Am I the last person on the boat again? Probably. Nora might be one step behind me, but she lacks the opposable thumbs necessary to operate a touch screen with any sort of grace, so that's probably not a fair expectation. She's not much of a reader anyways.
I don't have a Kindle, but I do have the Kindle app for my iPod. I downloaded it ages ago, intending to read all the free classics available online, but that idea went the way of all my college English books I've yet to Goodwill because I "might want to read them again someday." (Because everyone reads Aristotle on the beach. Duh.) So, like my copies of To the Lighthouse and Crime and Punishment, my sad, empty Kindle app sat on its digital shelf and collected dust.
Until I got a free download of Extremely Load and Incredibly Close and suddenly rediscovered how much I enjoy reading. (Ironically, this joy was stolen from me in college, where quantity is substituted for quality and architecture majors are discouraged from reading any book that isn't 98% black and white photos or written in Italian/French/any other language you cannot read. Am I bitter? Yes.) The floodgates opened and I was young again, the elementary school Book It! Champion, pouring through books faster than I could download them. I actually had to make myself stop downloading one day, otherwise I knew I would never go to sleep! (And yes, I was the Book It! Champion. Just ask Sister V., who had to bear the shame of her precocious sister's name called out on school P.A. system every week. :P)
But outside of making books cheaply accessible (The waiting lists for books at our public library are ridiculously long. Like, if I didn't download The Hunger Games, I'd be waiting till 2020 to read it long.), I really like how the Kindle store completely skips the publishing process and allows authors to get their stories out there without going through the middleman. Granted, this allows a lot of crappy writing into the mainstream, but it also allows some really awesome stuff. My favorite this week? The Wool series by Hugh Howey. I downloaded the first of its five parts on the strength of its reviews - 99 cents isn't going to break anyone's bank, least of all mine - and was instantly hooked. (You can download them all at once and save a couple bucks. If you're into dystopian sci-fi's, I strongly suggest taking that route, unless you want to help the author out a little bit, which is cool too. It's worth it either way.)
I quickly downloaded the next four parts and I read them everywhere - the bathroom, the kitchen, the bus, in bed - all thanks to my Kindle app. I even started reading it to Mr. C last night before we went to bed, which was a mistake. Bedtime stories are supposed to put you to sleep. We ended up reading all of part one and staying up till midnight. And when I looked at the author's website, I found out he's actually releasing Part 6 in a week or so. Egads. Looks like we have lots of late nights reading under the covers in our future!
What about you? Do you have a Kindle or the Kindle app? What's your feeling on the 'real book' vs. 'ebook' debate?
And yes, I am shamelessly breaking my rule about no Apple products in the bedroom. But I'm reading, not Facebook surfing or playing Draw Something. I think that makes it okay.
Yeah...even Dad V had you beat on this one! Thanks for the book suggestions...did you like Extremely Loud? I was wondering if I should read that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't remember the morning announcements declaring you book it queen, I just remember pizza hut personal pizzas, those always inspired me to read.
One more thing, my Draw Something is broken, that's why I haven't played in ages! I'm very sad.
Yes! I enjoyed Extremely Loud. It felt a little strange to read fiction about 9/11 - it doesn't seem long ago enough yet or something - but it was a good book. :)
ReplyDeleteI love my kindle. I mean, I still prefer the romance of an actual book (I get all nostalgic and start smelling the books in bookstores, okay?) but you can't beat it for portability. It was nice, when I went on my vacation, to not have to agonize over *which* book I would bring and if I needed one or two, or three. It's also really nice when you're reading something really large. It's still the same little kindle in your bag instead of a 1000 page epic. And yeah, all the classics are free and you can check out ebooks from a lot of libraries as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, and you can search in a book and you can save and search highlighted portions. That's a very nice feature if you're looking for a particular quote or passage. Also, there's a built-in dictionary and the eink screen is WAY better for you eyes than staring at a computer screen (or an ipod, yikes!)