Kindle love

I’m a little late to the party here (I like to call it fashionably late), but I just read my first book on my new Kindle. And I have to admit it: I’m in love.

A book geek to the core, I’ve been a staunch defender of the paperback. There’s just something about the smell of books, old and new, that you can’t beat. I treat books as collectibles – find an author I love, and suddenly I have to own their entire anthology / life’s works.

How could a tablet possibly hope to replace my books, my life’s love? I even studied English Literature at uni – I dread to think what some of my more archaic lecturers would say if they could see me now.

Because against nature (and possibly God), I love my Kindle.

My Kindle’s lightweight. It sits in its case so I can hold it in the same way as a book. I forget that it’s an electronic device. Sometimes, I even try to physically turn the page (I’m still getting used to the page turn button). It’s easy to read – much easier than text online – and the content is really consumable. The hard fact is that I read more. And that’s a great thing.

My main gripe is with navigation – it’s not the easiest to flick back a few chapters to do some fact-checking, or flick forward for some spoilers. But I guess that makes the reading experience much more linear, as the author intended.

It’s spectacularly easy to download books from Amazon’s Kindle Store – so easy in fact, that one can get carried away and rack up a bit of a bill. Unless you go for classics or trashies, eBooks aren’t as cheap as I thought they’d be.

It’s not like I’m replacing my books; it’s more like a new addition to the family. Nothing will ever, ever stop me from buying physical books. Now excuse me while I get trigger happy at the Kindle Store.

This post was originally published on Switched On Tech, the PriceRunner blog