10 Reasons I Kept My Old-Ass Nook E-Reader
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Like the increasing few, I have a Nook. No, not one of those new-fangled ones with the jazzy whatnots and glow-in-the-dark information insertion portholes. I mean a first-gen, vanilla Nook that, on a good day, might get you 10 bucks and a dirty look at a pawn shop.
Nook, as in the the company, is due to split off from Barnes & Noble any minute now. It’s given up on producing new e-readers, instead partnering with Samsung to stick its name on a tablet and presumably hoping people with other mobile devices have never heard of the free Nook app.
In other words, things aren’t looking up for what used to be a legitimate competitor to Amazon’s Kindle Kingdom. With prices of new, basic Kindle e-readers selling for less than a tank of gas, it’s a wonder I haven’t made the switch.
Actually, no it’s not. Here are 10 quick reasons why I kept this its-best-chance-is-to-be-nostalgic-in-five-years e-reader.
1 - It still works. There’s nothing mechanically wrong with it. There isn’t a part of the user experience that isn’t as solid as the day it came out of the box.
2 - It’s sturdy. Some would say clunky, but I like something that can pull double duty as a weapon against small- to medium-sized rodents. I have my reasons.
3 - I have a non-infuriating case for it. Do you know how long it took me to find a gal-damn case that didn’t look like Hello Kitty threw up on it? Long enough that I gave up on humanity being able to produce anything without a cutesy, ironic wink. I don’t need to pretend I’m carrying luggage on an aeroplane ride from the Belgian Congo to the World’s Fair. I need to keep this e-reader alive long enough to get through a book. Maybe the boring, practical cover is why it still works. Fuckin’ hipsters ruin everything.
4 - (Insert holier-than-thou rant about consumerism here)
5 - I grew to like the feel of the e-reader in my hand. I feel the same way about this as I do remote controls for the TV, and I upgrade both about as often.
6 - It’s not the e-reader that counts, it’s the story. If I can read the story just fine, who gives a damn about the platform? Unless what’s really going on is the experience of reading matters as much to you as the story itself. Well, maybe, but then again, really? Was there something you missed out on in that story that the next $200+ iteration of the Kindle will reveal? Or are you spending more time on the device than in the story?
7 - File converters. I’m a pretty big deal, you guys, so I get native files from authors on the house. It doesn’t matter what format they come to me as, I can convert them for the Nook. Those online file converters are free. The newest Kindle is $289 (that’s without “special offers” spamming you on the device but with 3G, in case you don’t live near this thing called the Internet). You do the math.
8 - Amazon pissed me off for a reason I forget. But I'll be damned if I'm going to forget about whatever that thing is that I forgot. It wasn't so bad that I don't sell all my e-books for the Kindle, though. It's important to have principles.
9 - It still works. Yes, even after writing eight more points in this list, it still works. And it probably will continue to do so.
10 - Don’t be a dick about e-readers. Be a dick about the stories you like. Then hold that over the heads of people at parties. You’re sure to be the most talked about gent or dame of the evening. After you leave.
I don’t care how you want to read e-books, but you need to check out 8 Funny Detective Stories with Maynard Soloman, Gal-Damn Detective. It’ll change a life. As in mine. As in I take your money. And I go to Taco Bell to use the free Wi-Fi, read an e-book, take six hours to eat a $1.19 burrito and more or less loiter until the manager asks me to leave. The End.
