h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I treated myself to a kindle last week, courtesy of birthday Amazon vouchers, and I've just finished reading my first book on it.

Terry Pratchett does write other stuff than Discworld novels, you know, so I started with the first of the Johnny trilogies, about a teenage nerd who gets involved in a real space war via a computer game.

I enjoyed the story, and the kindle is lovely to read on. Small and light, fits in my handbag, can be read with one hand.

I'm not sure that the file copy I was reading was fully kosher though - the punctuation and layout seemed odd at times, and there was 1 or 2 spelling mistakes. Maybe something to with converting from pdf to mobi.

I have a couple of paper books that I'm still finishing - Sadomasochism for Accountants, which I bought at a charity shop because the title amused me, and which is one of those books so badly researched and poorly written that you wonder how on earth it got published.

The other is How to Teach your Dog Quantum Mechanics (I buy a lot of books based solely on their titles, obviously) which is actually a serious look at QM and features a very lovable doggie. I'd give it 5 stars.

The Johnny books got better as they went along. Johnny and the Dead is a classic, on a par with "Back to the Future".

My favourite bit is the police sergeant who never got the hang of proper alphabetic code and radios things like "P for Psychology, X for Xylophone, M for Mnemonic"

B

A905519

Yup - I'm definitely going for one of those. Everyone seems so pleased with them. I'm not a "book-lover" in that I don't feel attached to those dusty, heavy, space-stealing books. And the chance of a crick in the neck* when reading in bed is minimalised.



* that's the first time I've ever seen that written.

I'm reading "Snuff" at the moment. In hardback. My son lent it to me. It's rather annoying that it's an American version, though. Can you press a switch on a Kindle that changes from British English to American spelling?

I'll have a look in the instructions. I know I specified a language during set up, but I'm not sure whether the actual files themselves are locked to one language or not.

I don't think you can, no. you can however change the dictionary and i'd recommend the OED...

The book I'm reading at the minute's making me seriously consider getting a Kindle. It's a biography about three inches thick, so if I want to take it to work I need to lug a bag around, which I wouldn't otherwise need. The Kindle I could bung in my coat pocket.

And as TC says, I've yet to hear a bad word about them from anyone who has one. Not many gadgets I could say that for!

It was interesting seeing how many people have them on the train these days - as they can be read with one hand, while you're holding on to something, you can see the appeal to commuters.

I'll look into different dictionaries, thanks Anna, I wasn't happy with the one it came with.

It comes with the American Oxford dictionary and the OED. Use the OED. Go to settings, change it there. They’re brilliant things, you can put PDFs on them, change the text size so you do not get a headache (I squint so changing text size = *lots of happy*) and plenty of other stuff. Students love them and why? If we can get a book/textbook on Kindle and it is not ridiculous expensive we will cos then we don't have to kill our shoulders lugging it in our bags! As you can tell, I am a Very Happy Student. My mother convinced me to get one and I haven't looked back since- no one else on my course seems to have one. It should be mandatory, they are getting cheaper- 86 quid for the new one but I don't think I like it. I’ll stick with mine with the keyboard, ta!

You can also balance it on your knee too, normal books you can't DO that.