Not long ago, I realized my reading habits have changed quite a bit since I moved in 2006. I don’t have much room for books at home, so I’ve always borrowed them from the library. The library used to be around the corner, now it’s much more inconvenient. I still use the library, but often I have to put the book I want on hold, wait a few weeks, and by the time I finally start reading, I’ve forgotten why I got the book in the first place. Finding a story that I read to the end has been iffy too — I seem to loose interest half way through.
I read a lot more on-line now, blogs and magazines and newspapers. Courtesy of Project Gutenberg there are a lot of books in the public domain (those classics we were supposed to read in college and high school) that can be read online. I downloaded a reader for my iphone and tried reading on it, but the pages were just too small.
My husband has listened to me grouse about the lack of books in my life, and surprised me a month ago with a Kindle, the wireless reading device from Amazon. I was indeed surprised, and not really very sure I would like it. I do love electronic gadgets — for years I’ve envied Dick Tracy his magic watch and when the iphone came out I didn’t wait long to get one because I could use the web anytime anywhere and look up any word or settle an argument with my husband in a restaurant using wikipedia. But there’s no lending library for the Kindle — I have to pay about $10 per book, and even though I can usually read the first chapter free, I’m wary of recent experience with not finishing books I start…
First I downloaded some free books from Project Gutenberg. Then I noticed that the New Yorker magazine came in Kindle-format — I take the New Yorker and while I read it right away, I keep issues for weeks, piled up by my bed, thinking that I’ve missed something and I’ll go through them once more before tossing them. So I also got one issue electronically, to see if I could replace my messy pile with a Kindle subscription.
The results: book reading okay, magazine not so much. The Kindle can’t display text and images on the same page, so all the little drawings and photos and illustrations that I use as sign posts in the print magazine are gone, making a familiar format very foreign. The poetry is definitely a lose — the pages are too short and narrow, so the lines wrap and I kept having to flip back and forth between pages to read the poem over.
But for fiction it may be just about right for this in-bed reader, although the jury is still out. I read before going to sleep and often as I doze the book falls off my lap onto the floor, loosing my place. The Kindle falls off my lap too, but the computer keeps my page marked. It’s a lot lighter and easier to hold than most books, and I don’t have to break the spine in the paperback to read the words in the gutter. And I’ve actually finished three books since I got the thing! Granted they were free books from Project Gutenberg which probably doesn’t justify the expense of the Kindle — and I still haven’t found a contemporary title that I want to read and is available in Kindle-format, but I’ll keep looking…
[Why did I pick that New Yorker cover to illustrate this post? It’s a bit hard to read that small, but shows an earth-scape reminiscent of WALL-E — all the electronic markers of our civilized world broken — so the kid is enjoying the thing that still works, a book…]
At last, an understandable review about the Kindle. I’m not opposed to ebooks, but every review I’ve read has been so glowing that I wondered what the downside was. I do like the idea of using it to store New Yorkers, but that is just too sad about the navigation.
So glad for this Kindle report. The part about reading in bed interests me—being lighter. Definitely a plus in one sense but I do love falling asleep in the afternoons during a good read with the weight of the book on my chest. A little quirky, but what a comfy old habit.