Amazon Kindle Customer Service LOVE

I’ve been slacking off on posts lately (I’m a few books behind!) but this experience inspired me! My poor Guy was broken! The screen was all wonky and well… just look at the picture. It’s sad!

Unfortunately I knew he was out of warranty because Kevin bought it for me in February 2009 and I didn’t buy the extended warranty. So I called Customer Service, very sadly, thinking I’d have to shell out a pretty sum for a replacement, if not the entire $260.

My CS rep Mike was super nice! As I spoke to him, I had a flashback to my last experience with technology-related CS – I was accused of dropping my laptop BY A CS REP when I needed to get my screen fixed. As in, he asked if I dropped my laptop, I said I didn’t, and he said, “Yeah, you did.” This was not Amazon, by the way, but a certain university’s PC support services.

So Amazon CS was a refreshing change from that. Mike was really helpful, asked me to try resetting it to see if it helped (it didn’t), then said they’d send me a new one, free of charge – overnight too! He even said they can credit my account with the return shipping!

Happy! This is definitely how customer service is supposed to be. Good job, Amazon! I award you 1 cookie!

Luckily, this didn’t keep me from reading… I’ve been reading a fair bit on Kindle for Blackberry and Kindle for PC apps too. It was a godsend to have these as a backup in the meantime, but I far prefer reading on the Kindle!

M-Edge free shipping

Because free shipping is just the best thing ever!

M-Edge is offering free shipping on e-book jackets and accessories until Valentines’ Day.  Just use the code MEDGE214 when you check out.  While you’re at it, get me the New Yorker Bookopolis jacket!  I can’t bring myself to buy another jacket but I wantsssss the preciousssss.

And for you nookies, their B&N Nook jackets are available now too.  They have several different options, many of which are compatible with their book light.  Make sure you get the appropriate book light – it looks like there’s one for the Kindle jackets and a different one for the Nook jackets.  Anyway, the Kindle light is white and the Nook light is black, so you have no excuse for mixing it up!

Also they have the new Guardian which is meant to be “the only floating waterproof case for Kindle”.  Sounds exciting, but I would be way too scared to test it out.  I think I need a video where they dunk that baby in the water to ease my discomfort.  It’s not meant to be out until “Spring 2010” and apparently will be available in six colours.  There’s only one picture so I can’t tell exactly what will be coloured but it sounds neat anyway.

I can just imagine reading with my Guardianed Kindle in the bathtub…

The Millennium Trilogy

…which consists of: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.

I’ve been putting off this write-up because I finished these books several weeks ago but I wanted to devote proper attention to this post. And I’m still going to be extremely vague. It was really, really fabulous. The trilogy was one of the most engaging, most stimulating plots I’ve read in a while. It really has something for everyone: gender studies, state of the art technology (not to mention technology namedropping), social criticism, media as an actor, mystery, and tons of sex. Really, the male protagonist sleeps with literally every main female character in the trilogy.

Nevertheless, highly highly highly recommended!

The Review Reviewal

Dear readers, check out my friend JP’s new blog, The Review Reviewal!  JP and I have been friends since meeting at Midwinter Convention for the New Jersey District of Key Club in 2004, he as an incoming Lieutenant Governor and I outgoing.  (Points if you know what all that rubbish is… I still miss it and wouldn’t miss a chance to link a fellow Key Clubber.)  Strangely enough, JP and I never actually served on the Board together and actually met very few times for Key Club, except every year since we both graduated from high school JP picks me up to go to our old administrator’s holiday party.  Always good times, and I can always count on JP for ridiculous AIM conversations at 2AM.  A good, good friend and absolutely hilarious, so go read what he has to say!

What, you want to know what he blogs about?  Why does that matter?  He’s funny.  (But if you really have to know, he reviews anything from movies to… well, I don’t know just what else since he’s only posted a few entries but we’ll just have to find out as he goes along, won’t we?)

Edited to Add: For clarification’s sake, he reviews reviews of movies, etc. Slightly different, but we’re talking degrees of separation here.

Friendly authors

I think my new cause is supporting authors who are actually open-minded.  I never had anything against writers who were defenders of “the old ways” – I completely understand when writers generally prefer typewriters or notebooks to laptops.  And even being opposed to the idea of the so-called revolution in reading brought on by the electronic book isn’t so bad.  (Even though I think authors are foolish to think they can prevent it from happening.  It’s happening… paper books may not disappear forever, but we know now that it’s not the only option.)

But instigating violence against forward-thinking people simply because one prefers traditional methods?  That grievously offends me.

That’s why I’m going to be keeping an eye out for writers who are notably supportive of the e-book.  I don’t necessarily mean that they have to be willing to hand out free digital copies of all their stuff.  I mean writers who are supportive of all their readers (two-way street, please), and recognizing that their readers still want to read their work but are asking to be able to read in the manner which pleases or conveniences them most.  It means making your works available in several formats and not complaining that bookstores are the only way in which you can interact with your readers because that’s just making excuses, and bad ones at that.

I would say that my current favourite Friendly Authors are:

1. Neil Gaiman: partly because he’s my favourite contemporary author, but also because he seems to be the most accessible writer I’ve ever heard of.  For someone who’s so incredibly popular (pretty much world-wide), he’s really interactive on his award-winning journal and on Twitter too!  Now that’s a way to interact with your readers without clinging desperately to the brick-and-mortar institutions.
2. Cory Doctorow: not because I’m particularly knowledgeable on his works (actually, I’ve read one… short story) but because I think he’s really quite brave to post Little Brother and some of his other works online for free.  He’s also a well-known supporter of more liberal copyright laws, filesharing, and the Creative Commons, and an opponent of DRM.  I promise to read at least Little Brother, in support of Doctorow.

And just now I’ve been reading about Bradley Denton, whose famous book Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede is being made into a movie starring Jon Heder.  Boingboing shared that Denton has posted a PDF of his book on his website in an effort to make his work more available to readers.  The link is in the article but Denton’s website doesn’t seem to be working at the moment (overloaded, maybe?) so I won’t link to it… but comments on the Boingboing article also share several other links which might work.

That’s all for now.  I feel like that was sufficient drama in the e-book world.  Now time to enjoy the weekend.

P.S. Yes, I’m still way behind on Infinite Jest (30%).  In my defense, my sisters having been borrowing my Kindle because there weren’t enough copies of their summer reading books at the library – Native Son and East of Eden.  Yet another Kindle WIN – no chance of all the library copies being loaned out.