In Praise of Kindles
Kindles are the bee's knees. The cat's pyjamas. The dog's bollocks (sorry, why is that considered positive again?) There are few things in life that give me a bigger buzz than curling up with a brand new ebook, scrolling and clicking on my early model Kindle. (It must be coming up for six years old now).
This wasn't always the case. While not a technophobe exactly, I eyed them with suspicion - pretty much how Caxton's contemporaries must've reacted to his boast his product was "hot off the press." How could this souped up calculator* replace the experience of reading a print book? The crispness of the pages, the smell of the ink, the sensation of holding one in your hand or hugging it to your chest - I'd felt a kinship with books for as long as I could remember.
Like most of my possessions, it was secondhand. My other half had moved onto the latest model, so - having heard many a diatribe against them - tentatively gave me her cast off. I reasoned that if I hated it I could always donate it to EBay.
Segue to a falling in love montage. I took my new companion everywhere - on my break, with a cake, on a train, out in Spain. I acquainted myself with its wonderful parts. It could browse the Net (sadly discontinued). It could recite your book a la Professor Hawking. Best of all, you had the world's largest bookstore at your finger tips, the ebooks affordably priced! What's not to like?
Perhaps I'm a traitor to my former bibliophile self, but nowadays I prefer to read on my Kindle. Yes, it's gone eccentric in its dotage. It jams, goes blank, leaves me to stare at portraits of Famous Authors (Zombie Emily Dickinson is terrifying). The formatting in the cheaper classics leaves a lot to be desired. I accept that one day I'll have to give it a Viking funeral. But think of the pluses!
If you're on your Kindle, nobody knows what you're reading, hence the boom in erotica and LGBT titles. You won't get people spoiling the ending or using it as a pretext to chat you up. (Wannabe Romeos, don't interrupt a girl's reading time unless you want the book inserted in you). When you go on holiday, you don't have to lug a library around but have your whole collection to choose from. You have access to fantastic indie books you'd never hear of otherwise.
You can change the font size, meaning that squinting at tiny old print or dropping half a ton of book on your nose is a thing of the past. If a book isn't to your liking, you can exile it to your Archives rather than fob it off on charity shops or assorted relatives. Above all, if you borrow a Kindle book it won't be dog eared, covered in dubious stains or littered with distracting margin notes ('OMG, this happened to me!' doodled over Wuthering Heights). You can rest easily knowing that if there's gubbins on the cover or a crack in the screen, it's your own personalised grot.
Prophets of doom like to scaremonger and say it's a death knell for the traditional book. I don't see why they can't co-exist, and continue to do so for years to come.
*I don't have anything against calculators, by the way. I lose the ability to count once I've run out of fingers and toes.
This wasn't always the case. While not a technophobe exactly, I eyed them with suspicion - pretty much how Caxton's contemporaries must've reacted to his boast his product was "hot off the press." How could this souped up calculator* replace the experience of reading a print book? The crispness of the pages, the smell of the ink, the sensation of holding one in your hand or hugging it to your chest - I'd felt a kinship with books for as long as I could remember.
Like most of my possessions, it was secondhand. My other half had moved onto the latest model, so - having heard many a diatribe against them - tentatively gave me her cast off. I reasoned that if I hated it I could always donate it to EBay.
Segue to a falling in love montage. I took my new companion everywhere - on my break, with a cake, on a train, out in Spain. I acquainted myself with its wonderful parts. It could browse the Net (sadly discontinued). It could recite your book a la Professor Hawking. Best of all, you had the world's largest bookstore at your finger tips, the ebooks affordably priced! What's not to like?
Perhaps I'm a traitor to my former bibliophile self, but nowadays I prefer to read on my Kindle. Yes, it's gone eccentric in its dotage. It jams, goes blank, leaves me to stare at portraits of Famous Authors (Zombie Emily Dickinson is terrifying). The formatting in the cheaper classics leaves a lot to be desired. I accept that one day I'll have to give it a Viking funeral. But think of the pluses!
If you're on your Kindle, nobody knows what you're reading, hence the boom in erotica and LGBT titles. You won't get people spoiling the ending or using it as a pretext to chat you up. (Wannabe Romeos, don't interrupt a girl's reading time unless you want the book inserted in you). When you go on holiday, you don't have to lug a library around but have your whole collection to choose from. You have access to fantastic indie books you'd never hear of otherwise.
You can change the font size, meaning that squinting at tiny old print or dropping half a ton of book on your nose is a thing of the past. If a book isn't to your liking, you can exile it to your Archives rather than fob it off on charity shops or assorted relatives. Above all, if you borrow a Kindle book it won't be dog eared, covered in dubious stains or littered with distracting margin notes ('OMG, this happened to me!' doodled over Wuthering Heights). You can rest easily knowing that if there's gubbins on the cover or a crack in the screen, it's your own personalised grot.
Prophets of doom like to scaremonger and say it's a death knell for the traditional book. I don't see why they can't co-exist, and continue to do so for years to come.
*I don't have anything against calculators, by the way. I lose the ability to count once I've run out of fingers and toes.
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