Breaking down and paying for goat balls

Today marks a mini-milestone in my media consumption habits: for the first time I actually spent money for a Kindle book.

Amy bought an actual Kindle some time back, but the first rule of Kindle turned out to be "Bryan doesn't get to use the Kindle." Can't say as I blame her. A few years ago I bought her a Nintendo DS and then promptly expropriated it so I could waste obscene amounts of time "improving" myself by playing Brain Age. Still, the restriction did serve to postpone my entry into the world of e-books.

When we got smart phones last summer, I noted that a Kindle reader was one of the available apps. Though the type was predictably tiny on the phone, it proved to be a better time-killer in waiting rooms than solitaire. And then when I splurged after Christmas and bought an iPad, e-reading reached a new level. Suddenly it was comfortable, easy, and sufficiently dead-tree-esque to make it a pleasant experience. Not to mention that the iPad case I got props itself up on my nightstand, and of course the tablet doesn't require a cumbersome book light.

What I didn't do was rush off to Amazon and buy a bunch of stuff. Instead, everything I downloaded was public domain, free-of-charge, mostly classics from Project Gutenberg. As long as I'm marking milestones, I should note that a couple of days ago I finished The Iliad, the first e-book I read from beginning to end.

For some time now I've been meaning to buy a copy of Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. As a John R. Brinkley-abilia fan, I couldn't resist. If nothing else, I'm always looking for new info to improve the lesson I teach my Mass Media students about Brinkley. When I looked into ordering a copy, I noticed that Buns and Noodles had it available for the Nook. And if it had been Nooked, surely it must also be Kindled.

Thus I'm now the proud owner of my first ever actually-paid-money-for-it e-book. O brave new world.

In MSG news, I spent a chunk of time this morning clearing out the email I've been sending myself (and other people have been sending me) full of links to articles that need to be included in the text. Not for the first time -- and probably not for the last -- I'm impressed by the sheer enormity of the task before me.