My current Kindle for TouchPad reading includes Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970 by David Browne. As the title suggests, the author makes the case that 1970 was a pivotal year for these groups and for the society. 1970 was the year of the Kent State shootings and of the Manson trial.
The first half of 1970 I was a high school junior. In September of 1970 I started my senior year.
The summer between had a huge impact on my life. I attended the co-ed John Hay Summer Residential Institute hosted at Marks Hall, Claremont Men's (now McKenna) College in Claremont. I spent a month on the campus of the Claremont Colleges. The thirty or so of us read Ralph Ellison, D.H. Lawrence, Camus, Freud, and Malinowski. We went to classical music concerts and took up art projects. We visited the Honnold Library and the Huntley Bookstore.We ate our meals together in the dining hall and in general lived together for a month.
I discovered Pitzer College, where I applied, where I was admitted, and from where I graduated.
"And that," to quote Frost, "has made all the difference."
1970 was a life-changing year for me.
I wrote a while back about how much I enjoy the magazine Books & Culture. As I wrote at the time, even though the magazine is published by the publishers of Christianity Today, Books & Culture "takes a balanced and even nearly academic approach. It is not by any means a bastion of liberalism, but the essays are intelligent, balanced, and well thought out."
I did have a couple of logistical problems with B&C. First, about one issue in three never showed up. Second, as much as I enjoyed the articles and reviews, the magazine is oversize and difficult to hold in my hands and read. I think the second point may be related to the first. Such odd-sized publications often don't make it through the postal system particularly well.
I solved both problems last week. I cancelled my print subscription and subscribed to the Web edition. And you know what? When I read the articles on my new HP TouchPad, I can increase the page size so the type is nice and crisp and clear, and I don't see the ads.
That is, I hope, a preview of what my experience will be with the Kindle for TouchPad, which is due out in, I am told, in a couple of weeks. Those predictions, I sincerely hope, are accurate.
UPDATE: I wrote this on Sunday. On Monday evening, minding my own business, my TouchPad notified me that the Kindle app was available. I of course downloaded it immediately. YES! It is there. It looks great! I am delighted. Hope to have a review for you next week. Angry Birds, you are going to have to take a back seat.
You know that I have been known to complain (whine?) about my Kindle overwhelm. So I have to say that I appreciate the advice from NPR about books:
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As books, magazines and blogs proliferate, avid readers are often frustrated that they
don't have time to consume everything. NPR's culture critic Linda Holmes says
it's time to face facts: your time is better spent deciding how to choose what
to read than bemoaning you can't digest it all.
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I like this. I need to pay attention.
Transcript and audio link here.
Karl Klaus, in The Made-Up Self, frequently mentions the naturalist and author, Loren Eiseley. Eiseley wrote a number of books in which he conveyed the awe and wonder of the natural world, the most well-known being The Immense Journey.
Back in my B. Dalton days in the mid-to-late 1970's I was an avid reader of Eiseley, and believe I read pretty much everything he had in print. In those pre-personal computer days I would copy down quotes from a book that spoke to me onto a piece of note paper and tape it to a sheet of eight-and-a-half by eleven paper, which I would then put in a three-ring binder. Other quotes I would copy directly to three-hole notebook paper. Many of those quotes are from Eiseley. I still have that binder today. Here's a randomly selected quote I found there:
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I have come to believe that in the world there is nothing to explain the world.
Nothing in nature can separate the existent from the potential. |
What's interesting is that I don't think I ever bought an Eiseley book. All of my Eiseley reading seems to be lunch and break-time reading at the store. I certainly can't find an Eiseley book on my shelves today. Now I certainly have gotten rid of a number of books over the years, but if I ever owned any Eiseley books I can't imagine having gotten rid of them. I certainly still have many less worthy books from those days.
It's odd, looking back and recognizing that.
If I were independently wealthy and didn't need to work, I'd be there actually reading the Kerouac novel.
I was looking at and thinking about my book collection the other day. I still have some books from my childhood. I have some books from my college days. I've got books from my B. Dalton Bookseller days. I've got books from my Religious Science days, and books from my once-and-again Episcopal days. I've given away, donated, or otherwise gotten rid of books from all of those eras. And yet I still have a lot of books from all of those eras. I'm not sure there's a lot of rhyme or reason to what I've kept and what I've let go of. Some books I've gotten rid of I wish I still had. Some books I still have I wonder why I've kept.
I have no answers here, just some random thoughts. Anyone have a similar experience?
