Amazon’s Kindle 2 is all the rage–or at least it was last week when I took two days off which is why you haven’t heard from me. The Kindle, like the books it may supercede, is for people with time.

Here’s my Kindle:

It’s an iPod shuffle (it reflected the camera flash). Sans screen, it’s perfect for audiobooks which I download for free from librivox.org or the free stuff from learnoutloud.com. I listen to them in the car, which is the only “free” time I have, and I’d rather learn than just sit and drive. They’re from the public domain which is an advantage in two ways: Free (always an advantage) and I don’t have to “read” anything from about 1925 forward. That is the age when, as I see it, the fulcrum of art began from the edifying toward its present state. I have less than no interest in devoting time to anything that does not improve me.

Here is a list of the books I’ve “read” with my iPod. In the list below you’ll note a preponderance of old potboilers, especially from Jack London, E. R. Burroughs, and H. G. Wells. That’s because I carry enough weight day to day; these are my escape. What’s yours?

Rated one to three stars.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court—Mark Twain *
A Princess of Mars—Edgar Rice Burroughs **
A Tale of Two Cities—Charles Dickens ***
A Warlord of Mars—Edgar Rice Burroughs **
Anthem—Ayn Rand **
Autobiography—Benjamin Franklin ***
Bleak House—Charles Dickens ****
Call of the Wild—Jack London **
Common Sense—Thomas Paine ***
Frankenstein—Mary Shelley **
Heart of Darkness—Joseph Conrad *
Howards End—E. M. Forster **
Huckleberry Finn—Mark Twain **
King Solomon’s Mines—H. Rider Haggard **
Selections from The Ethics of Aristotle, Up from Slavery by Frederick
Douglass??, The Story of My Life—Helen Keller, The Eduaction of Henry
Adams—Henry Adams, Love of Life—Jack London. What is
Enlightenment—Immanual Kant, The Butterfly—Hans Christian Anderson,
The Garden of Paradise—Hans Christian Anderson, The Sun-Dog Trail—Jack
London, Under the Knife—H.G. Wells ** avg.
Oliver Twist—Charles Dickens ***
Orthodoxy—G. K Chesterton **
Pride and Prejudice—Jane Austen ***
Robinson Crusoe—Daniel Defoe ***
In the Year 2889—Jules Verne *
The Art of War—Sun Tsu **
The Constitution of the United States of America ***
The Count of Monte Cristo—Alexandre Dumas **
The Declaration of Independence ***
The Federalist Papers—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay ***
The First Men in the Moon—H. G. Wells *
The Four MIllion—O. Henry *
The Gods of Mars—Edgar Rice Burroughs **
The Machine Stops—E. M. Forster **
The Magic Shop— H. G. Wells *
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ***
The Pickwick Papers—Charles Dickens ***
The Pilgrims’ Progress—John Bunyan **
The Prince—Níccolo Machiavelli **
The Secret Garden—Frances Hodgson Burnett **
The Time Machine—H. G. Wells *
The Woman in White—Wilkie Collins *
Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Harriet Beecher Stowe ***
War of the Worlds—H. G. Wells *

And now—The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins ***