All too often academic editions of classic works are dreadful on the Kindle, with poor proofreading and worse navigation. But Hackett has gotten it right, and delivered an excellent edition in this reading format. Footnotes are live links, so you can easily navigate from text to notes and back again without losing the flow of your reading. On the Kindle touch you can use swipe gestures to jump easily between chapters, which is extremely handy both in reading and in the classroom.
It's frustrating that in early 2012 these qualities should be so rare as to be worthy of comment, but if you've ever had to deal with a bad Kindle edition of a classic -- and even otherwise excellent publishers seem to feel they can get away with this nonsense -- then you'll know that high standards for etexts are not something you can count on. Where they exist, they deserve praise, garlands, chocolate -- and oh yes (in my opinion), money.
Hackett's priced the text at $3.45, which is considerably cheaper than the paperback. Given the high quality of the extext, this edition gives value for the money. It provides a better experience for new readers and students than you could get in the Project Gutenberg version, which uses the Jowett translation, I believe. In this edition you get: a text impeccably formatted for the Kindle; an introduction, bibliography, and notes that are informative but not overly obtrusive; and a very good translation that will be more accessible than many of the alternatives to readers who are new to the book. The translation is lively, readable, and fun. Its idiomatic English allows readers to appreciate sudden shifts between formal and informal language, as when Alcibiades, dangerously snarky even when smashed out of his mind, greets a more pedantic guest like this: "O Eryximachus, best possible son of the best possible, most temperate father: Hi!"
As for what the Symposium is actually about -- I will leave that to the many excellent and informative reviewers who preceded me. I'm writing under the assumption that you navigated to this page because you've heard of the Symposium elsewhere, and you are trying to decide which edition to buy, whether for school or for your own pleasure. If you have never read the book, I promise you that you are in for a treat. This is one of the most delightful discussions of the nature of love that human beings have ever produced, anywhere. If you've ever been in love and felt something bigger was at stake in this feeling than simple lust, then this is the book for you to read. It will offer you five (at least) different perspectives on *why* so many people believe that love is not just a feeling for another person (though of course it is that) but a way of understanding the world and our place in it. Read the darn thing, if not in this edition than in some other. You won't regret it.
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