Now only use four letter words... is how the song Anything Goes speaks about modern authors, mid 20th Century. 

Not so about Sheridan Hay. 

I am currently reading Sheridan’s book, The Secret of Lost Things.  It is an introspective novel about a 15 year-old Tasmanian native transplanted from her antipode island to the smaller island of Manhattan.  There she begins work in a Dickensian bookstore located in the Madison Square-Union Square area of the island.

Each of the characters is fully developed enough to fit their place in the story.  But, though it may seem like one, this is not a book review.  Good Book-Read it!  There, that’s the review.

What it is about is my vocabularic shame.  In my youth I developed the habit of writing words I didn’t know in the  fly.  Then, unless the word was critical to the understanding of the story, I would, at the end of the day, go to the dictionary and learn the word.

Now we have The Kindle.  Each time a word appears that stops me short, and in this book it happens all too often, I use the Kindle’s instant dictionary referral tool. It can honestly be said, I will probably never use any of the words I have looked up in my Vulgate speech, but, I will in Scrabble.  I learned early in life to take Kipling’s words in his poem If, “...nor talk too wise.” to heart.  

What pleases me most is each of these words exactly fits their meaning as used in the sentence and the story.  Where it throws me, is are these the words a barely educated girl from a small village in Tasmania would use?  Have you every held a conversation with an Australian?  They do tend toward the saltier, more colorful side of the English Language.

Again, The Secret of Lost Things, by Sheridan Hay

It was good to start the morning with my newly arrived loose tea now on standard order with Amazon.com and a podcast from snowy Toronto.
Work in the trenches has kept me from keeping the blogs in good working order. I would love to promise improvement, but there is this quirky eating thing to which I have grown so accustomed. The other two distractions are, as before, the Google Reader and Kindle.
Out Google Reader subscription list is now a ridiculous number. However, the shortcuts, such as the letters m and j as well as the space bar do let me browse at a quicker pace. There is literature out there that says the human attention span is diminishing due to browsing in this manner. I don't know about that.
When mankind had little more to do then contemplate the ashes from last night's fire, the attention span may have been longer, but now with the entire world coming to our face on the computer screen, we need to be able to triage the information.
The program Q10, a full screen editor that brings me back to my DOS 8086, with the blue back ground and yellow print  it helps to remove the distraction of bars and pop ups. I am using it now for the first copy of this entry.
The sound effect of the typewriter also soothes my ancient soul.
On the Kindle front, I have discovered Samples. I have mentioned a comparison between the Kindle and heroin. The offering of samples is along the same line.
This morning, before anything else, I went to the Amazon.com kindle books Web site and chose a dozen or so books to sample. Of the dozen, I chose to buy Gore Vidal's memoir. I am toying with The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes but will decide that after finishing Gore Vidal's book.
If you go down the right column on Belltowernews.com you will see the Google Reader box. I am constantly adding links in that box even when not making entries to the blog.
So, if you come to Belltowernews.com or any of the other Grazing Blogs, and there are no new entries, it would behoove you to at least glance at the Reader links.

Some of this stuff is fantastic.

Back to Google Reader!!!
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It would seem there are more people out there disgruntled with the practices of Amazon.com.  My grievance continues with the lack of delivery of the Kindle which was ordered last year on December 2nd. 

Here is a link to an entry at Geeknewscentral.com.  If you would like a virtual visit to CES, almost to the point where you can taste the shrimp and the "White Castle-like hamburgers, it is a good time to visit Geeknewscentral.com.

It was during one of the back-channel wanderings that I overheard a conversation regarding ActiveWords.  The praise heaped upon this program was a wonder to me.  I wasn't sure exactly what it did, but I had to at least load it and see. 

So far, most of the actions are in the background and only noticeable, because I am looking for them.  Once the marvel of it al fades, I will only notice it when it's  not working.

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In this morning's New York Times, in the technology section, in a column called Talking Business is an article praising Amazon.com to the high hills.  It tells of a wonderful Christmas story where an article, though it made it to his building and even perhaps to his front door, did not make it into the writer's hands.

He called Amazon Customer Service and miraculously the $500.00 item was replaced and in his hands by Christmas Eve.  Miracle of Miracles!

That's the good news.

Now here's the bad news:

My brother-in-law, in conspiracy with my wife, ordered a Kindle for me on December 2, 2007.  It is now January 5, 2008 and the Kindle is yet to appear.  I wrote an Email to Amazon Customer Service.  The email contained all of the details, numbers, etc. related to the order.

Three days later, I received a template email obviously geared toward someone who very recently ordered the Kindle.  It was many paragraphs long.  The gist of it was, sorry, we stupidly did not predict the incredible number of orders that would come in for this electronic reader and didn't manufacture anywhere near enough of them to fulfill orders.  Don't hold your breath, but your Kindle will arrive one day, this year, maybe.

Near the end of the email, there was a satisfaction button.  I clicked NO, when asked did this answer your question.  This took me to a webpage the use of which would put me back into the loop of rubber stamp online customer service.

Bottom line, five WEEKS late, still no Kindle.  I will keep you up to date here and on all of the other Grazing related web sites.

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Amazon Toll Free Customer Service Line: (+1-800-201-7575)