would not should good

LAST WEEK of this month’s Kindle-watch showed the highest total of Kindle’s yet. Of course, the iPad dominated ebook discussions for the week, even though ebooks are just a small piece of its offering. The last Kindle I saw was being used side by side with an iPhone.

I will have to see iBooks for myself to see if they have solved the eye strain problem with non-e-ink displays. I will do an iPad watch in April as a follow to see if people love their iPads for the commute or on their coach at home.

Oh, and Amazon kicked Macmillan to the curb when Macmillan suggested retail prices for ebooks be $15 not $9.99.

1/4 - 1/8 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 1 Nook 0
1/11 - 1/15 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 0 Nook 1
1/18 – 1/22 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 1 Nook 0
1/25 - 1/29 Kindle 3 Sony Reader 0 Nook 1
Totals Kindle 9 Sony Reader 2 Nook 2

DESPITE spending less time on commuter and subway trains, the numbers don’t look that much off. 

On the flight back from Seattle today it was dueling ebook readers, as one guy had a Sony Reader and one had a Kindle.  The stewardess even mention that we needed to check the seatback pockets and not forget our expensive items like our Kindles.  Kindle, like Google or iPhone, is now part of the parlance of our times.

I also spent some time arguing and imagining what the new Apple device will do and mean for the ebook market.   Which means, Apple has got everybody waiting for their announcement next week, including me. 

1/4 - 1/8 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 1 Nook 0
1/11 - 1/15 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 0 Nook 1
1/18 – 1/22 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 1 Nook 0
Totals Kindle 6 Sony Reader 2 Nook 1

THE KINDLES continued to come out of hiding this week. I witnessed another two people reading on their Kindles this week. One person was reading Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers, which supports my view that the vast majority of the reading being done with ebook readers consists of free and public domain boooks. It is also what I am reading on my version 1 Kindle at home on occasion.

The Barnes and Noble Nook made an appearance late Friday on the Commuter Rail (in contrast, I have seen the Kindles mostly on the Red Line subway). The woman gushed to a passenger sitting next to her how much she loved the Nook - she reads two to three books a week, uses it on the train and on vacation, books cost a lost less, and generally loved the experience of the lower screen for searching for books. She did mention in a tone of disappointment that she could only go to the Barnes and Noble store. The screen didn’t look bad from my seat across the aisle, but I was hoping she would exclaim a little less loudly so I could the fourth book in the Percy Jackson series.

Here are the running totals for the month so far. Definitely up from last month. I will be out of town most of next week, so the numbers will be abbreviated and skewed. I will look for Kindles at the airport instead.

1/4 - 1/8 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 1 Nook 0
1/11 - 1/15 Kindle 2 Sony Reader 0 Nook 1
Totals Kindle 4 Sony Reader 1 Nook 1

I EXPECTED there to be a larger number of Kindle’s on the Fitchburg line and the Red line after the Christmas and New Year Holidays.  The first week back on the train started slowly.  At first I saw a Sony Reader.  Not sure if it was a new Daily Edition or not.  At the end of the week, picked up steam with 2 Kindle sightings.  One was the larger sized DX model.  This week started off with a Kindle DX that I almost missed as the man using it had his back to me.  If the trends continue, I expect to see more Kindles on my commute.  Of course, they are all reading free books, but that is another story. 

The Boston Book Festival Twitter linked to this interesting little mashup of “The Big Lebowski” and William Shakespeare entitled Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. It definitely brings a smile to face after a long first week back at the day job after the holidays. Makes me want to rush out and buy some milk and Kahlua and settle down for a white russian after we close the bookstore today. And perhaps go bowling.

MY FACE froze up during this day out snowshoeing last Tuesday. I also “found” some spots where the rains from a couple days before had created some hidden pockets of water. It immediately froze to my snowshoes making them kind of deep frozen snowshoes, boots and pants.

Here is a list of the the wines that Patty and I drank over the end of year holiday time. I am still very fond of the Ken Wright wines. They definitely get better after four years or more in the bottle. A lot of Northwest wines, but I guess that just shows where we started to drink wine and how it has influenced our tastes.

The List

Pio Cesare Barolo 2005

Ken Wright Cellars Abbott Claim Vineyard 2005

Honig Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc 2008

Bodegas El Nido Jumilla Clio 2006

Ken Wright Cellars McCrone Vineyard 2006 (half bottle)

NxNW Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

Lorenzo Begali Valpolicella Classico Superiore Ripasso Vigneto La Cengia 2006

Siduri Russian River Valley Pinot Noir 2007

Bethel Heights Estate Grown Pinot Noir 2007

NO SNOW here in Vermont on Christmas Day, but we managed to catch an afternoon showing of the new Sherlock Holmes movie staring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. I wanted to write that this was Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes movie, but they don’t really let him off the leash too much with the big budget and multiple writers and screenplay fix up men.

Getting to see the preview for Iron Man 2 with Downey only set the table for how fun it is to watch him play the smart guy that is not house broken roles that he seems to be specializing in these days. Rachel McAdams did not muck it up as I had feared.

Overall it is a solid film that had some laughs, some villains, some adventure, some lovely special effects, and a good wrap it up ending. I missed a whole bunch of clues. They do set themselves up for the next movie, which is normally a bad thing in my opinion, but in this case I like Downey and Law as Holmes and Watson enough to want to see where they take it in the second movie. And I am hoping they let Guy Ritchie do a bit more.

I WILL not be on the commuter rail or subway for the rest of the holiday season, but I find it interesting that I only saw one Kindle in the month of December. Perhaps the Kindles are shy, as there were a lot more out and about in October and November. I will be repeating the process again in January with an expectation that a few people got them as holiday gifts and will want to try them out on their long commutes.

I DECIDED to count the number of Kindles I see on my regular commutes during the month of December. 0 for December 1st, but 1 for today. I looked over and the guy had a Kindle DX, which looked large and in charge compared to my Kindle 1.0. I didn’t really mind as I thought I was reading Hilary Mantel’s Man Booker Award winning opus on Thomas Cromwell, “Wolf Hall“, and I didn’t really care that the guy sitting next to me had a big, bad ass Kindle. I figured I had a better book.