Al Gore lives on my shoulder. He whispers in my ear while I’m doing laundry (“Cold water!”), driving (“Inflate your tires!”) or snuggling with my husband (“Turn off the light!”).

Al is never more disapproving than when a box of books arrives on my doorstep. “Oh, your carbon footprint!” Al sighs. “How much fuel was wasted shipping those books? And don’t get me started on the paper!”

Killjoy.

I recently silenced my inner Al by investing $359 in a new Kindle 2, Amazon’s next-generation e-book reader, beloved by Oprah and untold (because Amazon refuses to divulge the exact number) thousands of early adopters.

Here’s a review of the Kindle 2 from the viewpoint of a reader, not a tech wizard.

The Skinny: Product Specs

It’s nearly inconceivable that 1,500 books can fit onto the 10.2-ounce Kindle. At 8” x 5.3”, approximately one-third of an inch thick, the sleek, slender device easily slips into all but the smallest purses. The battery fully charges in three hours, and Amazon claims a single charge can last two weeks with the wireless radio turned off or four days with the wireless on.

The Kindle uses black “e-ink” on a gray display screen (slightly darker than the paper in a child’s coloring book) that is not backlit like typical computer screens. As a result, the Kindle has no reflected glare, is perfectly readable in full sunlight, and is far less likely to cause eyestrain than a computer. However, unlike a computer, the Kindle cannot be read in the dark.

A reader “turns pages” by pressing a button on either side of the device (a bonus for lefties). When “pages” are “turned,” there’s a brief flash as the e-ink repositions itself. Some find the flash annoying, but after a few minutes, I didn’t notice it. An indicator at the bottom of the screen tracks the reader’s progress through the book, graphically and as a percentage.

Purchasing Content

Currently, the Kindle Store sells over 250,000 titles, as well as subscriptions to major national and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Kindle content expands every day, as Amazon executes its ambitious plan to ultimately stock the Kindle Store with “every book ever printed in every language.”

The Kindle Store is accessed through the device’s wireless radio (no need for a computer hookup) anywhere there’s a Sprint wireless signal. Before purchasing a book, readers may download a free sample—usually a book’s first chapter or a complimentary two-week subscription to a periodical. A simple click completes the purchase, and the price is automatically charged to an Amazon-registered credit card. Within 60 seconds (usually faster), the wireless download is complete.

Kindle books cost about 50% less than a typical hardback (a savings of $10.00-$15.00) and 20% ($1.00-$2.00) less than a paperback. A randomly selected textbook (Mass Spectrometry by Jürgen H. Gross) sells for $57.56, or 42% less than its $99.00 cover price, leading one to wonder when e-readers will become the norm on university campuses.

Content Availability

How many of Kindle’s 250,000 titles are up your alley? It depends. A virtual stroll through the Kindle Store reveals depth in some areas, gaps in others.

The Kindle Store features 103 of the 111 books on the New York Times Best Seller lists, and the more famous the author, the more extensive the backlist. For example, Kindle sells 106 titles by horror king Stephen King and 63 by romance titan Nora Roberts, but the backlists for less well-known writers can be spotty.

Kindle’s library is by no means limited to contemporary writers. In fact, it’s hard to beat Kindle’s price for public-domain classics: the complete works of Shakespeare cost $3.19, all six Jane Austen novels only $1.59, and Dickens’s 16 novels, an astounding 99 cents. Who could resist that? Not me. Click!

Many popular craft books are also in Kindle format, including On Writing by Stephen King; Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; Screenplay by Syd Field; and Fiction Writer’s Toolkit by Bob Mayer.

But if you’re looking for Writing the Breakout Novel; Goal, Motivation and Conflict; or the most recent edition of Elements of Style, you’re out of luck—for now.

Other features

Technology enthusiasts can spend hours poring over the Kindle User’s Guide (sensibly pre-installed on the device). But for amateurs like me, here are the highlights.

Adjustable type: Any book can now be converted into large print, thanks to Kindle’s six adjustable font sizes. This feature alone makes it worth a look for vision-impaired book lovers.

Text-to-speech: Kindle’s text-to-speech feature has inflamed authors and publishers, who fear it threatens audiobooks (and the accompanying royalties). They needn’t worry.

Since I have the maturity level of a twelve-year-old boy, I first tested the text-to-speech application on a sex scene in Sea Witch by Virginia Kantra. The scene was super-hot when I read it, but creepily bizarre when recited in the Kindle’s emotionless, robotic monotone. It was like getting an obscene phone call from Stephen Hawking.

In addition, Prof. Hawking sometimes can’t “read” the text properly (translating the honorific “Ms.” as “millisecond,” for example).

So relax, everybody. Kindle’s text-to-speech is okay in a pinch, but will never replace a well-performed audiobook.

Audiobooks and music: (Real) audiobooks from Amazon’s Audible.com and music files can be downloaded to a Kindle, although they consume an inordinate amount of memory.

Built-in dictionary: Highlight the unfamiliar word and—voilà!—up pops the definition from the free, pre-loaded dictionary.

Search functions: Type in a word or phrase and the Kindle provides a list of occurrences within the document. With a few additional clicks of a tiny toggle switch, readers can also search Google or Wikipedia for more information.

Other features: Kindle offers many other features, including the ability to save “clippings” from books and periodicals, type notes in the “margins” of documents, bookmark pages with a virtual dog-ear, and download Word, TXT, HTML, image, and pdf files.

Pros and Cons

Is the Kindle right for you? Consider the pros and cons. On the pro side, the Kindle is user-friendly (I downloaded my first book within five minutes of opening the box); ridiculously portable; and a pleasure to read, indoors or out. In addition, the Kindle Store mimics Amazon.com’s first-class purchasing experience, then does it one better with its ability to deliver a book in less than 60 seconds.

Other pluses: savings and environmental considerations. Between the $10-15 savings on hardbacks and $1-2 on paperbacks, serious buyers can break even in a year. And e-books are infinitely greener than conventional books, though the Kindle’s plastic casing and battery aren’t impact-free.

Finally, don’t discount the very real, if very shallow, cool factor. Whip out a Kindle and crowds gather (mostly men—hurray!).

Kindle cons include its steep price, its available-only-from-Amazon content, and, for readers who enjoy the feel of a new book and appreciate cover art, its rather joyless, utilitarian reproduction of the printed word. In addition, the virtual purchasing experience has its hazards: without an armful of books or an internet shopping cart tally to remind you of your literary gluttony, it’s easy to lose track of your spending. And if you share books, buying a Kindle will effectively end that generous and frugal practice.

A Final Note

I love my Kindle. I highly recommend it to anyone who buys lots of books, has back problems from lugging around their personal library, or covets cool technology. Of course, the Kindle isn’t the only game in town—Sony Reader aficionados extol its lower price, sleeker design, convenient touch screen and read-in-the-dark back lighting, among other features. So do your homework before making an investment in the future of books.

But if you do decide to buy a Kindle, use this link and Liberty States Fiction Writers will get a $35 referral fee for each Kindle purchased!

Liberty States Fiction Writers Bookstore

And one more thing:

As of this writing, An Inconvenient Truth is not available on Kindle.

Your move, Al Gore.

Questions about the Kindle? Thoughts about the future of e-books? Leave a comment and let me know!

Carolyn Martin is a former senior communications executive for a Fortune 100 company. Now a freelance writer/editor and pre-published author, she’s catching up on twenty years of deferred reading.

What happens when an aspiring author is seduced by her hero’s best friend?

Something bad happened in the middle of my first book.

I always considered myself a one-man woman. And my book’s hero-graced with strength, looks, and an unerring moral center-was so perfect I thought he was everything I’d ever want in a protagonist. I would never stray. Never.

But then-poof!-his best friend appeared on the scene.

I didn’t pay him much attention at first. I only had eyes for my first love. But the best friend was always there on the margins. Always ready to help the hero pull off a narrow escape or point out the heroine’s strong points-the ones my hero was too stubborn to appreciate. Always the right man to supply some timely exposition or a much-needed slug of whiskey.

He was…different. More smart-alecky than my hero, the best friend had just enough humor to break the tension in a nail-biting moment, just enough skill in masculine trash-talk to make sure my protagonist never got too full of himself.

Just enough character to make sure I couldn’t ignore him.

And then one day I…I…

I checked out his backstory.

I took a good, long look.

And God help me, I was attracted to it. It was strong and well-rounded and very, very sexy.

I fell head over heels for my hero’s best friend! And it got worse-soon I was downright obsessed, stalking the best friend through my hero’s story, finding him in places he had no business being.

I had to spend more time with him. But not in my novel-his growing presence there was too disruptive. We needed someplace private:  a new password-protected document just one window over, easily hidden with a single click.

Tucked away in our top-secret file, the best friend’s charm and sensuality tempted me beyond words. Actually, it tempted me to lots of words. Just a few hundred, I promised myself. Just a few hundred words to satisfy my curiosity. Then I’d return to my hero and forget I’d ever fantasized about his best friend.

But a few hundred words became a thousand. Then five thousand-ten! I lingered for sentence after addictive sentence, ignoring my original hero and wishing with all my heart I’d met his best friend first.

Can you blame me? The best friend was more fascinating, funnier, more carnal than my original hero. Certainly less demanding. The closer I came to finishing my first hero’s book, the more he wanted from me. He insisted on logical explanations for all his actions-and everyone else’s too! Sometimes things came out of his mouth that made no sense whatsoever, and I’d waste a half-hour translating it into standard English. And did he ever, ever thank me for how I kept his book nice and neat, tying up loose ends with every word correctly spelled, every line grammatically flawless and all the scenes organized into perfectly paced chapters? No!

My hero didn’t appreciate me any more. He didn’t care what I wanted, what made me happy. It was all about him-him, him, him!

His best friend wasn’t nearly as needy. He was always glad to invite me into his novel, for however long I cared to roll around in his rumpled paragraphs or rub up against his dangling participles. I could climb through his window whenever I wanted, even in the middle of a sentence. He was so thrilled to be on the receiving end of something only I could give him-his own book-that he never complained. Meanwhile, he gamely continued his supporting role in my first novel, never hinting there was anything untoward behind his sly smiles. My second novel was our little secret. The thought of syntax never crossed my mind.

I’d meet him in the oddest places-at Starbucks, by the neighborhood pool, on the kitchen table. Even while my kids were watching SpongeBob in the next room!

“Mommy’s coming!” I called from the office as I teased out a final, mischievous double entendre before shutting him down for the night. I’d chance anything to explore all the naughty, naughty things he could do in my laptop.

It was exciting. It was intoxicating. It was madness! I was throwing away a perfectly good book to cavort with a new one.

“Are you crazy?” a writer-friend screamed over the phone. “If you get involved with another novel you’ll never finish your first one! You can’t flit from book to book like some little…”

She bit back her words before she said something hurtful, but her sigh spoke volumes.

“Don’t do it,” she said softly. “I know what I’m talking about.”

That sad note in her voice forced me to consider the consequences of my reckless actions. After all, I’d made a very public commitment to my hero-I’d told everybody I was writing a novel. What would my friends-Oh, God, my family!-think if they knew I was not only abandoning my hero, sometimes for days, but also hooking up with someone else? And his best friend, of all people! What kind of author was I?

There was only one solution. I had to find him a girlfriend-fast.

Someone spunky. No-someone uptight, someone who wouldn’t find his snark as amusing as he did. Someone who’d resist him-at least for a while-better than I ever could. A woman who’d give him a taste of his own medicine.

I set them up to meet cute. Sparks flew, along with an unexpected dish. (How was I supposed to know she had a temper? I just met her myself!). And then, just pages into their tempestuous affair, the most astonishing thing happened:  my back-door lover became just like his best friend, my original hero, now jeering from the sidelines of this new story. The best friend was still to die for, but he turned out to be as frustrating and time-consuming as my first love.

I guess I had to learn it the hard way.

So with the best friend distracted by the woman of his dreams, I crept back to my first book, a bit older and much, much wiser. To his credit, my hero never uttered a single reproachful word. And my heart had indeed grown fonder during our break. All those traits that once drove me nuts-his murky motives, his occasional inarticulateness, his infuriating tendency to tell, not show-were easier to deal with, even a little endearing. Sure, he wasn’t perfect; what hero is?

But before I fully recommitted to my first novel, I made sure the best friend had something to remember me by-a detailed storyline so he wouldn’t get lonely while I worked things out with my original hero. As thanks for the lessons he’d unwittingly taught me, I gave the best friend everything he ever wanted-the fiery girl, a rollicking family, the whole nine yards.

Maybe it was too pat, but it eased my conscience. And everything went back to normal, except…

Except…

You know that cheeky orphan the best friend and his new wife adopt at the end of their story? In twenty years or so, I suspect he’ll turn out to be quite the hero himself-gorgeous, resourceful and more than a little dangerous.

Wait a minute. It’s already twenty years later-in the new file I just created.

Only few hundred words, I swear.

Carolyn Martin’s original hero stars in her historical western Something Fierce, which placed third in the Music City Romance Writer’s 2008 “Melody of Love” contest for pre-published authors. Her hero’s best friend is still bumping around in his own file, waiting for his turn in the spotlight.