2/22/12

Smiles and Sadnesses

First, to all who took the time to read and comment on my guest post yesterday, I am beyond honored. Thank you. :) *blushes*

Okay, let's talk about the Kindle Touch.
  • Smiles: Walking and reading {at the same time} just got like twenty times easier.
  • Smiles: The accessibility means that I read twice as fast.
  • Sadness: I read an entire book in one day, finished, and felt like I was cheating when I starred it on GoodReads. After all, I didn't feel that I'd really read it. I never held it. I never saw the cover in anything other than a jpg. I don't know how big it is.
  • Sadness: I just finished Patrick Ness' A Monster Calls as a real book. The wonder and creeptastic-ness of that book would never translate over to e-book. Never. There's something about the peculiar size of the book, the unusual thickness of the pages...and the illustrations. The illustrations are legit, and they would never be the same on a Kindle. Never.
    • Thought: It is my guess that more and more future books will be made uniquely, with illustrations or other oddities, like A Monster Calls. There is still demand for real books if they offer something that can't be replicated on a e-reader. {See also: Why We Broke Up}
  • Smiles: FREE CLASSICS! I have many reasons for never having read Melville and Tolstoy and more than one Austen. One is that they take so darn long for me to get through, I usually need them longer than the library will grant. The other reason is that they're so big that I don't want to carry them with me everywhere {which contributes to my delay in finishing}. Both these problems are solved with the Kindle...and a ridiculous amount of these classics are free!
    • Also, when I'm three pages into a long novel in three days, I can't look at the inches of pages in my hands and despair. {Yes, Kindle gives me a "percentage completed" statistic at the bottom of the screen, but it doesn't work the same in my head.} Thus, I'm more apt to actually finish.
  • Smiles: Elsie Dinsmore. When I was in high school, I got many of the Elsie Dinsmore books as presents, but that era of gift-giving ended, and I was left with a gap of three books in my series, not to mention a lack of the series' continuation. But guess what--Elsie is free on Amazon Kindle. Heck yes.
  • Smiles: Games. I had no idea that there were games, but my brother did. He got a cool line-drawing-connect-the-dots one for free, which is saving trees...and boredom.
  • Sadness: Let's just say that no matter how heavy it is in your backpack, the batteries will never run out on your book. Ever.
  • Smiles: The Bible! I go to a lot of church-esque events, which means carrying my Bible with me everywhere. Let me inform you that Bibles are heavy. Pocket Bibles are lighter, but the print is like a size 6. I got the KJV Bible on my Kindle for $1.69, and I'm very happy with it and its epic search functions. {Still waiting for it to index, though. Need to check into that.}
  • Sadness: I can drop a book gently on the floor if my hands are full. Not so with a Kindle. I can shove a book into my backpack and allow it to get crushed under other baggage. Not so a Kindle. {If anyone has any comments or advice on Kindle cases, I am more than eager to hear what you've got to say. I'm in the research phase right now.}
  • Smiles: It plays music, like a little iPod. Or a big iPod, rather. But since I do not have an iPod, and my phone requires an easy-to-misplace convertor cord, this is heaven.
  • Smiles: Checking out e-books from my library right now. No waiting. {If I bought books, I'm sure I would be high on this instantaneousness also.} I want that book, and I want to read it now. Okay! Here it is!
I'm sure there's more, but that's a lot. My thoughts on the Kindle Touch. Summary: I love it.

Do you have an e-reader? What do you like? What do you miss? 

2 comments:

Shelley Sly said...

Awesome! I don't have an e-reader, but I have a Kindle app on my Droid phone, so I read e-books on there. The screen is really small, so I only read on there if I have to (like if it's a blog friend's e-book or something). I hope to get a Kindle one day, though. Enjoy yours! :D

Traci Kenworth said...

Don't have a Kindle but I'd love one. I think, however, I'd miss a book in my hands, so I'm torn.