Downton Abbey

Thanks to Amazon Prime, my wife and I recently binged on Downton Abbey, a show that seems to be sweeping the planet with it's soap opera tales of life in aristocratic England, circa early 20th century.

I couldn't understand the draw to the show at first. After all, as an American, my forefathers fought a bloody, multiyear year war, the purpose for which was to cast off the yoke of aristocratic rule. Why should a show about people still clinging to such outdated concepts be that wonderful a show to watch?

After catching up with the Season 4 opener, I think I can see the attachment to the show. The show is about the people, both above the stairs and below. It's about their relationships between each other in their particular class, and their relationships with those above and below their social standing. It's about the struggle to stay on top of where ever life has placed you.

It's about a time when people are beginning to throw off the shackles of class, which to this American, is particularly interesting. One of the "Ladies" of the house falls in love with her chauffeur. Not just any lower class man, but an Irish Republican revolutionary! Their child eventually becomes owner of the estate.

Another of the Crawley ladies looks like she's going to be "shacking up" with a married man, albeit it a married man whose wife is clinically insane and locked up in an asylum. We still haven't met the wife, so time will tell if the stories of her inability to love her husband are true.

And its a story of people who are "rich" in the truly American sense. They are in debt up to their eyeballs and really have no cash. Taxes are about to destroy their wealth. They have to have the latest of everything. It's keeping up with the Joneses at its best!

Will Lord Richard be able to maintain control of the estate, or will the influence of his "liberated" daughter and his socialist son-in-law destroy everything he holds dear? Will the middle daughter really run off to Germany with a married man? Will Daisy the cook ever really find true love?

Tune in next time to find out!

Kindle e-book reader

One of my partners got a Kindle e-book reader from her husband for Christmas, last year. She recently brought it to the office and let me play with it. Now I've got my own, and love it!!! The technology still isn't perfect, but this has been a great new toy!

I've had my Kindle now for about 1 month, and already I've downloaded over 30 books, either in full form or sample versions. No, I haven't read them all, yet. Like any new toy, I am giving it alot of attention.

Things I love:

1. Downloading free samples. It's just like going to the book store and spending time thumbing thru the paper edition. About 1/3 of the things I've downloaded have been in this format. When I get to them, if they interest me, I'll buy the whole thing.
2. The Kindle takes up much less space on my shelf! I love reading, and I tend to buy 2 new books while I'm still reading one. This gets on my wife's nerves. So now we don't need as much storage space.
3. The Whispernet. It downloads books in mere seconds.
4. The built-in dictionary. I've found that I use it much more than I thought I would.
5. It makes me feel like I'm an officer on the starship Enterprise when I'm using it!
6. There are tons of free or very cheap books available, not just the bestsellers.
7. I've read some complaints about the lack of backlighting. I guess a lot of people want to be able to read at the bottom of Mammoth Cave. Personally, I don't care about this. I already need light to read books, so it's no biggie.
8. Changing the text size is way cool!
9. I leave my Whispernet turned off while I'm reading, so the battery life is excellent. I charge it up about once a week, but even then, the batter is not fully discharged.

Things I don't like:
1. Still not enough titles. The Kindle is too new. Hopefully with time, more and more authors and publishers will get on board.
2. It doesn't render pictures very well at all. Amazon will have to continue to improve this technology if they really want to replace the printed word (which I don't think will ever really happen-books are here to stay). I can see college kids one day having all their textbooks on a Kindle, though. But not yet.
3. Amazon.com advertises "over 140,000 books". However, I have found that alot of these books are actually repeats. I think I found 5 or 6 different versions of Ben Franklin's Autobiography, all of them being offered at different prices. Don't really understand that logic. I guess some of them may have different comments from modern editors.
4. They do need to design a better cover. As long as I hold it tight, it's fine, but it does tend to slip out quite a bit.
5. The right hand "next page" button is placed at the very edge of the Kindle. Occasionally I'll shift my grip, and accidentally turn the page.