While the origin of the word "Kindle" is said to be "candle," ironically "to kindle" can mean "to set something [including books] on fire." "Thursday, October 17, 1650. [. . .] the colony’s hangman, Thomas Bell, dropped a book onto a fire. He had kindled the flames late that morning near the crossroads[.]" I quote this line from David M. Power's book Damnable Heresy which deals with the first book banned in the US. The author of the first burned book was William Pynchon... yes, an ancestor of the famous reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon.
The news of Pynchon's works like Gravity's Rainbow finally being available on Kindle is still fresh in our memories, but recently the argument of whether the e-book would become a trigger for today's book burning seems to have abated. Especially because of the increasingly powerful stay-at-home movement, some bestselling novelists who haven’t had to release e-book editions of their works have become compelled to do so. With a complicated feeling, I've found myself reading my Kindle in my garden because of my working from home. . .
