choices are out of copyright anyway.

Of course, there are so many bootleg e-copies of Tolkien's books out there that people could convert via Calibre to the .mobi format that even if Amazon (or Harper Collins) were to withdraw the 'official' copies altogether they'd hardly disappear from Kindles - if only one knew someone with such versions ... (ahem...)

[Morthoron]

You see, this is the whole reason why I don't deal with Kindle or the plethora of e-book variants on the market. If I download a song or album from Amazon, it is mine, and I can dispense with it as I wish (just as if I purchased a music CD). I do not care for the thought of some Big Brother (a perfect allusion to the Orwellian nature of this thread) ready to pounce on my reading material.

Currently, if anyone wanted to take one of my books from my home without permission, they'd have to get past the owner -- holding a Browning BPS 12 gauge pump shotgun.

[LadyBrooke]

I guess I'm just so used to the fact that in this electronic age anything can vanish that it doesn't bother me that much. After using the school computers and having entire essays vanish, I'm not going to worry about Amazon removing my copy of LotR. Plus there are the free samples so I can figure out if I want to read The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun without actually buying it. On the other hand, I don't see myself taking my books off the top of my desktop any time soon.

[davem]

A few things interest me about the e-Tolkien's - both LotR & TH have appeared in different 'editions'. LotR has (it could be argued) three 'incarnations' - the first edition text was available between 1954/55 & (I think) about 1966, when Tolkien made a number of changes to the text as a result of the Ace Books controversy in order to allow him to renew/establish copyright for the work in the US. Then, in 2005, we got the '50th Anniversary edition', edited with a new index, by Hammond & Scull under the supervision of Christopher Tolkien. This contained 300-400 changes/amendments - mostly minor, but still.....all done after the author's death. (This came up in another thread http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showpos...2&postcount=98

Now, I have all three versions in print books, but the only 'official' e-book version available is the 50th - & that, appearing after Tolkien's death, is the only one of the three that appeared without Tolkien's stamp of approval. The other thing about e-books is the ability of the publisher/copyright holder to further amend/'update' the texts - an e-text is not a fixed thing in the way a print book is - you connect your Kindle to Amazon & it could simply update your current text with an amended one. Argument for: typos could be fixed. Argument against: any changes the copyright holder decides on would be forced on you - after all, you don't 'own' the text, only the licence to read it on your device.

Now, my favourite version is the revised, Second Edition - in the main because that's the one I read first & the one I know best - therefore the changes (however 'minor' they may be claimed to be) in the 50th grate on me. But I can never read that edition on the Kindle (unless I break the law & get hold of one of the older bootleg Second Editions, convert it, & stick it on there myself ..... but of course, that could cause all kinds of problems of a legal nature. And, of course, as indicated by the Orwell books issue, one could see a situation where, if copyright law is changed in the future then books which are currently out of copyright could (if copyright is extended) suddenly become copyright again & vanish off your device. I read somewhere that the Disney corporation is among those working to extend copyright, as Walt died in 1966 & his work would enter the public domain in 2036. I still don;t know whether the changes made to LotR (added to any possible future changes we may see) have extended/renewed the copyright on LotR.

[Mister Underhill]

Everyone has to find their own level of (dis)comfort with the idea of e-readers and the ephemeral nature of digital content. If you think of a device as a replacement for your physical books, then some of these issues become more pressing. If, as I do, you view the device merely as a convenient adjunct to reading, it's pretty nifty. For instance, one additional thing I've found I can do is take out books (admittedly a small selection so far) from the library without actually having to go to the library. I like going to the library, but I'm also open to anything that will save me a trip out into LA traffic.

Anywho, here's -- finally -- the side-by-side look that I promised. This is an old mass-market edition of TT alongside the Kindle. The Kindle is set to the third smallest font size. You can also fiddle with the font (there's one called "Condensed" which crams considerably more print on a line without changing the actual font size), as well as the words-per-line (in this pic it's set to "Default" but there's also "Fewer" and "Fewest" if you want to create wider margins) and line spacing (mine is set to the max of three settings). I figure since page count isn't an issue, why not go with settings geared towards comfort, but if you prefer more words on the Kindle page, by turning the settings down you can actually get about a fourth again more words on the screen than on a paperback page and it's still readable.

[davem]

Well, after umming & ahhing for a few weeks I finally bought a Kindle (& the case I linked to earlier) So far I haven't read anything on it (I'm part way through a 'real' book, which I want to finish before going 'e'). I've downloaded a few books ready for when I get going (Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy', Tresselll's 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' & Chesterton's 'The Flying Inn' - which probably reveals much about me...... And they were all free )

Anyway - I also downloaded the free sample of LotR from Amazon (Intro, Prologue, Shire map & first two chapters) to try it out, & I noticed something - I couldn't read it. It was nice & clear, well presented - perfectly up to the standard I'd expected. But I still couldn't read it.

The problem was, its not simply about the text, its about the experience. I've read other e-texts on computers & phones, but I've never (even though I've used an e-text of LotR to search & find quotes) tried reading it for pleasure off a screen. What I found was that I missed the weight, & the experience of turning the pages (specifically I missed the weight & the feel of the paper of the A&U Second Edition 3vol H/B set which is an essential part of my experience of Middle-earth). Kindle is brilliant for presenting the text of a book, but not the 'experience' of reading a book. I'll use the Kindle a lot (I suspect) - lots of free stuff, very convenient for holidays, etc, etc. But I doubt I'll ever be able to read any Tolkien on it.

[Mister Underhill]

I'm not particularly picky about a specific edition -- for many, many years my Hobbit and LotR were a mismatched set of battered second-hand paperbacks. But I get what you're saying. The overall diminished physical experience of reading is an effect of the e-reader that I didn't fully anticipate.

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.

[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)

[davem]

Well, poping back to this thread

I actually gave up on the Kindle LotR & as I was within a week of purchase I got it wiped by Amazon & a full refund. The typos proved too much in the end.

Actually glad I did, because Harper Collins, the publishers have now surpassed themselves - even for a company owned by Rupert Murdoch:

HarperCollins sets 26-checkout cap on its library e-books http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/harpe...brary-e-books/

The publisher also issued a short statement: "HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come."

What presence? The presence that budget-crunched libraries can’t afford to purchase again once they’re loaned out 26 times? Great move, HC!

Of course, the idea is that printed books wear out after a certain number of lendings (30-35, says this librarian). And since the publishing industry never tires of thinking up ways to make e-books act more like print, this sort of thing probably should have been expected sooner or later. Needless to say, librarians and their partisans are upset, and a Twitter protest is going on under the hashtag #hcod.

It’s unclear whether, like agency pricing, this practice is going to spread to the other publishers. I wonder if any of them will realize just how bad this is making HarperCollins look. I mean, come on, libraries are having enough budget trouble already, and it’s not like you’re going to make a huge amount of money off of them in any case. And they expose people to your books who might decide they like them enough to buy them in another form. Do you really want to go this way, HarperCollins? Seriously?

So there we are, at a time when libraries in the UK are being shut down in their hundreds due to government spending cuts, Tolkien's publisher decides to cause a little more mischief, in a mean way. I no longer buy new physical editions of Tolkien books on principle, & I'll now make sure I avoid HC's ebooks - even if that means not getting e-copies at all.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by davem

I no longer buy new physical editions of Tolkien books on principle, & I'll now make sure I avoid HC's ebooks - even if that means not getting e-copies at all.

If you shun buying the actual books as well as the e-versions, what options are you left with? Used copies from second-hand shops? That's actually where my "working" copies come from.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

If you shun buying the actual books as well as the e-versions, what options are you left with? Used copies from second-hand shops? That's actually where my "working" copies come from.

The older (Allen & Unwin) editions are much higher quality than the cheap junk put out by HC. I've got some A&U editions from the '60's & 70's which will outlast the current stuff HC are churning out now - & they can be bought for the same price via Abe Books.

[Mister Underhill]

Physical books wear out after 30-35 lendings? Sheesh, what are people doing to their library books?

On the Kindle vs traditional books front, a new software update has added absolute page number functionality to the device. So now the "location" you're at can be mapped to the corresponding page number in the dead-tree edition. For me it definitely eases the difference in medium to be able to know what page I'm on.

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Mister Underhill

Physical books wear out after 30-35 lendings? Sheesh, what are people doing to their library books?

Couple months too late, but this caught my eye - 30-35 is the amount that can be expected in my experience. Now, my school is a relatively poor one, so we got by with the librarians making new covers out of construction paper and such, in some cases, especially for paperback books. Hardbacks normally lasted longer then that. Now those numbers are best case scenarios, in several cases this year, books only lasted for a little bit, before somebody would manage to tear the cover off, drop it in animal waste (yes, this happened), drop it in the toilet, the book was returned with bite marks, ect. Yes, all those happened...luckily, the kid who dropped his book in animal waste, had the common sense to not bring it into school, and just brought the money for the book instead....

Now, to return to the Tolkien on the Kindle, several new Tolkien books have come out on their recently including BoLT I & II. As I recently graduated high school, which can be a lucrative business if you have a party with relatives, I now have them, as well as Tales from the Perilous Realm. Next up, Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun to buy...Reviews of BoLT and Tales formatting on Kindle, as soon as I have the chance to finish reading them...

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by LadyBrooke

Couple months too late, but this caught my eye - 30-35 is the amount that can be expected in my experience. Now, my school is a relatively poor one, so we got by with the librarians making new covers out of construction paper and such, in some cases, especially for paperback books. Hardbacks normally lasted longer then that. Now those numbers are best case scenarios, in several cases this year, books only lasted for a little bit, before somebody would manage to tear the cover off, drop it in animal waste (yes, this happened), drop it in the toilet, the book was returned with bite marks, ect. Yes, all those happened...luckily, the kid who dropped his book in animal waste, had the common sense to not bring it into school, and just brought the money for the book instead....

That is, um, interesting... I have books that used to be my grandmothers, and they are still intact.... Why such a disrespect for books? Judging from your post many kids don't care about books, but I know many who would make a scandal because there's a scratch on their iPod.


I still hold my firm stance against reading books that are not really books. That is odd; well, I'm an odd sort of person. I generally dislike technology. I don't have (and don't want) any iPods, Macs, Blackberries, iPhones, or whatever else is popular now. All I have is the cheapest cellphone I could find, and a computer that I could call my own because my parents forced me to keep it.

Am I an old-fashioned kid? Probably. That's the only reason I could come up with for my animosity towards electronic books.

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

That is, um, interesting... I have books that used to be my grandmothers, and they are still intact.... Why such a disrespect for books? Judging from your post many kids don't care about books, but I know many who would make a scandal because there's a scratch on their iPod.

Well, in defense of the one kid, who dropped it in animal waste - he actually did normally take very good care of the books he checked out. Unfortunately, we had a period of heavy rain, his driveway sloped down hill, and as he was walking down it from the bus one day, he went on a roll - he had the customary gravel scratch marks to prove it. Both the librarian and I felt sorry for him....In general though, the kids didn't care - though the books did get more respect then me. The fact that I was shorter then them, didn't help earn me any respect....

I still hold my firm stance against reading books that are not really books. That is odd; well, I'm an odd sort of person. I generally dislike technology. I don't have (and don't want) any iPods, Macs, Blackberries, iPhones, or whatever else is popular now. All I have is the cheapest cellphone I could find, and a computer that I could call my own because my parents forced me to keep it.

I could care less about cellphones (I hate talking to people on the phone), but other then that - I want the latest technology. I have a Kindle, an iPod, and in the past few months, I've spent some of the money I got for graduating, and earlier this year my birthday, to improve my technology - I've upgraded to a wireless mouse and keyboard, got a usb hub so I have more room for my devices, bought a wireless printer/scanner, a Wacom art tablet, a new camera, and an external hard drive. Next, I have to get a laptop for college.....