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I'm not sure what happened with pinetreelover but I know it is very hard and sometimes frustrating to read some books on a Kindle. If you need to see a "map" at the front/back of the book, if there are definitions or translations on a certain page, if you forget a character and want to jump back to find them the kindle is a pita to do those things Sometimes you just need to be able to scroll though the pages and chapters.
I totally agree with that, which is why I don't like reading on kindle. But I wasn't sure if something else happened. Moscow didn't require maps or anything, so I don't know that the back and forth would be as big an issue.
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Originally Posted by chicagoliz
I totally agree with that, which is why I don't like reading on kindle. But I wasn't sure if something else happened. Moscow didn't require maps or anything, so I don't know that the back and forth would be as big an issue.
I seem to recall that she lost track of some of the names and who was who. Had I not been super-focused on reading it -- and not read for a day -- I wouldn't have been able to keep track either. When the names are foreign, I definitely find it more difficult. (ETA: I'm a Kindler.)
I've just never been able to get into kindle. But I'm dying of curiosity -- what the heck happened with Moscow where the book was ruined?
Ah.... The Moscow incident - I bought The Gentleman in Moscow for my Kindle and was so excited because I had loved Amor Towles previous book, Rules of Civility. It was soooo hard! Russian names, Russian nicknames (generously doled out) and a timeline that moved through the decades left me struggling to hang with the story. At one point a character reappeared from the dead! To be fair, he wasn't ever dead, but I thought he was because I had lost track of the name-jumble.
In a real book I can easily flip back, quickly check a name and get right back to the story, but with my Kindle, that was always hard to do and I blamed my Kindle for sucking the joy out of Gentleman.
Another reason that I should have known that my Kindle wasn't for me - I am a sucker for good cover art and I really missed having an interesting book to look at.
Some kindle books have x-ray which allows you to see who was who and jump back and forth. I discovered that by accident.
Characters I don't remember reading about have done that to me too when I've been lost in thought for a page or two.
I haven't read the Gentleman book.
ETA: although I haven't quite figured out how to jump to the back of the book. I know there is a way to jump back and forth between pages and sometimes I've done that by accident.
Just finished a British mystery "She" -- Detective Munro series
Definitely a strange one--
Told partly in first-person by a serial killer
Starting #2 in series now
Kindle Unlimited some of them so no cost
Finished # 4 and 5 in the Oxford Mystery series by Anna Swenfan set in Medieval England
Main character is Nickolas Elyot, owner of a thriving book shop where he has three "scribners" creating books by hand for students in the Oxford colleges or wealthy people who appreciate books...
His wife and many family/friends died in the Black Death just few years before so the impact of that on society is part of the storylines...
Interesting insight because of the historical culture, lifestyle of the average "middle class" person during that time and the effort it took to simply stay alive and put food in your mouth
Interesting also in that anyone teaching in the colleges --men cause women were not allowed in that role---are required by convention and canon law to avoid female relationships---can't marry and were supposed to be celebate.
Nickolas fell in love during his studies and was forced to leave university life to marry...
So much poverty taken for granted, so many people willing to live a fairly downtrodden life as servant simply to get two meals a day and place to sleep under cover...but the inroads of the Black Death also created possibilities for people w/ambition and skills to move up in society...
Makes you appreciate the advances society has made in some ways although lost in others...
Finished # 4 and 5 in the Oxford Mystery series by Anna Swenfan set in Medieval England
Main character is Nickolas Elyot, owner of a thriving book shop where he has three "scribners" creating books by hand for students in the Oxford colleges or wealthy people who appreciate books...
His wife and many family/friends died in the Black Death just few years before so the impact of that on society is part of the storylines...
Interesting insight because of the historical culture, lifestyle of the average "middle class" person during that time and the effort it took to simply stay alive and put food in your mouth
Interesting also in that anyone teaching in the colleges --men cause women were not allowed in that role---are required by convention and canon law to avoid female relationships---can't marry and were supposed to be celebate.
Nickolas fell in love during his studies and was forced to leave university life to marry...
So much poverty taken for granted, so many people willing to live a fairly downtrodden life as servant simply to get two meals a day and place to sleep under cover...but the inroads of the Black Death also created possibilities for people w/ambition and skills to move up in society...
Makes you appreciate the advances society has made in some ways although lost in others...
This is why I enjoy the historical fiction to much- I found history very boring as a subject at school but to get all the background knowledge about daily life and such is so appealing to me. ( I might not totally follow the actual story but love the background).....thank you for posting this.
This is why I enjoy the historical fiction to much- I found history very boring as a subject at school but to get all the background knowledge about daily life and such is so appealing to me. ( I might not totally follow the actual story but love the background).....thank you for posting this.
The way they teach it in school is terrible. Historical fiction is good, but an even better way is through narrative nonfiction and biographies. There are some very engrossing books about history.
This is why I enjoy the historical fiction to much- I found history very boring as a subject at school but to get all the background knowledge about daily life and such is so appealing to me. ( I might not totally follow the actual story but love the background).....thank you for posting this.
Me too, Mayvenne....that's how I got so deep into history, the historical fiction.....it was then onto nonfiction history, and bios. The Other Boleyn Girl started me on English history around the court of Henry VIII.
Hist fiction is a way for me to get basic info on a historical subject, to see if I want to delve into it further with nonfiction.
I finished History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund last night, er, 5 am this morning. It's a disturbing coming-of-age story which weaves a lot of things together in a way I don't think I have seen before in a book. That might be why it only gets 3 1/2 stars on Amazon but I thought it ranked a solid four stars. Set just across the Canadian border in Minnesota, the protagonist's family reminded me of some families on this side of the border but in bush country as opposed to prairie. Those families always were seen as a little different because they were so isolated - a friend of my sister's explained her boyfriend to my sister by calling him a "bush boy."
And going back to what I read in the period I wasn't posting, I see on my kindle I have The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley which I gave five stars. Looking at the notes, it also is a coming-of-age story. "She was relieved to be out of sight for a few moments. To let go of the face she put on in public. It nearly always felt like she was pretending, as if her insides were only full of locked doors...."
I actually was blessed with a lot of really exceptionally good books right after my dog died. I will post them when I run across them.
So many of you made thoughtful comments about my dog. So I thought I'd let you know I plunked down a down payment on a German shepherd puppy, which I will be getting toward the end of April. I'm a little scared because it always feels like there is no way a new dog can measure up to my old dogs and but my heeler needs company and I need a farm protector as I'm fairly isolated where I am. So if any of you have any cool name ideas for a solid black Czech girl puppy, let me know!
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the kindle is a pita to do those things
Sometimes you just need to be able to scroll though the pages and chapters.
