As I said, he went overboard:
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| Unbelievably, this isn't even all of it. |
And there are still others I have yet to open and /or use. Among the latter (until last week, at least) was the Kindle Fire. I have to admit: I was skeptical. I enjoy the written word. On paper. I mourn the loss of the newspaper as we migrate to electronic news. The same holds true for books and magazines. While I am also a self-described tree lover (and subscribe to the old-school “save a tree” sentiment), there is just something special about the feel of a book in your hands, the spine across your fingers, the smell of the paper (especially in older books) that draws me in.
The kindle offers me none of these.
So when Tommy bought me the Kindle for Christmas (unsolicited), I was interested but not excited. In fact, my excitement was so scarce that it took me a full ten weeks to pull the Kindle out and begin to learn it. For the first week, I played on the web. A bit. Certainly nothing extreme or exciting. It is faster than my laptop but loses its signal far more often (I’m certain the poor connectivity is due to my less-than-desirable internet provider more than the Kindle, laptop, iPhone or iPod as we have the same problem with all our devices). I navigated through its most basic of capabilities and my interest grew, though only mildly.
Prior to my owning a Kindle, I developed a preconceived notion of the price of an eBook. I had no basis for this number: it was purely arbitrary. After all, it’s an eBook; there is no production cost, no material cost. So the price point I set in my head (again, purely arbitrary) was $3.99. You can imagine my surprise to learn that many of the eBooks are, in fact, more expensive than their hard-copy counterpart. $9.99 for the Kindle edition of Mississippi Sissy (one of my favorite books) while the paperback is $5.99 new! This further led to my discouragement and I’ve yet to pay for a Kindle book, downloading only the Amazon freebies, which are generally books that I will, in all honesty, probably never read. I’ve yet to begin even one of those freebies.
And then there was last night.
After some “virtual” complaining, my wonderful friend Lisa offered up her services. She has an extensive Kindle book collection, including several books I’d asked about specifically. We spent no more than an hour setting the Kindle up for email sharing, retrieving books from her account and getting my settings in order.
So last night before bed I decided to move into this century and give the Kindle a fair shot at making an impression.
And (oh boy) did it!
I love this thing. Absolutely. Love. It. While I’m still a bit saddened that the tangible qualities of the hard-copy are lost, I can still make notes, highlight, bookmark. I can look up a word’s definition while I’m reading. I can change my background, the text and background colors, even the margins. I can see how much progress I’ve made, skip to a specific chapter, even search for words in the text (that would’ve been useful in college!).
Simon & Schuster can’t touch that!
I’m literally one day in, and I’m in awe. I had no clue that ceasing to fumble through pages or bookmark your spot could make such a difference. I haven’t even read my handbook to determine what other tricks I’m missing, but I am definitely looking forward to it.
And, as I am fortunate in that I have MANY a “Lit geek” friend, I’m sure I will never run out of either great book suggestions or free downloads of those books.
I look forward to more of these instances wherein my natural pessimism is defeated by pleasant surprises. Sometimes being wrong isn’t so bad, after all.
Happy reading, y'all!
