Review: Good. Official LDS version
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 6, 2013
I say this is an official LDS publication because it's linked to from the Church's site. It has footnotes, which make it a bigger download.Anyway, other than the issues I'm going to mention below, this is a really great e-book. It's up-to-date with the latest LDS edition (it is the latest LDS edition, in fact). It actually has the official photographs and maps, as well as the topical guide, Bible dictionary and such. It runs very well on my Kindle Fire 2.Now, before you download this and review it with one star saying The Gospel Library app is better, you should keep these things in mind:* The Gospel Library app is an app. It's not a Kindle Book. You can't use the Gospel Library app from the Kindle Cloud Reader or a regular Kindle (Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Touch, Kindle Keyboard).* You can't turn pages on the Gospel Library. You have to scroll. That can be great, but I prefer page-turning for faster reading.* The Kindle App is faster, including with making notes and stuff.* It's very hard to highlight things on accident in Kindle books. I like how the Kindle doesn't do anything permanently just by selecting text, but brings up buttons there that then do it.* You might want an isolated icon (the picture of the book you click on to open it) for your book, separate from the whole Gospel Library. It's just nice, sometimes, especially to put in your favorites menu. You've got to navigate differently in the app.* It's different. It's just not the same thing.* You can always have the Gospel Library app and this book. There's no need to be down on one because the other exists.* It's not THAT expensive. If you're broke, just do a little work on Amazon's Mechanical Turk and it's paid for.* If you use Kindle Freetime, your child will have access to your same LDS account settings on the Gospel Library. They have their own notes and marks on Kindle books, and they won't affect yours. While we're talking about kids, remember, and I'll say it again, that it's difficult to highlight stuff on accident here. Most people (not just kids) I've lent my Kindle Fire to for using the Gospel Library app have made accidental (or purposeful) highlights all over the place because they like to set a finger on the screen without realizing it (and without knowing it's going to have unintended consequences). I could see this frustrating people a lot.Now, before you review this and say that such and such blog has the books for download for free:* I think that blog is offline, now.* You should consider whether it was authorized to offer those downloads in the first place. If it wasn't, then it's copyright infringement (for the non-public domain materials, at least, and I believe the chapter headings and footnotes are not public domain). The Church may or may not care, but without permission, it's not authorized. I have no idea if those were authorized.* You can't read them on the Kindle Cloud Reader, which is in my opinion, one of the best ways to read e-books. (Although if you manage to successfully email them to your Kindle email, they'll show up in your docs, and the Kindle Fire reader will, fortunately, load it (I believe regular Kindles are supposed to do that, too). I say 'fortunately', because I've tried loading scriptures on other e-readers and they were really slow. The Kindle reader renders them very quickly. I said, 'if you manage' because I tried sending a Bible to it, and it failed. I think the file was too large or something.)Now, before you review this and say that the Church offers this for free:* That's kind of true, but you still can't access it on the Kindle Cloud Reader. Hopefully they'll change that so it'll work in future. AND, you still have to email it successfully, which hopefully will work for you (but it failed when I tried it, probably due to its size or something, as smaller items have worked).Issues (I don't mention these to be critical, but in the hopes that improvements may be made, in future, and for the benefit of those wanting to know all the features and issues):Here are some problems with the footnotes:* When doing dictionary lookup on a word (on the Kindle Fire 2) with a footnote on it, it includes the footnote letter as part of the word. So, it doesn't work. The Kindle Cloud Reader does not have this problem, fortunately. :)* The Kindle Cloud Reader doesn't raise the footnote letters (the Kindle app for the Kindle Fire 2 does raise them, however). This may obstruct reading, but you can get used to it, with some effort. The official Triple Combination with footnotes does not have this problem; so, I imagine this is going to be fixed.Here is a solution for the publishers, if they choose to implement it:* Get rid of the letter indicators in the verse and just use hyperlinks. Leave the letter indicators in the actual note. However, also have the word the link is on in the note, much as in the Gospel Library app. It may seem a sacrifice, but it's actually a fair trade for what you get in return.Example:"34 A new commandment I give unto you, that ye /love/ one another; as I have loved you, that ye also /love/ one another....34a. love: ...b. love: ..."As an alternative solution, we and also the publisher could lobby with Amazon to fix the two issues (which are not the publisher's fault, as far as I'm aware).While we're at it, we should lobby for the ability to link to other books on the Amazon cloud within a book. Amazon would like that because it would encourage more sales (but they need to understand that it would increase sales, first). I mean, if you link to books you don't have, you'd be brought to a page to buy them when you click the link. A lot of people would be willing to buy those, I think. That way, we could have all the Gospel Library books separately (without the extra load time for each) and still be able to instantly cross-reference. They would probably want to have the links not associated with location numbers, however, or that would mess things up when people submit new editions of their books and such. They also need to ensure that it links to specific sections of the book, rather than just the book generally (I think we can already do that to some extent, though I could be wrong).One mean-time solution to the lack of inter-book linking ability is to have the book link to the Gospel Library stuff in the web browser, online. That's not perfect, but it's a lot better than no links to outside books.Some other things to know about:* Margins are narrower than the default with Kindle Books. This seems to be purposeful. I just set mine to allow the most text on each line and it looks normal again.* The font face is hard-coded and can't be changed (just the size).* Downloading and pinning to the Kindle Cloud Reader takes quite a bit of time, but if you're just reading it, it opens fairly readily.* It does not have links to each verse at the beginning of each chapter, but it does have links to each chapter at the beginning of each book (which is more important).* I have no idea how well this works on regular Kindles, like the Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Touch (just my Kindle Fire 2 and the Kindle Cloud Reader). I'd really like to know, though, since I want to get a regular Kindle one of these days.* Footnote information is at the end of each chapter. This is kind of nice, since when you click a link it doesn't take forever to travel there and back. Plus, you see all the information after you read each chapter. A link to skip that, and on to the next chapter might be nice, if you don't want to look through it, however.* The italics in the chapter headings show up on the Kindle Fire, but not on the Kindle Cloud Reader. I'm not sure why. I'm sure Amazon will fix that, eventually.Now, as for my review of the King James Bible, I think it's awesome. It's true, as far as it has been translated correctly. I highly recommend the Old Testament Institute manuals as a companion study for it. They make a lot of things clearer about the Law of Moses, and address problems people often have with the Old Testament (such as why they did this and that). I don't know if Amazon carries them, but they're in the Gospel Library and you can get them from the Institute website. I also recommend another book (this one's not free): Joseph Smith Translation: Every Revision in the Old & New Testaments (by Kenneth and Lyndell Lutes). That e-book stalls sometimes at the beginning on my Kindle Fire 2, but it's a great reference and well-done for comparison study.