Great up until 93% (according to my Kindle)
343729
The Goldfinch is a page turner, with an interesting story to tell and compelling characters.  But in the final 7%, the author veers away from the narrative to give each main character a chance to pontificate on weighty matters of life, death, loss, and oh, art.  So rather than the actions and motives of the characters stirring us to our own philosophical musings, we have an overblown version of "what it all means" spelled out in evangelical tones.  I cared for the characters, and the story provided some urgent late night reading, but when all was said and done, I was strangely unmoved by the book.
438034
Well, I hope I can come back and update this review later...
  I can't comment on the quality of the writing at all.  What I can comment on is that it won't open in Kindle for PC, and crashes the program on every attempt, as of May 23, 2012.  I've downloaded it twice, tried multiple times to open it.  Another reviewer mentions the same problem with Kindle Fire, but the problem is not limited to the Fire.
3159925
I agree with the rest of the reviewers .... I have raved about the Kindle to all my friends and one of the top "raves" was about the great price on the books.  I sure hope this isn't setting a trend. :-(
517471
One thing to be aware of is the fact that if you leave your Kindle on an open article of the New York Times Latest News and shut down your Kindle, when you reawaken your Kindle you will find that you have not been updated, even though updates are available. For this reason, I try to always go to the Home Page before turning off my Kindle.

That detail aside... I have been subscribed for several years. 5 stars would be appropriate except for the very very frequent problem of the "latest" news not being available. Now is a case in point. For several days, my "latest" news was one day late, e.g. on April 24, 2017 (today, right now!), what I have on my Kindle Paperwhite is the April 23 edition. I'm at home and my wifi connection is live and strong.

A week ago, after my device being in this condition for several days running (a day behind), I called Kindle Support and complained (I've done this many times over the years). I got a pretty clueless customer service representative who tried unsuccessfully, many many times to upload the latest news to my device. After 20 minutes or so I asked to talk to a supervisor. I was later informed that their queue was backed up. I was dropped to a dial tone and called again. I asked to talk to a supervisor and was eventually hooked up to one (was called back). The upshot was that there was no latest news for that day. In other words, The New York Times had failed to provide updates later than the previous day. I am tired ot wading through Amazon Kindle Support's system on this matter. Sometimes the "latest" news is two days behind the current date. I think that we subscribers should take it upon ourselves to complain en masse, then maybe something would be done.
738816
Thus looks like an interesting read, but I could not get through the first chapter due to issues with the Kindle book.  It will be missing several words between pages on one page turn.  Then the next page turn it will have several words repeated from the previous page.  I usually read with the font on a larger print so that I can read while I am running on the elliptical.  This means that I am turing the page and having issues with this just about every paragraph.  It is super infuriating.  I have never had this issue with other Kindle books.  I am using a Kindle Fire.

I would be happy to give this book another chance if the technological issues are fixed!
477110
The contents of this book are great but why the hell is it only available for Kindle for Mac or PC and NOT cloud kindle, regular kindle? I mean, for the price, it should be much more widely available. I'm really unhappy with this situation and I hope the author and publisher agree to open this up for the other devices.

**Update** I've read through a good portion of the book now and done the exercises. It's a fantastic book. I'm limited in how I can view it so I don't plan on giving it more stars until that is addressed. The book starts off with the three axioms of probability and some great examples. From there the book references back to those axioms to show how further concepts in probability are built from them. Sticking with the game of Texas Hold'em is a great tactic because the reader becomes intimately familiar with the game and isn't trying to switch gears into other domains for every example. I have found this to be extremely useful in building up the knowledge meant to be imparted by the book.

I would say this book is worth 4 to 4.5 stars on content alone. The restricted format, though, has made it shockingly limited in what apps and devices can display it. For the price, the content is perfect. I just wish I didn't have to revive an old 15" laptop with an old version of Windows just to read it given I have Linux, Windows 8 and a 3rd generation Kindle...
515933
i sent amazon this note:

i'm eager to purchase the kindle edition of the lord of the rings, but apparently there are numerous formatting issues and text dropouts, as has been reported around the net. i downloaded the sample and ran into problems even with that. for instance, at location 300, there is space between N and the rest of Numenorean which causes an incorrect break. at 221-229, "...a romance between Aragorn and E (MISSING TEXT HERE) that Tolkien wrote...". you will agree that it's particularly ironic that these errors occur in forwards describing how there have been problems with the text through the years!

anyway, please let me know when the kindle edition has been corrected, so i can go ahead and purchase it. i'm really looking forward to doing so.

update - 5/28/11
a couple of weeks ago i received an email from amazon informing me that the book had been republished with
corrections. there were instructions for getting a new copy. i checked a couple of problems from the previous
edition and they were fixed!
1011137
It is really frustrating reading a great book but every few lines words are missing. I've tried it on all my kindle devices: kindle fire, ipad4, nexus 10 and Samsung S3. All the same. Anyone else have this problem?
609891
I love this book.  The story itself I would give 4-4.5 stars.

I was very excited to get a version for my Kindle.  It's just so much easier to read for me than my well-used paperback.  So why do I give this 1 star?

1.  $9.99 for something you can pick up for much less.  Yes, it looks like the Kindle price came down to match the price but oh well.

2.  There are no maps (at least when I click on "maps" from the table of contents, it goes to a small blank area before chapter 1).  I read on the Tor website that the e-books of The Wheel of Time would have maps, drop-down letters at the start of the chapters, chapter icons, etc.  Amazon, where are my maps?

3.  Drop-down letters at the beginning of the chapter are rendered as a single letter on the line above.

It looks like this:

T
 his is supposed to be a fancy start of a chapter.

I hear that the Sony conversion is gorgeous.
1566033
Aside from the dirty trick of getting rid of the stock of second generation kindles by reducing the price to $189 31 days before offering the latest generation for the same price, I like the kindle with some reservations. My taste trends towards lesser known authors and books and most of these are not available for the kindle. Also if you like short story collections beware of kindle books with no table of contents and without the author and story name on each page. You will have no way of finding a story or recalling it's title or author without going through it page by page. Maddening! But these are all content and marketing issues. Technically it's 5 stars. If you read bestsellers and the more popular books, the issues I have will not be a problem for you. Some kind of built in light would be very nice the clip on ones available are awkward and annoying. Use a 10 cent padded shipping envelope for a protective sleeve and save your money skip the fancy $30 snakeskin or leather ones.
1638675
I too just canceled after the price went up to 14.99-- a 50% increase.

I've subscribed to the wsj via the kindle for over a year now with these comments:

1. being able to read outside in sunlight was great, and it solved the problem of the wind blowing my print edition around.

2. The kindle version is crippled compared to the print edition as very few photos and graphs are included.  They made it better some number of months ago, but it still lags considerably.

3. Both the print and online editions are richer in content--with the online VASTLY richer with more articles.  However, I do not like reading on the computer screen, so the kindle made sense.

4. being able to search the wsj for keywords on the kindle was great.

5. I really enjoyed not having the piles of paper around the house.

6. The pricing didn't make sense at 9.99 (but it was tolerable), and now it makes less sense at 14.99 which brings it over the cost of the print version. How can something sent wirelessly cost more than actually printing and having someone drive it to my house each day?

In my opinion, Amazon is really dropping the ball with their Kindle vision.  It's a great vision and a compelling device, but the content is still too crippled and expensive.  The WSJ is an example.  I recently bought a kindle book which was only $1 cheaper than Amazon's new hardcopy price (and more expensive than a used book).  The Kindle version did not include any of the images that the print version of the book contained (and they were black and white images!).

I'm just about finished with this Kindle experiment and am moving back to print for most everything.
858868
Regarding the Kindle version:

The formatting has issues with what would be line-height or

line-spacing.  It's as if the whole book is double-spaced, similar to

how I'm writing this very post. I hope the publisher fixes this soon and

offers an update.

This is not a matter of text size settings on the reader.

I use both a Kindle v2 and an iPhone, it is the same issue on both.

I didn't find another way to leave feedback on technical concerns with

Kindle purchases..  this will have to do.

I'll leave a review about the book itself after I finish reading it.  So

far it has been very helpful.
3553934
We received it yesterday and werez extremely impressed with the quality of the build and thoughtfulness of the layout. The unit, for what it is, is the best of the e-ink readers currently on the market. The positive aspects of the unit are immense - aspects that I will not bore you with, since everyone here has already touched on in one form or another.

That being said, some headaches occur outside of the well-made unit. First off, I am a previous owner of a Sony 505 (that the kindle handily bests). I have several books on the damned thing that I would love to transfer over to my new kindle, but with the DRM in place...? If someone knows a way, please feel free to enlighten me. It just seems with DRM, it makes all this into a money game of one company or another - it forces you to be locked into one branding or another, otherwise you lose your entire collection. This is insane and needs to change, but with tons of money at stake, it's a long way off from releasing the full, true potential of these readers. I know DRM is here to stay, lets just make it seamless for us to move around a bit more freely on the branding.

If we want this mainstream, the price needs to lower considerably. Mr. Bezo, I know you need to make up the costs of R&D, etc. That is perfectly acceptable, but at some point when you want this to be a mega-hit (and after peddling the product on Oprah and The View), the price needs to be considerably lower. Look at another industry - the gaming industry. In particular, Valve Software - makers of fantastic hits like Half-life (1,2), Team Fortress 2, and Left4Dead. L4D was out for a few months on Steam (digital transfer) and retail outlets and over last weekend they lowered the price by 50% (digital only). Their sales rose over 1000%. That proves people out there are pinched for cash. At $300+ for a one trick pony (albeit an incredible one), it scares the majority of the population away.

Another few small irritations is the fact that I have craploads of books.. I wish there was some way to get them somehow magically transferred to my kindle for a small price. My gosh.. if there was some way, my life would be complete! LOL The other irritation is the 250,000 kindle book store. Sounds fantastic and IS the best selection out there by far (Sony, yours is WAY overpriced and, well, sucks). It would be nice if that the Kindle store had one book in a series, they would HAVE THE REST AVAILABLE..?! That's such a tease. I know you can "request" a book, but I have requested till i'm blue in the face on books that are from a popular author - still waiting.

Yes, a bit lengthy on the gripes, but this is a review on the product itself - and the complaints are more on streamlining an already improving process. It's more of a wish list of sorts. The product is solid and the very best of it's type to date. I highly recommend it to anyone that can afford the product at this price point.
3270433
The primary reason I bought a Kindle Paperwhite device is for this lone book & version-- for on-the-go access and lightweight travel & transport compatibility.

The reason for the ONE STAR RATING is to alert a potential purchaser to its (hopefully temporary) Kindle Paperwhite incompatibility, and obviously NOT due the content of this wonderful book!

(If you read no further, I hope that the incompatibility glitch is solved by the publisher/software writer by the time you read this sentence.)

Upon purchase the book file would (cloud) queue  but would not download to the device (at least not fully or permanently).  It got stuck in a constant, non-stop auto-loop of attempting a download and crashing the Kindle, again and again and again.

The (wonderfully kind!) Amazon support had me update software (firmware update) to rectify the issue, without success.  After repeated efforts and avenues, the Paperwhite was thought to have been damaged (either from the factory or via corrupt download?), as a hard restart and then followed by a factory reset brought only repeated crash-and-restart pain, to the point I could not turn the machine off.

So with the Paperwhite being only a few days old (Christmas), Amazon figured the device defective and sent me another.  But wait.  Same problem with the new one today.  I downloaded 2 books.  One worked fine, but the MacArthur Study Bible, after queuing and showing to be 100% downloaded (but not showing as 'check-marked' or moved to the 'Downloaded' section), crashed the machine.  So once again, the crash and restart loop.

At that point the tech (and I) thought the software to be faulty/incompatible with the Paperwhite, having tried many times on 2 different devices.  She removed the book from my queue (with refund).  She said she was going to alert the publisher to fix the software, hopefully within 3-5 days (today being the last day of 2017).  She was also, after filling out a report, going to remove the book from digital inventory until incompatibility issues get resolved.  So if the e-book (and its reviews) get temporarily sidelined, I'm hopeful that by the time you are able to read this review all will be well.
3571459
Wonderful product with one GLARING PROBLEM!!! If you have a large number of books to download onto your new kindle. It goes into a "nervous" breakdown FOR REAL  the screen starts flickering from page to page independent of any touch or action on your behalf. This action is extraordinarily fast and you can NOT stop it by your own action. I did find that this "nervous breakdown" will stop after about 10 minutes on it's own. However, this enigmatic behavior starts even after trying to download 2 books. Now I have hundreds of books (a bookaholic), but Amazon advertises the large capacity of books the kindle can handle. Just that it won't work.
This is a a WARNING TO THOSE WITH LARGE AMOUNTS OF,BOOKS. BEWARE!!!!!!!  Come on Amazon. Straighten this out!!!!
462528
I would have given a full 5 if the reader allows me to view my goodreader from my 3G e-reader as it feels kinda of funny that i still have to on my mobile phone's hotspot.

Another thing i observed is that my top button (default setting) tends to skip to additional page when i press once.  I am not sure is it my reader is too "sensitive" and this happened occasionally during my read.  I reset a few times and the occurrences reduced.
692150
I've been a subscriber for going on 2 years now.  Glitch here and there made delivery late, but I survived so that I could get my Bronco news.  A couple of weeks ago, the Post announced a cutback in employees and it's obvious that some must have been involved in the Kindle edition. Content has gone down by almost 50%. I'm going to keep it for a little while longer to give them a fair chance.