Death of a Kindle

So, my kindle died. 

It happened some time ago actually, and it didn’t so much “die” as get inadvertently smooshed – it’s a long story. Of course, all of the books I’d downloaded are still available via my Amazon account and I can use the online cloud reader or “Kindle for PC” to read them. The problem, however, is with my collections.

The kindle allows you to categorize your books for easy reference and I accordingly had such collection titles as: vampires, zombies, werewolves, dragons, food, short stories, classics, etc. And, of course you could add the same books to multiple collections, so if I wasn’t quite sure where I’d put “Buster’s Bloody Brunch: An Anthology of Vampire Feasting Tales with Recipes Included”, I could look in ‘vampires’, ‘food’ or ‘short stories’. 

When I came to Kenya, I never got around to synchronizing my kindle w/ my Amazon account before the accident – the wi-fi at the local coffee shop was never up when I tried to go there. So, the majority of my awesome collections are locked inside my kindle. The only problem with that is I no longer have access to my favorite collection: "Shitty Writing/Stupid Stories" (it had at least thirty books).

This collection was going to be the pool from which I picked most of the books I’d intended to review. Now, all of those books themselves are still accessible, but since there are well over one thousand books on my kindle – and since my memory is…not the best – I’ve no reliable way to

ensure that any given book I choose is one of the awful ones worthy of my ridicule – uh, I mean review! Yes, worthy of my review.

All, however, is not lost. At some point in the near future, I should be able to grab the info off my dead kindle. In the meantime, I have joined a website that grants readers/reviewers access to unpublished galleys of upcoming works. So, until I find the means to temporarily resurrect the kindle, I will be posting reviews of (hopefully) good books and graphic novels.

So, please stay tuned. The first review should be up in a day or two, followed shortly by another excerpt.

(Just a quick note: I was never a “kindle person”. I rather hated the idea of them and KNEW I’d never have one. Then I received one as a gift from my beloved and some friends. At first, I used it only to play some rather addictive word games, but I quickly discovered several web sites that send out e-mails with lists of all of the various free kindle books that are available daily. As I stated earlier, I’m a bit of a hoarder; within a few months, I managed to accrue quite a collection. (The few books I actually purchased were from indie author Joey Comeau; www.asofterworld.com – check him out!). It has now become my strange, obsessive vice/curse that I must check for free kindle books every single day and grab the ones that seem even remotely interesting. Hopefully, as I start writing more and more, I will obsess over my kindle less and less.

Until, of course, I publish and start selling books for the kindle…)