Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses City of Man: Religion and Politics in a New Era by Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson and Commentary’s Peter Wehner.
I have the book on my new Kindle and hope to review it here (hope springs eternal, right?) but I wanted to point out Ed’s interesting perspective on the Kindle:
After seven years of blogging, I had almost stopped book reading entirely. Blogging is a process that takes up a considerable amount of attention, and I used to tell myself and others that I had no time left for book reading. Three weeks ago, I bought a Kindle for the First Mate, mainly because the selection of audio books for her was small and the commercial titles rather expensive in CD or cassette format; even the Braille Library is limited in newer releases. The Kindle has a text-to-speech function that works with most Kindle books, and since she’s already used to the computer-generated voice with her PC, she took to it enthusiastically.
After playing with it for a couple of days to get it set up for her use, I decided to buy one for myself — and I love it. In the past couple of weeks, I have read The Road to Serfdom, City of Man, Peter Ferrara’s President Obama’s Tax Piracy, re-read The Three Musketeers, The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, and bought the subscription to Reason. (The classics can usually be found for free or for under a dollar.) It’s been a wonderful experience in diving back into what had once been my passion as a child and younger man, and I can’t recommend the experience more highly. Right now, I’m in the middle of A Shattered Peace by David Andelman, a book about the Versailles Treaty and its repercussions all the way to today.
I chose the Kindle mainly because of the price and the text-to-speech feature, which the Sony and the Barnes & Noble devices didn’t have. Occasionally I get asked about the iPad, which also serves well as an e-book reader, but the iPad is more costly (around $600 to the Kindle’s $139) and has the backlighting that tires out my eyes. The 6″ Kindle is more portable and more convenient, at least for me.
