18 January 2011

Taking Advantage of Your Kindle

I've my Kindle2 now for nearly 18 months and I have a few tips to pass on.
I'm presuming that these also hold good for the latest, the Kindle3.

These are features that I use a lot.

Collections/categories

Organising your books into collections is far better than listing your books in alphabetical order of title or author, or by "most recent."
Straight lists make it hard to find books and to know what you've read and what you haven't read.

Each book goes into just one collection on my Kindle.

Here are some of the collections I have.
  • now reading - one book goes into here
  • TBRN - to be read next, for those books I really have to tackle soon
  • special collections such as - historical, vintage, British, Nordic, global reading challenge, Agatha Christie, review books
  • completed - as I complete reading a book I move it into here and remove it from all other collections
  • TBR - any book not in another collection goes into here
 How to do it

Sound

Somewhere I read just recently a suggestion that if you were anxious to finish a book on your Kindle but were unable to use your eyes, e.g. when you are driving the car, then you could use the Text-reader and listen.

Not all books come with a text-reader option - apparently that is something the publisher had to agree to - and if you can turn it on, it is a computer-generated voice. As you listen it auto-turns the page.

Still, it is not bad. You can plug some head phones in and listen too. If the volume is a bit low, there is a regulator on the right hand side of the Kindle. Be aware that it will run the battery down more qucikly.

Notes, Highlights and BookMarks

I have begun using my notes and bookmarks when I create my book reviews.
You can highlight bits of text you want to include in your book review and add notes too.
When you read them over they serve to remind you of salient parts of the story.

When you connect your Kindle to your computer, it is treated as an extra drive.
Look for My Clippings. This is a text file and you can open it with a simple word processor like Notepad.
The highlights and notes from your most recent book will be at the end of the document.
I select the text I want and then transfer it into another text document and then manipulate it from there.
Check my most recent review, and you'll see how I used a bit of text that I had stored in my highlights.

So I hope these pointers are handy.

7 comments:

Dorte H said...

Good advice.

I do more or less the same, but with other categories. And I don´t only have one for read books, I split them up in British, American and others (which tell you a lot about where the majority of my books come from ;D)

bermudaonion said...

I've had my Kindle for about a year and a half too and I just figured out how to highlight passages!

Anonymous said...

Kerrie - I don't have a Kindle (yet?), but those do sound like useful pieces of advice!

Margaret @ BooksPlease said...

Thanks, Kerrie. I have made some collections but I shall copy your ideas on collections for currently reading etc.

I have just about understood how to open My Clippings on the computer (with my husband's help, that is!) and have included a quotation in my latest post - a Teaser Tuesday, quoting from The Secret Adversary.

At the moment this is slowing down my reading, but it's great fun!

I haven't ventured into getting the sound to work but it does sound a good idea.

michael said...

I love the collections feature but I send my read books to my archives. This gives me more space on my Kindle and I can still reread old favorites by simply downloading them again.

Anonymous said...

Another tip related to your audio point is that if you have wireless on your Kindle, always keep it off when you aren't actually using it to download a book. When it's on the battery runs down quite fast, but it lasts ages when it is off most of the time.

Re storage of books, I don't have that many "to be read" as I am trying to download books only when I want to actually read them. I do put them in one "collection". When I have finished one, I "delete" it from the Kindle altogether as the book is archived on Amazon's cloud/site and can be accessed/re-uploaded any time from your Amazon Kindle area at their website. This is good for me as it keeps my Kindle lean and uncluttered, which I like.
Best wishes
Maxine.

Maria said...

Very nice tips!!! I use the highlight and notes quite a bit. It's a great feature.

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