So today

was a pretty normal day. I went to work, I worked, I came home. Earlier today I decided to take out a special two-month trial subscription to the New York Times on the Kindle, as a way of edifying myself and getting news from places other than my RSS feeds.

And then you know what I did? I had it read to me while I waited for the bus (it was quickly growing too dark to read). :)

Yes, the content is text-to-speech enabled. And it's fun. It's like a slightly robotic not-ever-pausing-yet-still-soothing NPR. It was definitely a different way to experience a newspaper.

And the NY Times is long. My God, I'm only just getting through the arts section, and I listened for a good hour and a half. Now that I'm indoors and around light, I think I'll finish by actually reading. But I must admit, it's easy to navigate from article to article and you can go to various sections as well. After all, tomorrow there will be a whole new edition. I think I'll let it read to me while I work tomorrow (except when I'm transcribing library committee notes; can't really do both at the same time).

Oh, and I returned my first Kindle book with no trouble today. I remember looking at the book, but I although I don't really remember downloading it, I think I meant to get a sample and hit the button to buy it in its entirety instead (it's not really that easy to do, I was just brain dead that day). I was looking for a book on a particular subject, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. Apparently you can write to Amazon within 7 days and they will remove the content from your device and issue a credit to your card. Yay, Amazon!

I also received a 'real' book in the mail from them today, which was really great except that its last 40 pages or so were stuck together. I guess it had gotten wet along the way, although I don't think it was during the shipping. It's a collection of the Narnia books, put together into one volume with hand-coloured original illustrations. I managed to separate the pages with a minimum amount of damage, and didn't know if I wanted to go to all the fuss of returning, but I did contact them and they're shooting another off to me today and I have the other boxed up and return-stickered, ready to be sent back at no charge. It's the only time I've received something defective from them, and they were very attentive. So again, yay, Amazon!