Re-Kindled

I keep meaning to mention — remember how I said I bought a bunch of books for my Kindle just before I had my surgery, so I would have enough to read while I was laid up in bed for a couple weeks while I was recovering? Well, on day one, I apparently managed to crack the screen and render it unusable. Kind of like that Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough at Last."

It was all right. Turns out I mostly had enough brain-power during that time to watch movies on Netflix and faff about on the Internets, anyway. But still, I missed my Kindle — more than I thought I would, even. I was a little surprised at how quickly it had become indispensable to me.

I shouldn't have been that surprised. In a lot of ways, the e-readers are exactly what I'd been wishing for ever since I was little. There are so many books that I haven't finished, or never even tried to start, because they were literally too big — too unwieldy to lug around with me, too tiring and awkward to hold on to when I was actually reading them.

A tiny little pocket-sized flatscreen device that could contain a library's worth of books — hell, I've wanted that ever since I read about the titular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And now that I actually owned one, I'd been tearing through books faster and more voraciously than I had in years. No wonder I was so heartbroken the moment I broke it.

Even though it was still under warranty, I was a little worried that Amazon wouldn't be willing to replace it — after all, if I'd managed to break it somehow, surely that was my own damn fault? But all it took was one phone call, and less than five minutes later, they'd put an order into the system to ship me a replacement, and it reached me the next business day. I'm very impressed and happy with their customer service.

(Oh, and this time, I ordered a cover case for it. No use tempting fate.)