I could listen to this man for hours... yes... I would love a kindle reader... I downloaded a wonderful torrent of over 6000 philosophical texts a few years ago. Sadly, peering at the notebook screen while reading tends to induce headache.
Yes, I recent acquired a nice hard-backed bound set of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I hear it is perhaps still the most authoritative cometary on the subject.
I must admit... I kind of like the feel and smell of a 3D book...
Kindle non-feature list includes: 1. can't read in the bath 2. can't lend to friends 3. can't tear out pages to put as message in a bottle when marooned on a desert island 4. can't use as a fire lighter in a similar survival situations 5. can't use as toilet paper 6. can't be recycled 7. can't work without batteries 8. not guaranteed to work after a few years 9. can't replace all the books on your shelves as many are not available in e-book format 10.... many more (but ran out of space)
@shumble32 Well of course that's all very well, but a Kindle doesn't weigh much, it won't fall apart after opening & closing several times, you can't lend to friends and never hope to get it back, it doesn't gather dust, you can get rid of a book on Kindle without thinking you have committed vandalism, you can find any word in a book in a flash even without an index, lots of the biggest fattest books are free. I could go on but you get the point, I'm sure. Now I've run out of space!!
I prefer my books typeset, printed and bound. It is much healthier to look at the light reflected from the paper than the light emitted by an electronic device (especially considering how much time I already spend at the computer).
Not to mention I can flip through the pages if I feel like it. Also referring to illustrations not on the same page is much simpler in a real book.
@RustyTube I would certainly have agreed with you until I actually saw one of these Kindles. However, unlike a computer screen, they do not emit any light so you cannot read them in a darkened room: the effect is very similar to reading a cleanly printed page - and you get to choose your preferred font-size too. My Kindle works for about a month before it needs recharging.
I have the new kindle and it comes with the english english dictionary as well! I love it it's awesome, when I don't know a word I can easily look it up. Just finished reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.
@clehman67 I hope you get it soon. It really is first-rate, giving an excellent 'feel' for Florentine life & culture. I have with glee danced on the spot where Savonarola was put to death!
Just kidding, though I'm really attatched to non-virtual books. I have to stare at computer screens all day long, a break from that is always refreshing.
Simultaneously working my way through The Information by James Gleick and A History of God by Karen Armstrong.. Both books that I think you would thoroughly enjoy if you haven't already read them.
I cherish my six-volumes of Gibbon's masterpiece. I will admit that I have only read the 1st 3 volumes cover-to-cover (up to the fall of the Western Empire). Gibbon's English is so elegant that it's a pleasure to read. Someday I will finish volumes 4,5,&6. Although I'm a digital enthusiast, I've come to the conclusion that I prefer my books as hard copy, the important ones anyway. That's one way I'm old fashioned.
@ozmoroid My father would entirely have agreed with you. But I am now fully converted to the Kindle format. As you say, Gibbon shows the high point of English prose style in elegant - even rotund - diction.
Apart from the tactile pleasure of reading a book, I'm still in love with the aesthetic beauty of the things and I love to annotate them too. Besides, they each have their associated memories. But I will no doubt get an e-reader one day. My phone is my music player of choice but I still buy and play vinyl. It's not the death of books, if anything it increases their cachet.
I like to name my inanimate objects of desire, so if I had a Kindle I think I'd call it Dr. Richard. No arm in that! :¬)
My kindle has more than paid for itself from the public domain books alone. Mine is primarily occupied by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Shakespeare, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker--stuff like that.
I have 87 books on my Kindle at the moment and, well, I still have a lot of reading to do.
American English really annoys me too. I asked the editor of Mirriam Webster US why Americans changed the spelling of English words back in the day. She said because the US was mad at Britian and wanted to reinvent English for themselves. If thats the case I cant understand why they kept the British weights and measures system when there was a perfectly good alternative like Metric.
I agree with you about the Kindle I only wish they had brought it out before I had my new bookcase constructed to put the books in that I have bought since being in my present location. I note that we have some books in common such as those by CH. I would recommend Lyttleton's Britain which is a very amusing book. I am also looking forward to Michael Greens' books being put onto kindle as I always thought they were so funny.
@hairyreasoner Sadly I don't possess any copy of the One Book. My copy went to a charity shop three years ago and I expect it has now been pulped and recycled as toilet paper.
Sounds like you've been "ripped off," as we say in North America. My Kindle (the same model as yours) came with "The Oxford Dictionary of English," which purports to cover "world English" and lists words under their British spellings (favour, labour, etc.) But I, too, love the little gadget. Not only can you store 3,000 books inside it, but nobody can tell which one you're reading unless they can see the screen. And my wife, a librarian, has forbidden me to buy any more real books. Go figure.
@NORTHERNKONFLIKT Clicking around my Kindle, I see that it has both the "Ox. American Dictionary" and the "Ox. Dict. of English." I'm not sure how different they are... looks like the "American" one lists the US usages first, and that's about it. Whether one can delete either of them, I dunno. Meanwhile, I can recommend the Kindle version of "The Good Book" by David Plotz, a trip through the Bible in 21st-century vernacular that should be intelligible (and hilarious) anywhere.
@prophetchannel Yes, I noticed his portly frame in his portraits and wondered if he were really that large. Thomas Aquinas was very, very fat too: perhaps it comes of thinking too much and walking too little!
I teach international English, so my learners get both sides of the English language coin, spellings, pronunciations, and divergent meanings of the same words. There should be an Oxford International Dictionary of the Whole Damn Lot of It.
@LaMaisondeCasaHouse Yes indeed. And I would be speechless with awe to meet Erasmus. I have his Colloquia and his Ciceronianus, both from the house of Elzivir (1615)
Most books on my kindle are Fantasy novels (George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobbs and the like). Therefore the kindle really saves my hands and wrists, because I don't have to hold those tomes all the time. Also I got many literary classics for free on kindle. Currently reading The scarlet letter.
Evidently I am far more old fashioned than you, Professor....unless I hold a book in my hands, and feel the fine texture of the paper, and smell the glorious fragrance of the inks and glue, and feel the weight of it, and turn the pages as I read, until eventually the binding creases in the middle...Ah!!.....that is simply an integral part of the reading experience. I know it is anti-tree and I need to change...but what if the internet crashes worldwide and there are no books anywhere 2B found??
The books that are on the device stay there, even without internet. The same is true for all the data people have on their harddrives, many people are archiving their data and making sure they get all the interesting stuff they see online onto their harddrives. So if the internet goes down, not much data would be lost, and they would hack together a replacement for the internet quickly. And its doubtful that it even can go down.
@kurtilein3 :This is wonderful news to me. I had a dark suspicion that we are being led into a bookless society, dependent on electronics for education and personal enrichment. I tried to visualize a world absent of written words and electrical conveniences..What would happen? Would people enter a period of superstition and band together into tribes, passing on stories around a fire?Would religions long abandoned be re-invented? I shudder to think it! Thanks for the reassurance!! Technology=good
one time i got a tour of a facility where they have some supercomputers and data archives. Security was about as strict as in a nuclear reactor, the building had double walls, anti-terrorism protection, an automatic fire extinguishing system, and was shielded off against all electromagnetic radiation. Just an insane amount of security. And one thing they have on their highest-security data storage are all the scanned books from Project Guttenberg :)
the craziest thing about that data center: they even seem to put the value of their data a bit higher than the value of human life. If a fire breaks out, you have 90 seconds to evacuate the whole building before it gets completely flooded with 400000 dollars worth of Argon, and anyone still in there suffocates just like the fire. This cannot be prevented once the system is activated, there only are a few emergency-buttons that grant you a delay of 1 minute maximum.
@tenneral Have you used Calibre for Kindle, it is a free program to convert any text file like pdf to kindle format. I would not be without this program as there are so many free books and essays. I just googled change dictionary kindle and it says it can be done.....will try it out and let you know
sorry to say that i will not get a tablet as the hunt for a book is as enjoyable as the reading, saying that i do have a few downloaded to my laptop, it saves having the one read wonders around the place picking up dust
I don't have a tablet at the moment, if I got one I would use it for most of my books, but sometimes a really good book deserves to be owned in hard cover.
I still buy far too many books (my biggest addiction) because I like the feel of them in my hand and the joy of flipping pages. But I too have succumbed to some extent. I have Kindle reader for both my PC and my iPad. There are so many classic works for Kindle that are free from the Amazon store. To my great joy I've found that a number of scientific works can be downloaded for far less than the text version - sometimes half the price or less. Google books is another place to download free.
Haven't read a book for about 20 year's text to speech software, or audio books, moving my eyes seem's like too much hard work :D and I'm using speech to text software to right this :D
I just got my first kindle and the number of free and cheap books is pretty amazing. I am replacing many of my classics and now my night-stand is not covered with books. I bought it for the web browser but am really loving it for reading books.
Your videoa are works of art, sir. Please don't worry us too long with thoughts about you possibly 'poppojg off'. Although you seem to be in pristine fettle to Us, someone aged 42 died yesterday ... and it's not uncommon. Ken Russell is no longer with us. RIP, Ken. You WERE appreciated ... as quite a remarkable individual.
I know language evolves and English in another couple of hundred years, won't be the English you and I speak. However, American English, in my opinion is a far better option than the bastardisation of the language which I see in text messages and all over Facebook, courtesy of my younger relatives.
No, I haven't got any Kindle! I like my books heavy, with glossy papers, bound in leather and easily lying open on my lap. You see; I don't read in bed: I just mostly just sleep or there.
Nice to see you again anyway, and you really make up for your hiatus now...
I hope your Irish studies are gong fine, and that your next hiatus from YT will not last another 40 years ;-)
I also love my Kindle, great for taking on walks. I wish it was water-proofed, though, I love reading in the bath. I've been reading the Pickwick Papers, Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled', and 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'.
I could listen to this man for hours... yes... I would love a kindle reader... I downloaded a wonderful torrent of over 6000 philosophical texts a few years ago. Sadly, peering at the notebook screen while reading tends to induce headache.
Yes, I recent acquired a nice hard-backed bound set of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I hear it is perhaps still the most authoritative cometary on the subject.
I must admit... I kind of like the feel and smell of a 3D book...
TheWisemonkey8 3 months ago
shumble32 3 months ago
@shumble32 Well of course that's all very well, but a Kindle doesn't weigh much, it won't fall apart after opening & closing several times, you can't lend to friends and never hope to get it back, it doesn't gather dust, you can get rid of a book on Kindle without thinking you have committed vandalism, you can find any word in a book in a flash even without an index, lots of the biggest fattest books are free. I could go on but you get the point, I'm sure. Now I've run out of space!!
tenneral 3 months ago
Ah. That Gibbon. Not the Funky one.
fluffymcdeath 3 months ago
@fluffymcdeath Ah, the Goodies. Those were the days [when they all had hair and Bill Oddie was not quite so irritating!]
tenneral 3 months ago
No wonder you are so articulate
bajorjor1 3 months ago
I went nuts on Ancient Greek and Roman authors. Most were free.
fidgaf 3 months ago
I prefer my books typeset, printed and bound. It is much healthier to look at the light reflected from the paper than the light emitted by an electronic device (especially considering how much time I already spend at the computer).
Not to mention I can flip through the pages if I feel like it. Also referring to illustrations not on the same page is much simpler in a real book.
Best of all, paper books need no batteries!
RustyTube 3 months ago
@RustyTube I would certainly have agreed with you until I actually saw one of these Kindles. However, unlike a computer screen, they do not emit any light so you cannot read them in a darkened room: the effect is very similar to reading a cleanly printed page - and you get to choose your preferred font-size too. My Kindle works for about a month before it needs recharging.
tenneral 3 months ago
I have the new kindle and it comes with the english english dictionary as well! I love it it's awesome, when I don't know a word I can easily look it up. Just finished reading Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.
MaxPower824 3 months ago
I'm married to an Englishman, whom, I'm afraid, has adopted quite a few "Americanisms" into his vocabulary. LOL
Hereticbooks 3 months ago
Too bad "Death in Florence" by Strathern is currently unavailable for Kindle users in the US.
clehman67 3 months ago
@clehman67 I hope you get it soon. It really is first-rate, giving an excellent 'feel' for Florentine life & culture. I have with glee danced on the spot where Savonarola was put to death!
tenneral 3 months ago
A Kindle? Blasphemy!
Just kidding, though I'm really attatched to non-virtual books. I have to stare at computer screens all day long, a break from that is always refreshing.
TheCuriousWays 3 months ago
1:42 Has "library" four syllables to enunciate?
shangrigreige 3 months ago
Simultaneously working my way through The Information by James Gleick and A History of God by Karen Armstrong.. Both books that I think you would thoroughly enjoy if you haven't already read them.
antonc81 3 months ago
@antonc81 Have read the second and will try The Information on your recommendation.
tenneral 3 months ago
I cherish my six-volumes of Gibbon's masterpiece. I will admit that I have only read the 1st 3 volumes cover-to-cover (up to the fall of the Western Empire). Gibbon's English is so elegant that it's a pleasure to read. Someday I will finish volumes 4,5,&6. Although I'm a digital enthusiast, I've come to the conclusion that I prefer my books as hard copy, the important ones anyway. That's one way I'm old fashioned.
ozmoroid 3 months ago
@ozmoroid My father would entirely have agreed with you. But I am now fully converted to the Kindle format. As you say, Gibbon shows the high point of English prose style in elegant - even rotund - diction.
tenneral 3 months ago
A reader of essays and songs..............and English so proud...I hope you like Snordelhans
/watch?v=NvFj4ZwWszY
Redpilldown 3 months ago
@Redpilldown Now even I understand! Thanks
tenneral 3 months ago
Apart from the tactile pleasure of reading a book, I'm still in love with the aesthetic beauty of the things and I love to annotate them too. Besides, they each have their associated memories. But I will no doubt get an e-reader one day. My phone is my music player of choice but I still buy and play vinyl. It's not the death of books, if anything it increases their cachet.
I like to name my inanimate objects of desire, so if I had a Kindle I think I'd call it Dr. Richard. No arm in that! :¬)
DaithiDublin 3 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
My kindle has more than paid for itself from the public domain books alone. Mine is primarily occupied by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Shakespeare, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker--stuff like that.
I have 87 books on my Kindle at the moment and, well, I still have a lot of reading to do.
Hockeygod98 3 months ago
Comment removed
Hockeygod98 3 months ago
American English really annoys me too. I asked the editor of Mirriam Webster US why Americans changed the spelling of English words back in the day. She said because the US was mad at Britian and wanted to reinvent English for themselves. If thats the case I cant understand why they kept the British weights and measures system when there was a perfectly good alternative like Metric.
tubester4567 3 months ago
I agree with you about the Kindle I only wish they had brought it out before I had my new bookcase constructed to put the books in that I have bought since being in my present location. I note that we have some books in common such as those by CH. I would recommend Lyttleton's Britain which is a very amusing book. I am also looking forward to Michael Greens' books being put onto kindle as I always thought they were so funny.
Tridhos 3 months ago
Oh sir, with respect, there is only One Book.
The sooner you recognize that, the easier it will be for you.
Lovely to see and hear you, infidel.
hairyreasoner 3 months ago
@hairyreasoner Sadly I don't possess any copy of the One Book. My copy went to a charity shop three years ago and I expect it has now been pulped and recycled as toilet paper.
tenneral 3 months ago 2
Sounds like you've been "ripped off," as we say in North America. My Kindle (the same model as yours) came with "The Oxford Dictionary of English," which purports to cover "world English" and lists words under their British spellings (favour, labour, etc.) But I, too, love the little gadget. Not only can you store 3,000 books inside it, but nobody can tell which one you're reading unless they can see the screen. And my wife, a librarian, has forbidden me to buy any more real books. Go figure.
juliuschas 3 months ago
@juliuschas More people use the British spellings than do the American.
NORTHERNKONFLIKT 3 months ago
@NORTHERNKONFLIKT Clicking around my Kindle, I see that it has both the "Ox. American Dictionary" and the "Ox. Dict. of English." I'm not sure how different they are... looks like the "American" one lists the US usages first, and that's about it. Whether one can delete either of them, I dunno. Meanwhile, I can recommend the Kindle version of "The Good Book" by David Plotz, a trip through the Bible in 21st-century vernacular that should be intelligible (and hilarious) anywhere.
juliuschas 3 months ago
Hume: The fattest philosopher in the Western Canon.
prophetchannel 3 months ago
@prophetchannel Yes, I noticed his portly frame in his portraits and wondered if he were really that large. Thomas Aquinas was very, very fat too: perhaps it comes of thinking too much and walking too little!
tenneral 3 months ago
Do they have the old childrens pop up- 3D- books? .. they were great fun.
bonnie43uk 3 months ago
Kindles are great, I love mine.
But I do miss the smell of an old book, and the soft feel of the pages.
HarrysSecret 3 months ago
I teach international English, so my learners get both sides of the English language coin, spellings, pronunciations, and divergent meanings of the same words. There should be an Oxford International Dictionary of the Whole Damn Lot of It.
MikeOfKorea 3 months ago
Erasmus would die of shock and amazement were you able to go back in time and show him one of those things :)
LaMaisondeCasaHouse 3 months ago
@LaMaisondeCasaHouse Yes indeed. And I would be speechless with awe to meet Erasmus. I have his Colloquia and his Ciceronianus, both from the house of Elzivir (1615)
tenneral 3 months ago
Most books on my kindle are Fantasy novels (George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobbs and the like). Therefore the kindle really saves my hands and wrists, because I don't have to hold those tomes all the time. Also I got many literary classics for free on kindle. Currently reading The scarlet letter.
scratchingcat 3 months ago
I was only just thinking of getting a kindle, watching this video has convinced me to do it, should be good :)
Oct195 3 months ago
Evidently I am far more old fashioned than you, Professor....unless I hold a book in my hands, and feel the fine texture of the paper, and smell the glorious fragrance of the inks and glue, and feel the weight of it, and turn the pages as I read, until eventually the binding creases in the middle...Ah!!.....that is simply an integral part of the reading experience. I know it is anti-tree and I need to change...but what if the internet crashes worldwide and there are no books anywhere 2B found??
8journey8 3 months ago
@8journey8
The books that are on the device stay there, even without internet. The same is true for all the data people have on their harddrives, many people are archiving their data and making sure they get all the interesting stuff they see online onto their harddrives. So if the internet goes down, not much data would be lost, and they would hack together a replacement for the internet quickly. And its doubtful that it even can go down.
you have to ask: what if electricity goes?
kurtilein3 3 months ago
@kurtilein3 :This is wonderful news to me. I had a dark suspicion that we are being led into a bookless society, dependent on electronics for education and personal enrichment. I tried to visualize a world absent of written words and electrical conveniences..What would happen? Would people enter a period of superstition and band together into tribes, passing on stories around a fire?Would religions long abandoned be re-invented? I shudder to think it! Thanks for the reassurance!! Technology=good
8journey8 3 months ago
@8journey8
one time i got a tour of a facility where they have some supercomputers and data archives. Security was about as strict as in a nuclear reactor, the building had double walls, anti-terrorism protection, an automatic fire extinguishing system, and was shielded off against all electromagnetic radiation. Just an insane amount of security. And one thing they have on their highest-security data storage are all the scanned books from Project Guttenberg :)
kurtilein3 3 months ago
@8journey8
the craziest thing about that data center: they even seem to put the value of their data a bit higher than the value of human life. If a fire breaks out, you have 90 seconds to evacuate the whole building before it gets completely flooded with 400000 dollars worth of Argon, and anyone still in there suffocates just like the fire. This cannot be prevented once the system is activated, there only are a few emergency-buttons that grant you a delay of 1 minute maximum.
kurtilein3 3 months ago
here is the instructions.... e-bookvine(dot)com/can-i-change-default-dictionary-on-my-kindle/
Redpilldown 3 months ago
@Redpilldown Thanks for the instructions. I shall apply them directly!
tenneral 3 months ago
@tenneral Have you used Calibre for Kindle, it is a free program to convert any text file like pdf to kindle format. I would not be without this program as there are so many free books and essays. I just googled change dictionary kindle and it says it can be done.....will try it out and let you know
Redpilldown 3 months ago
sorry to say that i will not get a tablet as the hunt for a book is as enjoyable as the reading, saying that i do have a few downloaded to my laptop, it saves having the one read wonders around the place picking up dust
333derick333 3 months ago
I don't have a tablet at the moment, if I got one I would use it for most of my books, but sometimes a really good book deserves to be owned in hard cover.
Whattchamacallit 3 months ago
I still buy far too many books (my biggest addiction) because I like the feel of them in my hand and the joy of flipping pages. But I too have succumbed to some extent. I have Kindle reader for both my PC and my iPad. There are so many classic works for Kindle that are free from the Amazon store. To my great joy I've found that a number of scientific works can be downloaded for far less than the text version - sometimes half the price or less. Google books is another place to download free.
meleagrisfelis 3 months ago
Haven't read a book for about 20 year's text to speech software, or audio books, moving my eyes seem's like too much hard work :D and I'm using speech to text software to right this :D
RevDevilin 3 months ago
@RevDevilin Now that's almost going too far! Thanks for the update.
tenneral 3 months ago
This is like a Tenneral Christmas! I just keep seeing video after video in my sub box!
Brokoro 3 months ago
What does the title have to do with the content?
Lpoolboy 3 months ago
@Lpoolboy
Gibbon wrote decline and fall
unassumption 3 months ago
@unassumption Oh, I see. Thanks.
Lpoolboy 3 months ago
I just got my first kindle and the number of free and cheap books is pretty amazing. I am replacing many of my classics and now my night-stand is not covered with books. I bought it for the web browser but am really loving it for reading books.
prodigyat9 3 months ago
I've got the same kindle! Does the job well, although now I have an iPad 2 it gets used a lot less.
robthesamplist 3 months ago
Your videoa are works of art, sir. Please don't worry us too long with thoughts about you possibly 'poppojg off'. Although you seem to be in pristine fettle to Us, someone aged 42 died yesterday ... and it's not uncommon. Ken Russell is no longer with us. RIP, Ken. You WERE appreciated ... as quite a remarkable individual.
fuckoverload 3 months ago
@fuckoverload Yes indeed - a larger-than-life character of whom there are far too few in these more grey days. His film on Elgar was one of his best.
tenneral 3 months ago
I know language evolves and English in another couple of hundred years, won't be the English you and I speak. However, American English, in my opinion is a far better option than the bastardisation of the language which I see in text messages and all over Facebook, courtesy of my younger relatives.
ShallowBeThyGames 3 months ago
@ShallowBeThyGames
WTH shal aint u be wit ta times?
prodigyat9 3 months ago
Call me a Luddite, but I execrate electronic devices of that sort. :)
WildwoodClaire1 3 months ago
@WildwoodClaire1 I say, it doesn't matter how you read, as long as you read a lot.
ShallowBeThyGames 3 months ago
@WildwoodClaire1
You're a luddite.
prodigyat9 3 months ago
@prodigyat9 Thank you.
WildwoodClaire1 3 months ago
@WildwoodClaire1 So did I until my neighbour converted me. It really is the way to go for a lot of books.
tenneral 3 months ago
No, I haven't got any Kindle! I like my books heavy, with glossy papers, bound in leather and easily lying open on my lap. You see; I don't read in bed: I just mostly just sleep or there.
Nice to see you again anyway, and you really make up for your hiatus now...
I hope your Irish studies are gong fine, and that your next hiatus from YT will not last another 40 years ;-)
skinnyjohnsen 3 months ago
I also love my Kindle, great for taking on walks. I wish it was water-proofed, though, I love reading in the bath. I've been reading the Pickwick Papers, Bill Bryson's 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled', and 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists'.
Misterb0z 3 months ago
Hack it, don't think it is illegal on a kindle.
adrenacrumb 3 months ago
Oxford accepting a word by Sarah Palin idiotically made up on the spot like "refudiate" instead of the correct word "repudiate".
Not too much of a fan of Oxford at the moment.
mrx0066600 3 months ago