kindles interest

It looks like Amazon has hit the sweet spot with the Kindle, its new reading device. There’s a ton of press, much of it positive.

Peter Osnos, publisher of Public Affairs and director of the multi-platform publishing project Caravan (who, coincidentally, is also Scott McLellan’s editor and who I mentioned here in that regard, and obviously a very industrious guy) sings its praises here. [e.a.]

Now comes the Kindle, Amazon’s device for wireless reading that makes it possible to carry an entire library in a machine the size of a paperback. I ordered one on the day it was released at the high price of $399. It arrived two days later, and within minutes I was settled in an easy-chair downloading and reading David Halberstam’s The Coldest Winter, which I had bought for $9.99, less than a third of its list price for the printed version. … There will be a great many people who conclude that they only way they really enjoy a book is holding the printed pages in their hand, but for those who choose a machine (like those who have switched over time to MP3s from Hi-Fi, and to DVDs from the big screen), the Kindle is a major breakthrough.

A colleague will be pleased to note the device’s usefulness to publishing professionals:

As an editor, I was especially interested in the promise of downloading documents and manuscripts from my computer so I could read them and take notes without hauling wheelbarrows full of paper.

Alas, Osnos’s path to setting up the damn thing wasn’t obstacle-free. Read about it here. But read it!

I think it was a year and a half ago that I wrote “the future of books is here.” There’s an awful lot of press right now, so it’s hard to say amidst the fog of PR whether or not the Kindle will ignite (ha ha ha HA!) the imaginations of gadget lovers as well as book lovers. Its wireless capability just may give it the kind of crossover appeal to make the idea of an electronic device for reading books stick. And that’s more than half the battle, I believe.

Which means that books may finally be tipping over into the digital realm for real. I’ve been writing about this subject for a long time on the blog. And I’m also the author of the slogan

if you love books, set them free™

So I’m pleased about this development.

But I’m even more pleased to note a certain buzz around books that I haven’t picked up in a good long while. This one even made it into the news pages of the New York Times.

Maybe by coincidence, I’ve noted a mini-trend among the twentysomethings of my own acquaintance (not a scientific sample—not even close—but it’s still worth reporting, because it’s a change in their behavior): they’re not only reading more, but they’re reading more widely. And they’re drawn to big-canvas stories: Hemingway and Ayn Rand [!] are having a resurgence.

The extraordinary two-week outpouring of affection after the recent death of Norman Mailer put the spotlight on an era when authors—and books, of course—mattered. Articles about Mailer appeared so far and wide in the media that they left an impression. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten a lot of requests for guidance about the post-war mid-twentieth-century writers. I’ve pointed my young friends toward Bellow, Heller, Roth, Malamud, Capote, Talese, Thompson, Mailer, Wolfe, and Updike. Did I leave anyone out?

It’s an unexpected pleasure to be asked for book recommendations. You know what I mean?

Also, for me it’s just another indicator that the popular culture—TV and the movies—isn’t providing enough in the way of stories to satisfy the voracious hunger of the entertainment-consuming public. And the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike isn’t helping.

A restless public could do worse than turn to books, of course.

But even if they don’t—and this is my real point—storytellers should stop worrying and relax. The form in which they tell their tales will change and evolve.

But as long as there are human beings who want to know what happened? or what’s happening?, storytellers will never run out of business.

So: if you love books, set them free™—and let them evolve.