Kindle 2

Amazon has announced that there are now over 230,000 titles available for the Kindle. My count today yielded 31 newspapers, 22 magazines, and 237,694 books. In books, Meyer's Twilight series still holds the top three bestseller slots, followed by Young's religious fiction, The Shack, in slots four and five.

The announcement was coupled with the news that the second generation Kindle is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

The form factor of the Kindle 2 has grown slimmer and lighter than its predecessor. Battery life is 25% longer (I do occasionally run out of juice while reading), page turns are 20% faster (although I'm totally used to the Kindle's current page turn speed), and of course it has more memory and can hold more titles. The most significant new features, in my opinion, are the 16 shade gray scale and the text-to-speech capability.

As I noted in my review of The Graveyard Book, art display quality- even on gray scale sketches- wasn't quite up to snuff on the Kindle 1. I'd be interested to see what a gray scale graphic novel looked like on the Kindle 2. Several years ago I had my hands on a Sony eBook reader at a Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan- and was shocked by how beautifully it displayed the art.

Now to discuss the text-to-speech feature. Text-to-speech takes the printed word and reads it aloud as audio. Readers can choose between male or female narrators, and can dial up and down how fast the narrator reads. The brief text-to-speech sample on Amazon's video demo reminded me of Hal from 2001- although, to be fair, the voice was a little less fluid than Hal, and a little less creepy. I'd be curious to hear how well the computerized narrator pronounces proper nouns and foreign words.

Beyond the quality of the narrator, I was wondering who, under the age of five, would want their print book read out loud to them? Then I realized text-to-speech is probably fantastic for commuters. If you're reading on the train, then want to continue your story driving from the park and ride back home- you can do so with no interruption of continuity, no searching for your place- and no second book to buy in audio format. All my life I've had the avid reader's nightmare illness- extreme car sickness whenever I attempt to read in motion. So I can definitely see the value of text-to-speech. On the other hand, I never buy an audio book without first listening to a sample of the narrator. The narrator can make or break the reading experience. So I'll be interested to see whether or not Kindle 2 readers actually use the text-to-speech feature.