Kindles and Tablets and Phones, Oh My!
As most of you know, I am a pretty deep and wide reader. I will read anything that doesn’t run away fast enough. My apartment has more books than bookshelves, even with the four additional bookshelves I inherited when one of my oldest friends moved. Further, my roommate is a retired librarian. If there is a flat surface in our house other than the kitchen counter and table that is not covered with books, you can be sure it soon will be. I love to crack open a good book, and I always will.
That said, I am a great fan of e-books and e-readers. I wasn’t always, I admit, but I have come around. E-readers and e-reading apps make life easy. My Kindle has, as of this morning, 3,098 e-books on it. Imagine the delight of carrying that much reading material with me, especially since having several major surgeries, both of which have required me to drastically cut down the amount of stuff I can lug around on any given day. Further, so long as I remember to bring a charging cable with me, the devices can be used to make long hospital stays much more endurable.
Even better, I can borrow e-books from both the Brooklyn and New York Public Libraries. This means that new books are just a few clicks away. I can even send things like knitting patterns to my Kindle or other e-readers, so I am lugging less paper.
Also, one advantage of e-readers and apps is that I can adjust the size of the print to whatever I can comfortably read. Many e-readers and apps also allow you to adjust the brightness and background color to something that your eyes find comfortable. I also like that I can easily make notes, place bookmarks so that I can pick up from the same spot in a book on my Kindle, my tablet, or even my smartphone. I can also choose to have a different book open on each device or app. Since I tend to read several books at a time, this is one of the biggest advantages as far as I’m concerned.
I have found only one downside to using e-readers and apps: I now tend to acquire books at an even faster rate than I did before. The thing is that people, both online and off, keep recommending books and series of books to me. And there are always newsletters and websites to tell me about all the books I might want to read Real Soon Now. I have actually maxed out my Amazon store card on occasion because of this. It is far too easy, when buying a book for my e-reader, to just buy the whole series – just a few clicks and they are on my device. Still, this does have the upside of being able to have all of a series with me, just in case I need to look back to find something.
So, while books will always hold the premier place in my heart, e-readers and apps will tie for a close second. If you have not used an e-reader, I suggest that you download one of the many e-readers available to either a tablet or smartphone, and give it a try. You may discover that you enjoy the flexibility an e-reader or e-reading app.
I’d love to hear from y’all as to whether you like or hate e-reading devices and apps, so please feel free to comment below!
Not Just Another Grouchy Grammarian 