THE Lowly Peon

Kindle Singles 
30 January 2011, 1:04am

No more than a month or two ago, and I can't remember whom with, I had a discussion about how there's a market for a middle ground between articles — a word I'll use to describe any kind of periodical that I can read on my RSS reader — and books. Perhaps it was because I heard rumors of Amazon's new Kindle Singles, or maybe it's just because I've been getting horribly bored with my RSS subscriptions.

A few days ago I browsed some of the Kindle Singles already available, after only a few days of being released, and downloaded two of them to read on my iPhone.

I usually read news on the way to work while listening to some music — NY Times, The Economist, or several different blogs — but, being a weekend, there was nothing good to read. So I decided to read one of the Singles I had downloaded, Lifted, a quick read about a real-life bank heist that took place in Sweden recently. I was on the edge of my seat the whole way to work.

What I love about this "Singles" idea is that I don't need to dedicate lots of time or energy to reading, as I would a book, but I can get more involved than with a simple article. (Note: The New Yorker has some great longer articles, which I love to read. However, many of them are behind a paywall, and I hate the idea of paying for something I may not use for a while.)

So for those of you with attention spans too short for a novel, but who are getting bored reading John Gruber female dog* and moan about Android, perhaps Kindle Singles are for you. (And you can read them on your iOS device using the free Kindle app.)