I present to you the second half of a diary chronicling my experiences with the Kindle 2 wi-fi. Read Part 1 of my Kindle diary here. (You can also read Parts 1 and 2 of my Nook diary.)

Week 12

Hurrah! Amazon has announced a new lending feature for the Kindle, which means I can share titles with other Kindle users for 14 days at a time. The Nook’s LendMe feature was one of the main things that drew me to that device, so I’m excited to find that the Kindle now supports sharing e-books.

There’s just one tiny problem. None of the e-books I own appears to be lendable. Turns out the publisher gets to decide whether to make a title available for the lending feature, and not too many publishers seem to be as excited by this feature as I am. This is really too bad. A 14-day lending period is completely reasonable. Sharing books builds hype and gets readers hooked on a new author or series. Plus, it keeps Kindle-users happy so that they aren’t tempted to illegally download books for free. My 2 cents.

Week 13

I’m having a hard time trying to decide which books to download to my device, which to get from the library, and which to buy from a bookstore. Most of my books come from the library, because I read far more books in a month than I can afford to buy. But if a book is popular I have to wait weeks or months to get it from the library. If I buy a book from a local store, I’m supporting my local economy and I can pass the book on to a friend who might like it. But downloading it to my Kindle is easiest–it’s fast, and I don’t have to pay for gas to get to the store or shipping to order it online.

So here’s my system for determining whether to download a book (10 points=pay for the download):

• 10 points if I think I will love the book and want to keep it for a long time
• 7 points if I have giftcard that will cover all or most of the purchase (not 10, because who wants to waste a giftcard on a book that you won’t actually like?)
• 7 points if the book is self-pubbed and therefore only available as an e-book (but I need another reason to justify buying a book at all)
• 7 points if the e-book is really, really cheap (even though I’m probably less likely to enjoy a cheaper book)
• 5 points if I really want to read the book but all copies are checked out of the library
• 5 points if the book will be difficult to read and I’m going to want to hang onto it for a long time to finish it
• 3 points if I really need something to read but am feeling too lazy to go out and buy/borrow a book
• -5 points if my son hasn’t gotten to go to the bookstore in a while
• -5 points if I think a friend or family member will want to borrow the book when I’m finished

Week 14

I’ll admit that one of the reasons I wanted an e-reader rather than an iPad or smartphone is that a device like the Kindle keeps me free from distractions. Yes, it has a web browser on it, but it’s so difficult to use that I mostly ignore it. I