Tarot Books on the Kindle

[cmarie]

I am not sure if this is the right place to start this thread, but here goes...

I have about twenty tarot books on my kindle, and now I wish I had them all in paper! I am glad to have them, and it was fine to read them by but I like to flip around in them and refer back to them. This is hard to do on the kindle without a bunch of bookmarks - and still it is cumbersome.

Also my copy of Tarot and the Magus has many misspellings which just look like 'software' errors. For example the word 'the' is often 'die' !!!

So now I am slowly starting to collect books, actual books. So far I have The Book of Thoth, and Magick Book 4. Which is good, because I always refer to them - so I am spending a lot of time in these books. Actually this is what made me realize I need to go with real books - because now my kindle is being neglected. (in comparison to before)

Do you read Tarot books on your kindle?

One thing that is beneficial about having them on my kindle is that my tarot library is very portable. It would be hard to lug them around with me! But even so, I am going back to paper for my non fiction...

Some I really wish I had in paper:
Keywords for the Crowley Tarot by Hajo Banzhaf
The Language of Tarot by Roberta Lee
Tarot and the Magus by Paul Hughes-Barlow
Portable Magic by Donald Tyson
The Thoth Companion by Michael Snuffin
Symbolism of the Tarot by P.D. Ouspensky
The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie
Mystical Qabalah by Dion Fortune

Those are the books I refer back to most often, and it would be so much better if I could just grab them and flip to the pertinent part. I wish I could sell the digital copies.

Rant finished...

 

[a_gnostic]

Some of those you may be able to find as PDF files online, for free. If you don't mind printing them off (double-sided, for example) and binding them, that may be better than nothing. Try Googling the name of the book and author along with "pdf" or "+pdf", for example:

golden dawn israel regardie pdf​

yields a whole page of downloadable PDFs at:

http://www.golden-dawn-canada.com/library.html​

You shouldn't find currently-copyrighted works this way, but sometimes they turn up. I don't have a problem using those provided I have already paid for the work in another form, whether that's Kindle or a dead-trees edition. In that sense, your having paid for the electronic version need not seem like a "waste".

BTW, putting "+" before a term asks Google to emphasize that term in the results, so with "+pdf", you're somewhat more likely to get PDF files themselves than pages where people discuss those books.

 

[Richard]

There are only three or four books that I need which deal directly with Tarot from my perspective, and I have them in non-digital format. I did purchase the Kindle version of The Gnostic Bible (Revised Edition) by Barnstone and Meyer, which I believe does have some relevance to the Majors in the Waite deck. It contains amazingly readable translations of the original documents, many of which were in Coptic (Egyptian), so I may have to buy it also in the old-fashioned, non-volatile, book format.

 

[Sulis]

I don't think the ebook format is the best medium for text books for the reasons you've given..Text books are the sort of books that people read out of order and flick from one section to the next with. Kindles are far better for books that you read straight through, from beginning to end (fiction books).
For that reason, I don't have any tarot text books on my Kindle - I keep the Kindle for novels and I buy paper text books.

 

[tarotbear]

Echoing LRichard and Sulis - not a e-book person, but my e-Tarot version of my paper books were the first thing to sell - which I just don't understand! A novel is one thing, but a reference book...? You want to pick it off the shelf -flip through some pages fast- find what you need - then put it back. You can't do that on a Kindle.

link removed by Moderator

 

[a_gnostic]

I disagree regarding non-fiction on a Kindle. It's so easy to highlight and annotate text. You can view all of your annotations together, and it forms a clickable index back into the full text. You can have your entire library with you whether you have a Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or computer at hand.

More important (for me), you can copy text and paste it into your own notes. I use Evernote to consolidate all the stuff I'm trying to assimilate from different sources.

Now, I love "real books" too, and nothing compares to the touch and feel, but there are so many advantages to electronic versions that I have to stop and think hard when purchasing a new one. (BTW, "impulse" purchases are so much more likely to occur with e-books than dead-trees books, which may explain why your e-versions were among the first to sell, tarotbear.)

To illustrate, in addition to 14 dead-trees books on Tarot and related subjects, here's what's in my Kindle library:

• Bunning, Joan. Learning Tarot Spreads.
• Bunning, Joan. Learning Tarot Reversals.
• Bunning, Joan. Learning the Tarot: A Tarot Book for Beginners.
• Pollack, Rachel. Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings.
• Ashe, Steven. Secret Symbols of the Tarot.
• Antenucci, Nancy and Howard, Melanie A. Psychic Tarot: Using your Natural Psychic Abilities to Read the Cards.
• Three Initiates. The Kybalion: A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece (Illustrated).
• Eggleston, Michael. Initiation of the Soul: Esoteric & Occult Philosophy, Consciousness and Realization of Truth.
• Hamilton, Edith. Mythology.
• Berens, E. M. Illiad, Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome (Illustrated).
• Bulfinch, Thomas. Mythology (Annotated).
• Steiner, Rudolf. An Outline of Occult Science.

Ironically, I'm on the fence regarding getting the e-version or a dead-trees copy of "Every Man's Tarot": the prices on Amazon are nearly equal. If the e-version had been much less, I would have bought it instantly.

 

[MountainGirl]

For me, it really depends on the e-book. Some have a great detailed table of contents, which makes it easy to look up things. Others are just one big jumble, these I'd rather have on paper. The trouble with "real" books is that they take up too much space, so I prefer a good e-book edition anytime.

 

[rachelcat]

I love Kindle tarot books because I'm a cheap nerd. I can have all the basics with me at all times. And they're usually lots cheaper than a book or free.

AND I can have my own notes with me at all times, too! (Much neater than a ragged sheet of paper stuffed in the bag with the deck!)

(And the all-important complete works of Jane Austen! But that's a different subject . . .)

 

[Stormdancer]

I am not sure if this is the right place to start this thread, but here goes...

I have about twenty tarot books on my kindle, and now I wish I had them all in paper! I am glad to have them, and it was fine to read them by but I like to flip around in them and refer back to them. This is hard to do on the kindle without a bunch of bookmarks - and still it is cumbersome.

I'm not gonna quote everyone else.

Yeah. I bought a Kindle and I LOVE it for reading a novel, but for studying stuff, it sucked. Some of my material was PDF and that was sometimes worse.

I solved my dilemma when I bought a 1st generation refurbished iPad. I can now "flip" between numerous books much more easily, although I did need to insert bookmarks for some of the material. I just bookmarked the Fool, and then the Aces of each suit. I use Calibre to convert all of my e-library for either device, so I've not lost anything.

I still have my Kindle....er...at least I THINK I do. DD has kinda adopted it. ***sigh***

It's not mine anymore, is it?

Anyhoo....I still prefer to read novels on the Kindle, but most of my reading is more of the flipping between books these days.

 

[Winterchild]

IPad and Kindle Returns...

I solved my dilemma when I bought a 1st generation refurbished iPad. I can now "flip" between numerous books much more easily, although I did need to insert bookmarks for some of the material. I just bookmarked the Fool, and then the Aces of each suit. I use Calibre to convert all of my e-library for either device, so I've not lost anything.

Stormdancer do you use the Kindle App on your iPad?

I found the same thing re finding stuff quickly with Kindle books. I actually returned one book for a refund. I bought Mary Greer's 21 Ways to Read a Tarot Card as a friend and I were studying it, but the Kindle version had various chapter headings and sections numbers missing! It made it very difficult to work with. Anyway I have ordered the paper copy now. Do take note though that if you are unhappy and write to Amazon they are good at refunds and then they remove the book from your device.

Not all ebooks are cheaper either, some are the same price.. and you cant loan them!