For me personally, it’s acute: I don’t really even like buying books that I can’t get electronically anymore. It shows in my library — I’ve been giving away about 100-200 books a year to our public library, but still have well over 1,000 in the house. But I have more than 150 on my Kindle, after 2 1/2 years. My physical library is shrinking, my electronic one growing.

I have zero sentimentality – none - about the form of the book. I’ve noted elsewhere that what I discovered on getting my Kindle is that it isn’t particularly books that I love so much, it’s reading that I love. Novels, non-fiction works, short stories, whatever. It’s the words that I’ve always cared about, the ideas, the narratives, the characters. Not the wood pulp, the binding glue, the flashy book jackets (that often don’t have anything at all to do with the author’s intent).

But lately I’m worried that as we rush headlong into the electronic future that we’re losing something.

I think it’s pretty clear that we’re not reading as well — every reader I talk with reports that they’re not comprehending the books quite as deeply as they used to. I believe we’ll get better at reading electronically, and the format will allow better paging through and spatial memory eventually, but that’s far from obvious to me. (Most avid readers I talk with say that they can usually remember where on the page they read something — top left, lower right, in the middle, whatever — and that’s always been true for me. The reflowable digital form obviously breaks that spatial memory, and is a bit of a problem.)

But the thing I’m worried about more lately is the disappearance of books in our physical spaces. I’ve always found that when I go visit peoples’ houses that what’s on their bookshelves is a bit of a lens into their lives and their values. Almost invariably when people come over to our house for dinner, I’ll hand them a book from my shelves that they’re interested in with no expectation (or desire, actually) to get the book back.

I find it even in my own home — when I’m in the office, I’ll often notice a cluster of books about something that reminds me of a time in my life, or stokes an old curiosity, or that just makes me happy.

But now the books we have in our house don’t really represent the current me. We tend to have 3 categories: (1) kids books, (2) coffee table books, and (3) books from our past that we haven’t given away yet. I believe that will happen in most homes — and maybe it already has been, since the introduction of the television — and it makes our personal spaces much more anonymous — more screens, less deep content.

I feel the same thing as I travel around — in the airport or on airplanes, nobody can see what I’m reading. Mostly, that’s okay with me — I didn’t really want to talk to my seat neighbor about Stieg Larsson that much anyway. But it bugs me more that my wife can’t see what I’m reading — the books used to serve as an instant conversation-starter. Now the reading experience is faceless, not conversation-inviting at all.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll replace books as a lens into our brains and lives with something else — digital picture frames? Facebook pages glowing from our walls at home?

Nevertheless, I think we’re losing something in the process. That always happens as we move from one technology to the next, but we’ve overturned a 500 year old technology in less than a decade, and it’s going to be very disorienting.

I’ve never missed reading physical books nearly as much as I miss having the physical artifacts in our world, and how so many clues to who we are are disappearing along with them.

It’s no secret that I think incredibly highly of Bob Sutton and his work. I’ve always found him to be smart, encouraging, engaging, and interesting to talk with about work and management, and find that, more than most people in the field, he’s extremely data-driven in his work. I also find that he’s got an incredible ethical framework, and is very wise about the art of management.

He’s got a new book coming in September, and I really, really like it — I think it’s his most profound and useful work to date. I’m generally not a fan of business books — I find that usually their main value is in the title (and if it’s really awesome, maybe the introduction is useful) — but this one, which I’ve read a pre-pub copy of, is great.

His last book, The No Asshole Rule, got a lot of attention, partly for the provocative title, but really more for the ideas on how much culture matters in productive workplaces. And it clearly struck a nerve with people suffering from bad or incompetent managers. His new book is a little less situated in the negative context associated with bad managers, and talks more about how to be an exceptional leader. That distinction is important — it’s obviously easy to be a bad manager, and hard to be a good one — but it’s another thing entirely to be a really exceptional leader, and Bob has gone to great lengths in this book to look at some of the world’s best leaders and really understand what sets them apart.

You can get a taste of the book in this Harvard Business Review post by Bob titled “12 Things Good Bosses Believe” — this is an extremely powerful list of things that the best managers believe.

I fall short of these ideals a lot — I imagine everyone does, really — but every single one of them is worth thinking about and striving for each and every day in the workplace. This book is a great one because it reminds me of how good great leaders can be, and I really recommend you pick it up when it comes out.

I know that I’m writing and tweeting a lot about all of this lately — to be honest, it occupies a huge part of my brain — it’s a big deal for me this year. I was talking with someone over the weekend who said he’d had a similar surgery last year, and that it completely changed the complexion of his year. I’m finding the same thing — it dominates my mood and thinking — whether it’s how the shoulder hurts, the psychology of maneuvering with the sling, whatever.

Other than just being on my mind a lot, I’m writing so much for a couple of other reasons. First, as a reminder to myself over the years of the specifics of the injury and recovery. Second, because as I progress through this, I’m finding relevant information about what everything feels like to be tough to find on the web, and I hope that it can help others who are going through it.

My last post was a couple of weeks after the surgery, and we’re now a couple of weeks past that — I saw the surgeon Tuesday and things looked good enough to stop wearing the sling and start physical therapy. I’m really happy not to wear the sling anymore. The physical aspects were annoying, but it was really the psychological aspects that I was getting tired of — being in a sling for weeks, I found that I started to think of myself as less vital, more gimpy. I knew it wasn’t really true, and it was just temporary, but it wore on me a lot in any case.

Overall, things are going well — it’s been pretty painful overall — and lately my shoulder hurts most of the time (although it goes up and down). Sleeping has consistently been the biggest problem. Was hard to sleep with the sling, is hard to sleep with the soreness and sharp pains when I move in the wrong way. But making it through.

Wednesday I started physical therapy — I’ve got 2 weeks of passive stretching & range of motion exercises (I move the arm with my other arm, or the physical therapist moves it) and then another couple of weeks of active range of motion (where I use the arm itself). After that, 4 weeks of resistance training rehab, and who knows after that. So now I’m about 5 days into it. The exercises aren’t complicated — it’s about 30 minutes of laying with my arms wide, stretching them on an exercise ball, doing pendulums, etc. They’re designed to stretch out the capsule that holds the shoulder. The point of the surgery is to tighten up the capsule — and they overtighten it in surgery and use PT to loosen it to a manageable level.

The most interesting/freaky aspect of this phase is psychological, too — the therapist on Wednesday moved my shoulder into positions that my brain knows will dislocate — or rather would have dislocated before the repair. So when I start to approach those positions, I’m finding myself tense up and fight against the motion, which makes everything hurt more. I find it’s also triggering a strong fear response — just a very strong aversion to letting my arm get moved around, some feeling of nausea, etc. The next day, the first one where I was doing the exercises by myself with nobody to ask questions of, was actually a little scarier to me, just because it was a completely unknown feeling.

The good news is that, as of today, Day 5, things are going really well. The difference between today and last week is astonishing, and I’m finding that every day my range of motion is a little bit bigger, and the fear & nausea responses are becoming less severe and happening less often. It hurts most of the time — there’s not really any time that goes by that I’m not aware of it and devoting some attention to it. But it feels pretty good in the mornings now, and hurts more through the day as it gets more tired.

I find, too, that I’m trying to be as aggressive as I can about it — doing the exercises a couple of times a day instead of just once (I asked whether that would be okay) — so hopefully that’s helping. I know I can’t accelerate it that much — I think a lot of it is just diligence and time to heal.

The most amazing thing so far is that I can’t remember, at all, what the surgery and rehab was like when I first repaired the shoulder, in a much more invasive open procedure, in 1990. I literally can’t remember going to a physical therapist, can’t figure out when I got better, since I didn’t take any time off from school, and can only vaguely remember being in the hospital (it was a 3 day thing instead of just the morning like this year). I can remember a lot about both years at Stanford before and after it, but really nothing about getting my shoulder better. Weird.

Anyway, this note is a little all over the place, which is a little how I feel, too. But I’m happy to be more active now, and optimistic that the rehab is going well and starting to convince myself that my shoulder really is repaired.

My shoulder repair surgery was 11 days ago now, and things seem to be going pretty well. 17 more days with my sling, not that I’m counting, really. Pretty minimal pain at this point, except at night, when it’s pretty brutal — I think laying down on my back or side puts the shoulder into a position that puts pressure on the repair. So I’m not sleeping very well at all, which is discouraging, but overall I’m quite happy with how things are progressing, and am fired up about getting into PT in a couple of weeks.

I am blown away by the precision of the arthroscopic surgery. When I had my shoulder repaired 20 years ago, they made a 4 inch incision, detached the muscle from the bone, and generally had to open everything up to get in to repair things — that meant a 3 day stay in the hospital, and a long & painful rehab, although I don’t really remember much about it, honestly.

This time the experience is much different. I’ve got 3 band aids on my shoulder covering up 4mm incisions where the camera, vacuum and tools went in. My stay in the surgery center was 3 hours instead of 3 days. And as I’m recovering, it’s clear that only a few of the surrounding muscles and tendons and ligaments were really very disrupted. (Wearing my arm in the sling, by contrast, is creating more complaints — sort of a contact rash, a very sore elbow, and my wrist is pretty tweaked.)

On the whole, though, so far so good. 2 weeks left in the sling, then 4 weeks of PT (1st week is passive, where they will move my arm around; next 3 are active), then 4 weeks of strengthening. Feeling pretty doable at this point. Lots to see as I start to use the joint again, but optimistic so far.

I’ve included the pictures from the surgery above (click through to see the full size), although I don’t really understand too much about how to read them. If you number the pictures 1-9, going from left to right, top to bottom, here are a few choice shots:

• #1 is showing the healthy tendon, no problem
• #3 and #4 show the labrum before repair — pretty much shredded is what they said
• #5 is the posterior top of the shoulder ball — shows a notch in it that’s come from repeated dislocations, as it gets bumped by the labrum on the way out — didn’t repair that since it doesn’t seem to be giving me too much trouble
• #6 & #7 show the surgeon cleaning out the old stuff; #7 shows him roughing up my bone to cause “bony bleeding,” which encourages scarring like we want in there, I guess (sounds sorta awful to me, honestly, and I have lots of imagined pains due to my bones bleeding)
• #8 and #9 show the repair, with some striped thread and metallic-looking anchors, which the surgeon (of course) said “looks great.”

Anyhow, that’s the update from shoulder central — in a bit of pain at nights, but super-optimistic.

Next up, traveling to Vancouver with my sling.

Kinzer’s written two of the most influential histories that I’ve ever read: All the Shah’s Men, an account of the CIA-led coup of Reza Shah over Mohammed Mossadeh, and Overthrow, a history of the last 100 years or so of America’s regime-change-happy foreign policy, and its disastrous consequences.

Reading All the Shah’s Men was incredibly illuminating for me — there’s a very direct line from our adventurous and damaging foreign policy under the Dulles brothers to the unstable and antagonistic situation we find ourselves in with the Middle East. I couldn’t recommend more reading that history.

In this book, he recaps a bit of that — goes through the last hundred years or so of Iranian history — but in a parallel way, also chronicles the last hundred years of Turkish history. His basic argument is that, even though Saudi Arabia and Israel are our main partners in the region, and should remain partners, the overemphasis on those two countries is strange (for reasons I’ll state in a moment) and unproductive & dangerous, and that it’s in our best interests to develop significant partnerships with both Turkey and Iran.

He spends the time on history to show that the people of both countries have a longer history of wanting democracy and trying to bring democracy to their countries than any other countries in the region — the difference being that Turkey’s march towards democracy has been mostly unbroken, while Iran’s was massively disrupted by foreign involvement in the 1950s, which created the conditions to allow the 1979 Islamic Revolution to occur.

It’s really important to note 2 things. First, he’s not arguing that the governments are more democratic than elsewhere in the region, he’s arguing that the rank and file populace have a longer history with and very strong desire for democracy. Secondly, he’s not naive about the challenges of partnering, or that many compromises would have to be made — but in his view the set of choices which could result in an enduring, positive situation are very limited, and these are the ones most in our self-interest.

I liked this book a lot, both for the histories and the policies — much to think on.

I picked this book up because it’s mentioned in an online correspondence between Jonathan Lethem (one of my very favorite authors, although I’m finding Chronic Town tough to get through and David Gates. They both clearly admire the work as a way of helping them think about their own writing, and the way that writing is changing.

It’s a funny sort of book — really a collection of about 800 numbered passages, some of which are only 3 or 4 words, some which stretch to 3 or 4 pages. Some of them are Shield’s own writing, lots of them are cribbed from other authors.

His main point is that the novel is dead. More particularly, that the constraints of the novel mean that they’re so predictable and artificial — so awkward and divorced from the pace and intensity and authenticity of modern life — that they’re uniformly unchallenging and interesting for him. More fundamentally, he argues that all writing is fiction. Non-fiction, history, memoir, novels, poems, essays, etc – that they are all a construct of a mix of human memories. He more or less says that Andy Kaufman was right — that everything blurs. He cites a variety of examples of the trend, including some Eggers’ work and some of Frey’s. (In his view, Stephen Frey should have gone back on Oprah, not to take his beating by self-important critics, but rather to help people understand this idea):

“When Frey, LeRoy, Defonseca, Seltzer, Rosenblat, Wilkomirski, et al. wrote their books, of course they made things up. Who doesn’t? Each one said sure, call it a novel, call it a memoir; who’s going to care? I don’t want to defend Frey per se—he’s a terrible writer—but the very nearly pornographic obsession with his and similar cases reveals the degree of nervousness on the topic. The whole huge loud roar, as it returns again and again, has to do with the culture being embarrassed at how much it wants the frame of reality and, within that frame, great drama.

…

I’m disappointed not that Frey is a liar but that he isn’t a better one. He should have said, Everyone who writes about himself is a liar. I created a person meaner, funnier, more filled with life than I could ever be. He could have talked about the parallel between a writer’s persona and the public persona that Oprah presents to the world. Instead, he showed up for his whipping.”

He doesn’t really argue that novels will actually disappear — more that they are occupying a less and less central place in our culture.

I highlighted more passages in this book than I have in a really long time, even though I don’t really like the premise — but I know that Shields is correct about single-author long form work receding in importance, and very quickly.

Anyway, I think this is a really important piece of work for anyone who’s interested in where writing is headed at the moment. It’s a little sad to me, but really probably isn’t good or bad, just a reflection of today’s fragmented, multi-media, always synthetic culture.

One of my favorite set of passages:

I have a weakness for Steve Almond’s non-fiction work. I loved Candy Freak, a fantastic book in which Almond writes about a huge variety of candy-related histories.

In his latest book, he talks about his life as a rock critic, and more importantly, as a Drooling Fanatic. He talks about all sorts of music that he’s loved, bands that he’s hung out with. He talks about how powerful music is — says when he hears “Sunday Bloody Sunday” he’s about ready to join the IRA; how listening to “Sweet Home Alabama” makes him want to drink beer and shoot things, along with some less charitable emotions.

Skewers lots of really awful music, like this:

“I said before that there is no objectively “bad” music. I must now amend that statement. In so doing, let me cite Duke Ellington, who once famously declared that “there are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music. And by bad music I mean specifically the song ‘(I Bless the Rains Down in) Africa’ by Toto.” Ellington died two years before Toto formed as a band, which speaks to his prescience.”

and later in that chapter:

“What makes “(I Bless the Rains Down in) Africa” so bad? Mostly, it’s the lyrics. Also, the instrumentation, the vocals, and that virulent jazz-lite melody, which, despite the manifest wretchedness of everything I’ve just mentioned, means that you are no doubt conjuring the song even as you read this—those hypnotic banks of synthesizer and phony “tribal”-sounding drums—and without at all meaning to, sort of … grooving to “(I Bless the Rains Down in) Africa,” sort of digging it, sort of bathing in the buttery memory of sixth grade or tenth grade and hand jobs and lip gloss and really actually kind of remembering, or rediscovering, how much you love “(I Bless the Rains Down in) Africa” even as you’re hating yourself for this love. It’s complicated.”

That’s comedy gold right there. Leads right up to him talking about his early dating life, where he really, really liked a woman until they went to her house and she was so excited to put on Air Supply’s Greatest Hits, whereupon he immediately wanted to stop seeing her. But then considered that that make him shallow. And then decided to break up anyway.

Great book. Highly recommended.

This book reminded me a LOT of Stephen King’s The Stand. Some sort of vampire-creating virus gets loose, destroying the earth, people head to Las Vegas, that type of thing.

And coming in at nearly 800 pages, the length is a lot like The Stand, too.

But even with that, and maybe it’s the oxycodone talking, but I really enjoyed it. The time scope is actually longer than King’s work, and the writing is more character-driven and interesting.

Fun book for summer reading.

Billed as a book of modern fairy tales, I found this book pretty middling. The writing style did feel a lot like fairy tales, and the stories themselves were really quirky, but I just didn’t enjoy them very much at all.

Sort of a post-Iraq War spy thriller set in Beijing and other Chinese cities, with a little dose of World of Warcraft thrown in the mix. I liked it pretty well, and it was well written, but there probably wasn’t really enough plot to keep me totally interested. Given my visits to China over the past few years, and SPL’s Mandarin, I’m more interested than most folks in the context.

Liked it well enough; probably wouldn’t recommend it to most. Great book cover, though.

I seem to be on a bit of a modern fantasy streak, reading a lot of books about gods that crash on your couch and ruin your transmission, that sort of thing. Maybe because it’s summer. Not sure why.

Anyway, this is another in that set of books, and I probably liked it the least (compared to Sandman Slim and Johannes Cabal, the Necromancer). Nevertheless, it was a quick and fun read, and I’ll probably read more by Martinez in the future. Good but not fantastic, I thought.

A couple of weeks ago, I dislocated my left shoulder, and am planning to have it surgically repaired a couple of weeks from now. I wasn’t doing anything unusual at the time — was only putting my iPad on my bedside table — but put my arm in a bad position and the shoulder came out. (As a side note, for those of you keeping score at home: Kindle: 0 shoulder injuries. iPad: 1 shoulder injury.) Anyway, it came out, and Kathy was good enough to hold my forearm for me so that I could get my shoulder back in the socket.

This is a bit of a longstanding problem for me. I first dislocated my shoulder when I was 14 years old (give or take) — our soccer team had practice one evening, but another team was using the field, so we were warming up on the asphalt basketball court. I was dribbling around a guy but tripped over his foot, and caught my fall with my left arm, and my shoulder popped out. It took about 90 minutes to get me to the hospital and see a doctor — when I saw one, he lifted my arm above my head, and the shoulder got reseated, much to my relief. In retrospect, I don’t really know how much it hurt, but I know that I was pretty scared because I had never been through anything like that before.

I went through the normal rehab and physical therapy, but had continued problems — my shoulder dislocated maybe a dozen more times up until my freshman year at Stanford. It got to be so that the slightest thing could cause it — even turning over in my sleep did it a couple of times. So I decided to see a surgeon about doing something more to repair it.

In either 1990 or 1991, I had surgery near Dallas — something called a Bankart procedure to repair the tear in my labrum and to retension the capsule. It was an open procedure — not like the arthroscopic procedures that are most common today — and I remember it being tough to recover from, even as a 19 year old. Was in the hospital for 3 or 4 days, then a ton of rehab after that.

But the really, really great news was that my arm didn’t dislocate anymore. I lost some range of motion in the shoulder, basically because they tightened the capsule more than “normal.” But it was definitely worth it to have a more stable shoulder. In 1997 or 1998, though, it happened again during a softball game at Stanford, as I was in the batter’s circle. Surprised me, and hurt a lot.

And then, life was better for a while. I started lifting weights around that time, and generally getting into better shape, and my shoulder got stronger than it had ever been.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been in to see Dr. Eakin at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation a couple of times now, and I like him — he was pretty clear from the outset that I would very likely need surgery, and after looking at the x-rays and MRI images, it’s confirmed.

He actually drew me the set of pictures above — the top left shows a top view of the shoulder — you can see the ball connected to the very shallow socket, with the pointy bits of cartilage called the labrum keeping it in, along with the capsule that’s surrounding the ball. When the dislocation happened, as shown in the upper right diagram, it broke part of my labrum and detached the  capsule (or stretched it really thin). The procedure he’s suggesting is called a Bankhart procedure (I think) to repair the labrum and retension the capsule, resulting in the happy picture in the middle of the image. Unlike the procedure I had 20 years ago, this will be an arthroscopic one.

One side note is that part of the ball chipped during some earlier dislocations — resulting in the notch he’s drawn. That doesn’t seem to be causing me any particular issues at the moment.

As a rule, I’m very hesitant to choose surgery — it’s just very difficult to undo if something goes wrong. But since I’ve had such trouble over the years with this shoulder, and since it’s been surgically repaired before, I’m pretty clear that it’s the right thing to do. I think that if I don’t do it, my shoulder will always feel very unstable, and will have a pretty high likelihood of coming out again. I figure I can heal better now than I’ll be able to in the future.

Rehab is longer than I was hoping for — 1 week out of work, then 4-6 weeks in a sling, then 4-6 weeks in physical therapy, then another 4 weeks of strengthening work. So it eats up a lot of the summer, and is a little hard to swallow because I’m feeling pretty good right now, am able to go to the gym, etc. But I should come out of the summer with a more stable shoulder for the long term, so I think it’s the right thing to do.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll note that my right shoulder has dislocated a couple of times, too, but is decidedly more stable, and doesn’t really give me any problems at this point. My brother has dislocated one of his, too.

Anyway, as I’ve said other places, it’s a bummer, but I’m not really too unhappy about this development. I’ve got time to take care of it without hugely disrupting life, and it’s basically a fixable problem, with a minimum of drama. I’ll be able to do some working out while I rehab (like the exercise bike), so that will help, too. And I’d always take shoulder problems over knee issues — don’t have to walk on my shoulders.

Surgery in a couple of weeks — hopefully I’ll be in the 80% happy category on Dr. Eakin’s drawing.

I’ll be in my role here at Mozilla until we conclude a successful search for a new CEO, and intend to stay involved and on the Board of Directors.

I’ll have more to say about Mozilla over the next few months as we go through transition — I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done over the last several years, and very optimistic about what the future holds.

And I’ll have  more to say about Greylock as I move into my new role there. Venture investing is what I’ve wanted to do for quite a long time — I’ve been involved in many startups, even building an incubator a decade ago, and have interests that span enterprise, open source, and the broader web, among others. I’m incredibly excited to join an amazing team there — it’s a firm that I’ve noted to be incredibly strongly oriented towards entrepreneurs — it really matches my sensibilities as an operator extremely well.

Will be blogging and tweeting (@johnolilly) as per normal — more soon. Below is the letter I sent to everyone here at Mozilla, who I am deeply indebted to and proud of.

Everyone,

As my five year anniversary at Mozilla approaches, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to move on to my next role sometime later this year. This won’t happen today or tomorrow — I expect to be here and working for several months yet, and I’m planning to stay on the Board of Directors.

This is a tough note for me to write — I feel so incredibly lucky and humbled to have worked on such an amazing project, with such spectacular people, for the last few years.

But I’ve always been a startup guy at heart — Mozilla was originally going to be a quick volunteer effort for me, but quickly turned into a full time job, and at the beginning of 2008 turned into the CEO job that I have now. I’ve really been missing working with startups, and want to learn how to invest in and build great new startups, so am planning to join Greylock Partners as a Venture Partner once we transition here.

I’m in no rush, and the most important thing to me is to build the strongest Mozilla we can, with the best leadership possible. So my plan is to stay through that transition — we’re starting a CEO search now, and plan to do it in as transparent a way as possible — which means I’ll continue in my CEO role as normal for several more months, at least.

I’ll have more to say on the transition as we figure things out more clearly, but for now, business as usual. We’ve got Firefox 4 to ship, and Firefox on multiple mobile platforms. We’ve got our web services like Weave to stand up and make available to millions of users.

For now, though, I really want to communicate a deep gratitude to each of you — over the past few years we’ve done an amazing amount together, and changed the world in so many meaningful ways. 400 million users are directly touched every day by the work we’ve done so far, and many, many more are using better browsers because of our work. There are many more contributions and victories to come.

John

In other words, they’re different devices, and one is not the superset of the other.

I’ve gone through a few stages in coming to this conclusion — pre-iPad I was convinced the iPad wouldn’t be any good for reading at all. I was wrong. The first few weeks I had my iPad, I didn’t turn on my Kindle a single time. But the last couple of weeks I’ve been balancing out usage, and finding that I’m much happier.

The iPad is, for sure, a better experience for magazines, newspapers, and (obviously) web content. (Not to mention video and interactive stuff, which the current Kindle can’t even attempt.) It’s quite an acceptable reading experience for books, too, especially if you’re reading just a few pages at a time.

But whenever I tried to read for a longer time, I found a few problems. It’s pretty heavy to hold in one hand. The touch UI means the screen is always smudgy and needs attention (that same attention I’m trying to pay to the actual content). It’s not very comfortable to hold laying down in bed. And I found that the backlit screen tended to get me worked up as I was trying to drift off to sleep — sort of defeating the whole purpose.

There’s also an unusual psychological effect that happens. My brain tends to think of my iPad first in terms of communication — checking mail, following Twitter, whatever. And so even when I’m trying to focus on a book, I find myself hopping out of the book for just a few seconds to check up on things. With Kindle, my brain seems to understand that I’m in long-form-reading mode, and stays more still.

As I’ve read full books on both devices over the past few weeks, what I’ve found empirically is that I can read faster, and for longer, and with better understanding and recall when I’m using my Kindle than when I’m reading on my iPad. I can’t prove that to you for a certainty, but it’s very obvious in my recent reading — there’s just no comparison. So for me, the iPad can’t supersede the Kindle. They’re different devices for different purposes.

When I use the iPad, in a lot of ways, I feel like I’m living in the future. It’s an amazing device — beautiful, fun to throw data around, etc. And ultimately is an incredibly interesting split between form and function. (The form has essentially nothing that indicates what the function is — it’s perfectly plastic.)

And looking at the Kindle, it feels a lot like I’m looking at the past. It’s kind of a homely looking device. Has too many buttons in weird shapes. It’s black and white. Strange to say that about an invention that didn’t even really exist 3 years ago.

But I think it’s that in-the-past-ness of the Kindle that’s also its great strength. I find my mind more still, more focused. I find myself able to pay utmost attention to the content, and to really live in the words and ideas. In an age where I’m super-twitchy to read my tweets and mails all the time, the focusing effects of Kindle vs iPad feels like a real throwback win.

It’s pretty clear to me at this point that we’ve moving into a world where we’ll all have multiple screens around us — things we used to call “televisions,” or “phones,” or “eBooks,” or “computers.” And some of those screens will be have their own light and computing power like iPad; others will have reflective displays and mostly show content that comes from the cloud, like Kindle. I think as consumers, we’ll increasingly want all our content on whatever screen happens to fit our current circumstance. What’s around, what’s easy to hold, maybe what’s easy to share with others. It’s very clear that we’ll have screens everywhere, and content connected to all of them.

Anyway, like I said at the top: I think that for most folks who only read a little bit, the value proposition of the iPad and everything it can do will be superior.

But for a guy who for his whole life has never gone anywhere without a book in his hand, the iPad just doesn’t serve me as well as the Kindle for reading books right now. That might change; I might adjust. We’ll see. But for now, for me, my Kindle is the place for books.

This is a very unusual novel — I picked it up because of an incredibly glowing review in The New York Times, even though the subject matter didn’t seem that interesting to me.

It’s the story of a small international paper that’s based in Rome. Each chapter follows a different person who’s involved in the paper somehow, and there are interstitials that tell the story of the paper through the decades.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it?

And yet it was a very enjoyable read to me — the characters were all interesting and varied; the paper was weird and undistinguished enough to make you wonder at motivations of everyone; and the prose and dialog was really tight and thoughtful.

Definitely recommended, even if it’s a bit outside of your normal read.

I really liked the main topic of this book: motivation. In particular, Pink looked at why people do the work they do, what helps them to achieve. Firefox & Mozilla was a primary example, which was gratifying.

I didn’t find the book quite as deep or useful as I was hoping, though — ultimately was pretty short and a bit of a disappointment to me.

This is another quick read that I picked up at Al Billings’ suggestion while I was home sick last week. Another story about a guy who interacts with Hell and then runs around doing zany stuff on earth. Very hard edged, very violent. Pretty good mythology, lots of action.

I liked it; will read more by Kadrey in the future. But combined with Johannes Cabal, I think I’ve had my fill of deal-with-the-devil books for a few months.

I was looking for an easy read while I was home sick, and this was recommended by Amazon when I was looking for something else. I’m happy they recommended it – fun book that’s sort of a combo of Faust and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Guy sells his soul (we don’t really know why at the beginning), makes a deal with the devil to get it back, runs an undead carnival.

You know the type. Good times. Fun book to read.

Fantastic,fantastic book. The first really original science fiction that I’ve read in some time. At least two ideas in it that I’ve never seen anywhere else. The ending is a bit of a jumble, but not terrible.

Highly recommended.

While fights over jurisdictional basis will provide ample material for debate and discussion, what’s most important is that the open Internet principles are adopted. An open Internet is essential to the continued innovation, growth, and entrepreneurship that has changed our lives and created a host of new opportunities.

Let’s not forget, the Internet is young. For example, it’s been roughly 7,000 days since the announcement of the world wide web. Who would have predicted its impact on our lives in this short period? Companies like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook didn’t even exist 2,200 days ago. There is no dispute that the web has facilitated profound social, economic, and even political change all around the world. Even notions that were once new like “ecommerce” have faded away, as now, nearly all forms of commerce touch upon or utilize the Internet. Remember when we even wondered whether people would shop online? A 2009 study by Professor John Quelch published in the Harvard Business Review estimated that the web accounted for $85 billion in annual retail transactions.

Openness is the quintessential quality of the Internet upon which all of these developments are founded. Given our experience in this short time, what the next 7,000 days will look like is no doubt uncertain. What is certain, however, is that if we fail to preserve and protect the open Internet, we risk losing the full promise of the web. That’s a risk not worth taking, especially in light of what we’ve seen so far.

We commend the Commission for its efforts to strike the proper balance of preservation without over-reaching. What Chairman Genachowski has proposed demonstrates exceptional awareness of the importance of preserving key principles of Internet openness without wholesale over-regulation.