Commodity Fetishism

So, I finally gave in and jumped aboard the e-reader bandwagon. Not that it was a huge leap for me or anything, being the gadget-whore that I am, but I was just biding my time until I felt I could justify the expense. They made it easy for me by offering this refurbished Nook just within the double-digit price range. I’ve been enjoying it so far. I’d been using a Kindle app on my Android phone for quite some time—and even read all of Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore on my phone—but the price of the Kindle was a little more than the refurb Nook. Now that I have the Nook, while I certainly favor the more open epub format than the closed proprietary formats used by Kindle, I do miss the “Whispersync” feature of reading on Kindle. I’m hopeful that Barnes and Noble will pick up on that somewhere along the way.

Having an e-reader has also prompted me to start geeking out on how to create epub and kindle-formatted documents, which has been enjoyable. It turns out it may even have some useful applications in my workplace, which is also quite exciting. I am mindful of folks who seem to be against the idea of e-readers, although I suspect that’s actually more about Amazon and their arguably evil big business model. (They are Wal-Martish in many respects…?) I think it’s probably a good idea for more small publishers to look for ways to market ebooks as a way to combat the big business stranglehold on the market.

Anyway, all of that aside, one other thing I’ve managed to accomplish recently is getting my diplomas into some nice matching frames. Actually, they’ve been framed already for like two weeks now, the next line of business was getting them up on the wall. And that I have done. Enjoy.