So I find it ironic that technology has brought me full circle back to reading books. Well, technically electronic books. For I now have a Kindle.
Actually the Kindle
She liked it, she said, but it was the gift she had debated getting me for Christmas. She told me she'd been researching them for months and decided at the last minute not to get one for me. "But you love to read," I protested.
"I love to read 'books'," she explained. "I like to turn real pages and hold a real book in my hands. You on the other hand love technology." She went on to remind me that I had been talking for years about how books would eventually disappear to be replaced by their electronic and much more efficient counterparts.
She was right. I agreed to "share" the gift. Which translates that I essentially am the only one who will use it. Putting aside my guilt, it has turned out to be pretty darned cool. I have abandoned my Blackberry
I had forgotten how cool it is to escape into a good book. And for those purists out there who think you need printed page in front of you to actually be "reading" I'll remind you that it is the content that makes a book great, not the cover (though I have a nice leather cover for the Kindle
I predict that printed books will go the way of vinyl records. Think of all the trees that will be saved. Think of all of the untapped talent of writers who can be published for pennies instead of depending upon the bottom line of a traditional publisher who won't front the printing cost on an unproven commodity.
Libraries can become become virtual clearing houses for electronic books that can instantly be transmitted to multiple book readers versus doled out in archaic hard copies that can be mutilated, lost or stolen. Text books can now be distributed to all children and instantly updated so that knowledge isn't reserved for only those who can afford it.
My Kindle has obviously ignited a visionary flame in me. Now they only have to come out with a color version and then one that plays a musical soundtrack as you read. Then maybe "scents"-er-round so you smell what the characters are smelling.
Okay maybe not the smell thing. But color would be nice.
Anyway, thank you to my lovely and selfless wife for being gracious and turning my gift to her into a return to reading for me.
4 comments:
Do you read your kindle in the bathroom?
Not as long as there is a People Magazine available...wait, that may be available for Kindle, too.
I got a kindle for my birthday this last summer. I love the ability to have 20, 30 and more books at my finger tips while having to carry only the Kindle--which is the size, as you know, of just one book. My gripes are that I need to have the font so large that I can only display a couple of paragraphs at a time, that there is no way to light the screen internally for reading in the dark, and no way to easily "page through" a book to locate random pages quickly. These a pretty minor gripes though. Overall I love it.
I kind of wish there was a backlight for reading in a dark room, too. My bifocals allow me to read a fairly small font so the number of paragraphs on the page isn't a problem for me. And since I generally only read fiction, skimming through pages looking for stuff isn't something I normally do in a book. I like that the Kindle always knows where I was in the book. I was forever losing bookmarks and my days working in a library made me resist folding down the corners of pages. I am basically sold on electronic reading and only hope it doesn't become obsolete in a couple of years.
Post a Comment