Initially I was resistant to using a Kindle for reading but I decided to give it another chance.
The soft back lighting, portability and access to thousands of titles are the obvious pros of this device.
Having to mind the battery charge, not being able to easily flip pages to go back to an interesting passage and not having an apartment filled with several "leather bound books" are the cons.
After charging the thing up I started browsing for an interesting read.
I really wanted to get Travis Walton's "Fire in the Sky" in which he writes about his alien abduction in the 70s, but all that was offered was a short, detail starved account written by someone else.
I bought it anyway and was just as disappointed as I suspected I might be.
Kindle offered suggestions for other books of similar topics that I might like.
I saw several other texts with covers of menacing, ebony-eyed extraterrestrials and was intrigued.
But how to tell if they were any good?
That's where the reviews come in handy.
Many of the reviewers seemed to possess both compassion and a healthy sense of skepticism although, several of them complained about the poor writing skills of the authors.
They seem to think a person whose entire life has been dedicated to coxing forth edibles from the earth in rural Indiana should also be able to take up the mantle of community college adjunct English professor in a pinch.
I think this is an unreasonable demand.
Aside from this, I found that there was only one brave reviewer who dared to address the real elephant in the spaceship.
Katherine A. Shelton of San Francisco's review of the book "Aliens in the Backyard" was titled "This would be a fabulous book, if it were satire."
Katherine comes with an open mind and is even up for a bit of what she terms "paranormal smut."
She earnestly tries to find something useful or informative in the text but eventually takes the authors to task for lazy writing and focusing on the absurd sexual abuse abductees "discover" under the dubious practice of hypnotic regression.
I don't know if it was the lateness of the hour (around 2a.m.) or the sudden departure from educated language into the realm of the vulgar, but Katherine's take on the recurrent "anal probe" theme sent me into hysterics.
She writes:
"Truly sit and ponder why aliens would need to probe our asses. If, for whatever reason, an alien race decided they wanted to know something about human physiology and they really need to probe a human anus wouldn't one suffice? Or two? Why would "The Grays" need to abduct people en masse and then probe all of their asses? I mean really?"
Katherine, you are a treasure. Never change.
If I am thinking of a serious reason for "ass probing" I guess it might be to gather fecal matter and analyze an organism's dietary intake.
In this was "The Grays" might learn that most Americans have a surfeit of high fructose corn syrup and saturated fats in their meals with certain pockets of the West Coast population containing high concentrations of kale and granola.
In closing, I will leave you with this video from my favorite Canadian comedy troupe:
The soft back lighting, portability and access to thousands of titles are the obvious pros of this device.
Having to mind the battery charge, not being able to easily flip pages to go back to an interesting passage and not having an apartment filled with several "leather bound books" are the cons.
After charging the thing up I started browsing for an interesting read.
I really wanted to get Travis Walton's "Fire in the Sky" in which he writes about his alien abduction in the 70s, but all that was offered was a short, detail starved account written by someone else.
I bought it anyway and was just as disappointed as I suspected I might be.
Kindle offered suggestions for other books of similar topics that I might like.
I saw several other texts with covers of menacing, ebony-eyed extraterrestrials and was intrigued.
But how to tell if they were any good?
That's where the reviews come in handy.
Many of the reviewers seemed to possess both compassion and a healthy sense of skepticism although, several of them complained about the poor writing skills of the authors.
They seem to think a person whose entire life has been dedicated to coxing forth edibles from the earth in rural Indiana should also be able to take up the mantle of community college adjunct English professor in a pinch.
I think this is an unreasonable demand.
Aside from this, I found that there was only one brave reviewer who dared to address the real elephant in the spaceship.
Katherine A. Shelton of San Francisco's review of the book "Aliens in the Backyard" was titled "This would be a fabulous book, if it were satire."
Katherine comes with an open mind and is even up for a bit of what she terms "paranormal smut."
She earnestly tries to find something useful or informative in the text but eventually takes the authors to task for lazy writing and focusing on the absurd sexual abuse abductees "discover" under the dubious practice of hypnotic regression.
I don't know if it was the lateness of the hour (around 2a.m.) or the sudden departure from educated language into the realm of the vulgar, but Katherine's take on the recurrent "anal probe" theme sent me into hysterics.
She writes:
"Truly sit and ponder why aliens would need to probe our asses. If, for whatever reason, an alien race decided they wanted to know something about human physiology and they really need to probe a human anus wouldn't one suffice? Or two? Why would "The Grays" need to abduct people en masse and then probe all of their asses? I mean really?"
Katherine, you are a treasure. Never change.
If I am thinking of a serious reason for "ass probing" I guess it might be to gather fecal matter and analyze an organism's dietary intake.
In this was "The Grays" might learn that most Americans have a surfeit of high fructose corn syrup and saturated fats in their meals with certain pockets of the West Coast population containing high concentrations of kale and granola.
In closing, I will leave you with this video from my favorite Canadian comedy troupe:
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