Sherman Alexie

 

Sherman Alexie is a Native American poet who is known for his writings about Reservation life. His poems are self-expression of his personal experiences. One of the required readings of Alexie was the poem "Crow Testament." In summary, it tells the life of the Indians from when the settlers came to America to modern day. It is explained in more detail here. There were other poems that we read of his but what I found even more interesting is watching the interviews with him from the discussion board.

Sherman says that he doesn't allow his books to be available in any eBook form on the Colbert Report. I can sort of understand what he is saying, I like to hold an actual book in my hand, but with today's technology it's hard to compete with that. There are lots of eReaders and people that only read these type books. As far as Alexie is concerned about piracy, I know from experience that an Amazon Kindle will allow you to purchase the book and you may read it as many times as you want (just as a real book). Then you are allowed to share the book with another Kindle user, but the book may only be lent out once, and after 4 days, it goes back to the person who purchased it. In my opinion, the author would be making more money this way because only 2 people are allowed to read the book before it has to be purchased again. A print book can be lent out over and over and over again without having to purchase it or having a certain number of days to read it.

It's no secret. I am a thrift shopper. I buy lots of things from Goodwill and our local thrift store, God's Storehouse. There are always tons and tons of books in these thrift stores for as little as $0.10. Even though these books are cheap, the same ones are always there it seems. For me, a printed book is producing a lot of waste. Not only the waste of the materials to actually print the book, but also the waste of space. With an eReader, you can literally carry hundreds of books with you in your purse. Before the eReader we had to grab a book, some of them heavy, and carry it around with us to read. If we finished the book, we had to wait to start another one until we got another one from home, or even went to the book store and purchased one. Now, we can buy a new book or magazine on the go.

Interesting enough, I found his twitter account, which strikes me as odd since he was so "anti-technology" in the interview. He tweeted on 4/15/13, "E-readers aren't biodegradable & use the same electrical grid as everything else. Stop calling them more environmental than actual books."

He just doesn't get it.