Gear: The Amazon Kindle

So where have I been this past year? Well, with the birth of my second child, I am essentially evolving into my worst nightmare: a mom with a very depleted brain in sweats, no make-up, hair up in a bun, and yes, I have been known to catch a few episodes of Oprah. I do have to credit Oprah though for featuring the Amazon Kindle, the gadget I've always seen on Amazon's home page but was too lazy to figure out how it worked. Jeff Bezos was on Oprah touting the gadget, and I was sold. I balked a bit at the cost (about $359) but was so enthralled by the fact that I could carry up to 200 books on this one lightweight device that I bit the bullet and One-Clicked my way into owning a Kindle.

Here's how the device works: Amazon has a contract with Sprint that allows the books to be downloaded to your Kindle device wirelessly (on what's called the "Whispernet") within a few seconds using the same high speed data network as a cell phone (EVDO). There's no contract or additional fees other than your initial Kindle purchase; you just buy your Kindle, and your Amazon account permits you to buy new books anywhere within the U.S. within the coverage area. So you're at the airport and you finish a book--you can surf the Kindle store on your Kindle and buy a new title within a few seconds. You can highlight, make notes, look up words in the Kindle which has the New American Oxford Dictionary built in. All your purchases are automatically stored on Amazon. You can also subscribe to major newspapers like the NY Times and the Wall St. Journal, and they will automatically be delivered to your Kindle every morning. As for battery life, supposedly you can read War and Peace in one sitting on one charge if you turn off the wireless feature.

Granted I had to take a few baby steps back into the realm of reading and began by downloading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series for young adults, then I gradually worked my way up into the classics and found that I could download the entire Shakespeare catalogue for $.99, and depending on which edition you chose, Plato's Republic could be had for a mere $ .43. NY Times bestsellers generally sell for $9.99, a lot less than what you'd pay for a hardback.

The Kindle is like an iPod for books; however, they probably could have benefited from the Apple geniuses in the design. There are some glitches--yes, it's hard to lend your books to friends when it's on your Kindle, and it's too bad it's in black and white so any photographs in color aren't as effective, the ease of acquiring books anywhere has proven dangerous for the wallet, but the convenience outweighs the minor downsides, and I'm looking forward to seeing this device evolve.

Available at Amazon

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The Book

After hearing about the film (see previous post), I thought it only proper to visit the inspiration behind the film, and I headed to the bookstore to pick up a copy of Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. I finished the short, 131-page paperback translated from French to English in a little over an hour, dog-earing pages where Bauby's eloquent insightfulness moved me.

While Bauby's dismal situation would cause one to expect a tear-jerker, and tears did well up from time to time, I cried a lot less than I thought I would. Bauby does not spend a lot of time pitying himself or his situation. Instead, the book is a compilation of all that is going on in his mind throughout the course of his time at the hospital. As to be expected, there is a lot of reflection on the past, memories, his thoughts on the people at the hospital, what he sees, feels, thinks, what he misses the most, his interactions with his children, and sometimes insightful and humorous reflections on his condition.

When his son asks him to play hangman, Bauby aches to tell him that "I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition."

Although his body was trapped in the diving bell, his eloquent memoir shows that his mind was indeed as active as a glorious butterfly.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: The Movie

Before I continue wrapping up my Parisian adventures, I thought I'd deviate a little and talk about Cannes. Every year, I follow the Cannes film festival with great interest and make a few mental notes of what to watch out for in the coming months. This year, artist Julian Schnabel's adaptation of a beloved French memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death , has generated quite a bit of buzz. The memoir of Jean-Domnique Bauby, a former editor at Elle, recounts the author's remarkable tale of what it was like for him to live with "locked-in syndrome" caused by a rare stroke to the brain stem. As he was unable to speak or move, he could only communicate by blinking his left eye; using an alphabet system corresponding to blinks, the book was painfully transcribed by a very patient publisher's assistant. Unfortunately, Bauby passed away shortly after the book was published.

The film has opened at Cannes with favorable response and has been sold to ten markets already.

For more details, refer to this article by one of my favorite movie critics, the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan: LA Times, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Then Sings My Soul: Stories of the Hymns by Robert J. Morgan

Some of the world’s most beautiful music and poetry can be found in the hundreds of hymns written by devout believers over the centuries. I have to admit that I preferred more contemporary worship music during my youth, but over time, when the first sprigs of white hair seem to be here to stay, I have come to appreciate the beauty and magnificence of the hymn. Robert J. Morgan offers stories and perspectives behind 150 well-loved hymns in this first volume (there is a second one) complete with music and lyrics.

Among all the hymns, there is one that always brings a tear to my eye, and after reading the story behind Horatio G. Spafford’s well-loved 1873 hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul,” I will have an even greater appreciation for the lyrics—“when sorrows like sea billows roar.”

Mr. Spafford was an attorney who had lost most of his fortune in real estate investments during the great Chicago fire in 1871. He lost his only son to scarlet fever during the same period of time as well. Two years later, he planned a vacation abroad to Europe with his wife and four daughters; however, when an urgent matter detained him, he sent his wife and his four daughters ahead of him on another ship. That ship wound up colliding with another vessel, and sank, killing the majority of the passengers, including all four of his daughters. His wife was found barely conscious. En route to join his wife, when he passed the waters where the ship had sank it is written that he said, “It is well; the will of God be done.”

I hope that when my head is fully crowned with silver (or hopefully a nice salt- pepper gray), I will have attained that level of contentment and confidence with whatever comes my way. One thing I know, I am sure I will be wondering then as I do now, why we don’t sing hymns more often.

Available at www.amazon.com