However, and this is important, both services and the local libraries, all point to online archives for literature of free downloads. Project Gutenberg is famous for this. Lord of the Rings is an old series by JRR Tolkien (note that the Summer Knight was named Ronald Ruell in Jim Butcher's novel) is now public access and open for personal download. You can view it on your PC through Adobe Acrobat or any word processor, rather than pay for a tablet or electric book reader. You can also listen to the entire Silmarillion, all 15 hours of it.
I prefer to call them electric books rather than ebooks because it is funnier, and pronouncing "e" by itself is the kind of sham technology nonsense which annoys me after 18 years of IT work. "I" and "T" being pronounced individually as well, and deeply annoying when my primary customer's most common demand was "Ah juss wannit ta work!". If you have ever worked in IT, those are the words you dread because it is the gap between ignorance and expectation. In IT, problems are either caused by ignorance of simple operation or the tip of an iceberg of damage requiring hours of effort to repair, which will not be appreciated or understood by the plaintive whining of the "customer" who can't believe how seriously buggered it all is thanks to their downloading Whack-A-Mole spyware.
I have been pondering purchasing an electric book, such as the Kindle Paperwhite. It's just over $110 at the local office supply store, which is cheaper than Amazon sells them for. The upside is 8 weeks of battery life. The downside is no audio, no expandable memory, and no proper OS, though for reading only it is dandy. I could buy a tablet, which is bigger, heavier, and much shorter battery life, but does a ton more things, however tablets don't have a full OS so much as the expanded credit card business which a basic reader mostly avoids. Apps, such as found on Apples and Androids, are mostly subscription with a monthly charge, leading to a death by a thousand cuts. If you have many friends and no sense of personal pondering or individuality, you must be constantly affirmed by texts and facebook nonsense and proving you've been somewhere. The downside of such things is they're heavier, bulky, and not as convenient as something smaller. The reader, the Kindle, is 6 inches and small enough for a larger pocket. That said, since I've found that there's a huge archive of free books online, to protect Western Culture through literature libraries of noteworthy parts of our development.
I can put audiobooks on my tiny MP3 player, which uses AAA batteries from my Insulin pump, where they found first use, and yet retain sufficient power for about 10 more hours of music or books. I've got the Hobbit on there, read by an actor in 1974, the same recording I had as a child my mother gave to me and my brother when we were kids. Found all 13 CDs of the Silmarillion too, which may end up painfully long. I've never bothered with it before. We'll see. I long thought one of the strengths of LoTR was that it referred to past events without explaining them, which is an immersive setting technique in good writing.
I also found Unbeaten Tracks of Japan by Isabella Bird. This is 150 year old travelogue of an English woman in Japan, who apparently was only healthy when she travelled. Japan of 1878 is a very odd place, if you didn't know, and remains odd today. Years ago, when I first understood just how crippling my Diabetes would be, and how limiting it is, I swore that when I was cured I would backpack the Pacific Crest Trail, up the Sierras, from San Diego to Canada. Japan is mountainous like California, and I'd be seeking the same kind of solitudes and all the places that aren't Tokyo. Why go to Japan and do the same thing when I don't speak the language and haven't done the same here? Listening to life in Japan reminds me of what I haven't seen here yet and I ponder that while bicycling the various roads would be painful and slow, scootering it would be about the right speed and level of exhaustion to satisfy. I say level of exhaustion because travel is about seeing things and being tired enough to ponder the day's vistas. Google Earth is good for this, for overview, but on the ground its best done slowly so you can see the people and stop for every visual curiosity. And since I speak English, I'd be able to communicate with my Fellow Californians on such a journey, far better than I would in Japan. So in a way, the travelogue makes me want to explore more at home. I suppose I could take my car and meander down the mountain into a neighborhood with mansions I've glanced through. And by down, I mean that as downslope from here, closer to the creek.
If I were using a convergence device, I'd have to carry a tablet on my hike to take pictures. Instead, I have a camera that slips into my pocket, has its own battery, and a proper mechanical zoom lens so the pictures are sharp instead of fuzzy or covered in dust or scratches since most cellphone and tablet cameras suffer from those ills. Wrapping a tablet in a case ALSO increases its weight, which rather undoes the value of making it light in the first place. If I do settle down and buy the Kindle Paperwhite, as I think I shall, I plan to just use it plain, as I do with several of my gizmos. Plain is good enough, provided you're careful instead of a moron. I'm not a moron. I am careful. My stuff lasts.
I can see the point of an Android tablet as a reader with more stuff it can do. I can. And that's fine. I just don't think I need one. The idea of carrying a tablet on a hike so I can have GPS or a camera is laughable to me. I have to wonder if other people do that more than once? There's one born every minute. I'll stick to a regular PC for writing and data processing projects. Its more efficient and less likely to break or get scratched or wet or stolen. Be sensible.
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