Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

So, I’ve had my refurbished Kindle for about two days now.  As I said in my previous post, I really don’t see any difference between it and the brand new item.  I thought I’d write about some of the things I’m liking so far.  Many of these will be under the menu function when reading a book, though not all of them.  Things I’m liking:

1. Table of Contents – I like clicking two buttons (i.e. “menu” and then “table of contents”) and being back at the Table of Contents of a book.  It makes the global maneuvering through the book very easy.  It is most helpful when the Table of Contents for a book is broken down into subsections.
2. Search – I love the search function within the menu.  I think this is a major advantage over a paper book.  It will save me time from flipping through a book to find something that is in there, but I cannot remember where.  I can, however, see where there would be a downside if you do not know the exact word or phrase you are searching for.  “Flipping through” the book to find something with locations rather than pages would be difficult if not to say a nightmare.
3. Text-to-speech – I wrote a little about this yesterday.  I like it.  I like it a lot, even though it is not the same as an audiobook.  The voice is a bit monotone and it cannot read difficult technical words.  But, it has proven valuable.  If I’m in a room where it is noisy and I need to concentrate on reading, I can use text to speech to drown out the noise and stay focused.
4. Dictionary look-up – I haven’t really read anything yet where I needed this; however, I can see where this will come in extraordinarily handy.  I know that they will be able to make this more intuitive in the future, but for now it is functional enough to be very helpful.  You simply put the cursor in front of the word you do not know and the meaning comes up in a text box.
5. Bookmarking – The bookmarking is fairly intuitive, though I wish I could add a note to a bookmark.  Maybe I can and I just haven’t figured that out, but I think that would be much easier than using the note writing tool.

Again, I’ve only had the Kindle for two days now and there will be more to come.  There are aspects of it that I definitely think can be improved like the note taking and highlighting ability.  Moving the cursor around is a little cumbersome when trying to do this.  The same with the dictionary look-up.  It is functional, but the cursor is still a little cumbersome to move around.  Despite what I think could be improved I’m still loving it.  And, very soon I will try to make a list of Kindle books that I would recommend for Old Testament Study.