I have been a big fan of the Kindle in the past.  I have also been disappointed in some of the developmental decisions Amazon made in supporting the Kindle.  I haven’t upgraded my Kindle hardware for several years because I was not impressed with the evolution of the product.  Now, with the release of an HTML 5 Kindle Cloud Reader for your web browser, I’m back on the Kindle bandwagon!  I recently purchased the Kindle version of Ron Hansen‘s excellent novel, Mariette in Ecstasy, and in seconds I was reading it on the web!

Buying Mariette brought me to this screen with a button that said, “Read now in Kindle Cloud Reader.”  I clicked!  I read.  I conquered.

The book immediately loaded in my web browser:  Google Chrome for Mac.  I can resize the font and page width at will.  I can set bookmarks.  I am a sync away from reloading my wishes.  As I read, I can make notes.

All my purchased Kindle books are available for download or reading live online.  My Kindle library automatically loads from “The Cloud” when I visit read.amazon.com.

Here is Mariette — as a “downloaded” Kindle book plucked from The Cloud.  As you read a book, it is downloaded from The Cloud to your computer.

The Kindle Cloud Reader is a “Chrome App” on my Mac — and it appears in my Apps list whenever I open an empty Tab:

It feels great to rediscover my Kindle books because I have so many of them.  Kindle has now become a publishing and reading powerhouse and not just a hardware device.  That’s a good thing!

I enjoyed reading my Kindle books on my iOS devices, but being able to read my books, and interact with the words of my authors in a conventional web browser, is such a rich delight that I now actually now feel as if I finally have all my books available forever.  I didn’t have that sense using the Kindle book reader alone all those lonesome years, because that handheld experience always felt proprietary, fleeting and limited.

2 Comments

    1. David Boles – New York City – David Boles was born in Nebraska and holds an MFA from the Oscar Hammerstein II Center for Theatre Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York. He is an author, dramatist, editor, publisher, and teacher who writes across the live stage, print, radio, television, film, and the web. With more than 50 books in print, David continues to write 2MM words a year and has authored over 25K articles. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, the Authors Guild, and PEN America, and founded The United Stage advocacy platform on the principle that playwrights have a duty to direct their own work. Read the Prairie Voice Archive at Boles.com | Buy his books at David Boles Books Writing & Publishing at BolesBooks.com | Study with Script Professor at ScriptProfessor.com | Touch American Sign Language mastery at Hardcore ASL at HardcoreASL.com | Explore the Human Meme podcast at HumanMeme.com | Train with Boles Bells at BolesBells.com.
      David W. Boles says:

      I agree reading Kindle books on iOS devices is grand, but now with the Google Cloud Reader, we can read our books on any computer anywhere. No more relying on proprietary, standalone, hardware to access our books!

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