By Lewis Faulkner
FaulknerFiction
(Publisher’s Note: Early last month, you may recall, we ran a brief piece in Kindle Nation about the Triangle Kindle Readers Group, a Kindle meet-up group that was forming in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. Participant Lewis Faulkner, who hipped us to the meet-up in the first place, has been good enough to write up the meet-up for us here, and it’s the least I can do to mention in turn that Mr. Faulkner is the author of four novels, one of which has been optioned for a film. Any relation to another novelist? I didn’t ask. But you can click here to see Kindle editions of Faulkner’s novels
Ever wonder what would happen if a group of Kindle owners actually met in person?
Me, too.
And on Friday, 1/23/2010, I was there when the Triangle Kindle Readers Group had their first meeting at the Sawmill Tap Room in Raleigh, NC.
It wasn’t hard to find the group when I arrived. On the table were all sorts of Kindles, each with distinctive covers. Prior to arriving, we were supposed to rsvp and have downloaded a copy of Charles Frazier’s novel Thirteen Moons. For even the amateur Kindle owner, procuring the novel was about as easy as a two clicks and a thirty second transmission. And you never know, the author lives in North Carolina.
Altogether, there were nine or ten people present out of the twenty that had expressed some interest in the group. Our leader, Bob, welcomed everyone and drinks were ordered. Bob jokingly mentioned that we were the largest Kindle group in North Carolina; that’s because, to the best of our knowledge, we’re the only Kindle meet-up group in North Carolina.
We all introduced ourselves and tried to place names with the on-line photos from the website. Then, Bob led the group in some discussion questions. Insightful opinions were the norm. When a woman made a suggestion for our next book to read together, I looked it up on-line at the table and announced that it wouldn’t be available for download until February 23—yeah, you can do that with a Kindle in a bar! At various places during the evening, people asked questions about their Kindle. How things worked. How much accessories cost. We even discussed the new revelation that Kindle will soon be offering some aps, like the aps that are presently available for iPhones.
The most important thing to mention is that everyone was respectful, nice, and friendly. It’s hard to beat that kind of meeting in 2010. No obnoxious egos or double-doctorate English college professors. And, there wasn’t a techie-geek among us. Not only that, the average age looked to be about thirty, not fifteen.
Will I go back?
Heck, yeah.
When you’ve reached that stage of Kindle ownership where you get tired of hearing people exclaim on-line how much they love their Kindles, you might thing about attending a face-to-face group like ours, or starting one of your own.
You’ll find it exhilarating to be on the front-end of something novel, in every sense of the word.