The Kingle Single

Dwight Garner has a great piece in The New York Times about one of the lesser-known pleasures of owning an Amazon Kindle -- the Kindle Single.

Dwight says it well:

"I recently sat down and read 15 of these boutique minibooks. Most are blah; a few are so subliterate they made my temples ache. But several — like John Hooper’s reportage on the Costa Concordia disaster, Jane Hirshfield on haiku and Jonathan Mahler on Joe Paterno — are so good they awaken you to the promise of what feels almost like a new genre: long enough for genuine complexity, short enough that you don’t need journalistic starches and fillers."

I've read a couple. My favorite up 'til now is Pete Hamill's treatise on illegal immigration. But, having read Garner's article, I'm going to download the JoePa piece tonight when I get home.

Yes, I still adore the brick-and-mortar bookstore. Yes, I still buy paper-bound books. (Although if I bring too many more home my wife is going to kill me.)

But, I love the Kindle. I love it so much I have two. (Thanks, Jenn!) I'm currently reading Thomas Mallon's "Watergate: A Novel" on my Kindle Fire. Trust me, you quickly forget you're reading an electronic device and the e-ink technology of the original Kindle is easy on the eyes and doesn't glare in the sun.

E-readers and the internet are most likely the future of my profession. Heck, we wouldn't be meeting like this were it not for that lovely modern-day cracker barrel known as the weblog (or blog, for short).

So, I said all that to say all this, as Jerry Reed once sang. If you have a Kindle, don't miss out on the Singles. Good stuff. Good stuff, indeed.