Kindle pros and cons

Quite a lot of people contact me to say they don’t own (or don’t even want to own) a Kindle, or similar.

Mostly this is because they love the sensory experience of real books, and the pride and pleasure of being surrounded by their personal collection.

I’m in accord.

Plus, you don’t have to switch off real books for take-off and landing.

My daytime reading is always a printed book.

However, there are some pros of the Kindle.

As an author, you can reach anyone, pretty much anywhere in the world, instantly. The breaking of the stranglehold held by publishers has struck a great blow for freedom and enterprise.

More prosaically, you can read in the dark without disturbing your partner, and in the bath without fear of falling asleep.

And, finally (though this is not intended to be an exhaustive list), there is the built-in dictionary.

Touch a word and up comes the meaning.

I’m reading Sherlock Holmes at the moment. Not only was Conan Doyle writing in the idiom of his time, but also he clearly possessed a vocabulary the size of a planet. Every few pages a word comes up that I just don’t know.

Last night it was barouche: “a four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage with a collapsible hood over the rear half, a seat in front for the driver, and seats facing each other for the passengers”.

Fact and fiction in one fell swoop!