I caught fire
Nov 26th, 2009 by Hanna
…literally, of course! Two weeks ago happend to be my 2x. birthday. Well, actually it was only my 25th birthday so I can still tell you…we’ll see how we’ll handle that when it comes to being 3x. Anyway, it was my 25th birthday and I got an awesome birthday present from Marc. Some of you might have seen the hint I dropped in the title. I got an Amazon Kindle!!!
For those of you who are not familiar with that: it’s an E-reader, it uses E Ink electronic paper technology and you can download books wireless over Amazon Whispernet within a minute. The E Ink part allows it to display text on a screen by using electric fields and what you get is just like real print. I have read three Kindle books so far and I really like it. It is easy to read (no problems with the contrast as some people have reported), I can read for hours just like with a regular book and the reader is very light. While reading the printed hardcover version of Ken Follett’s “Die Tore der Welt” (World Without End) a few months ago I really wished I had a Kindle…the book is sooo heavy, it was really a pain holding it. And now I finally have such an E-reader and it fascinates me.
Of course there is this sad feeling - after all I love books, I love their smell, I love to see how many pages I have left, I love to have books standing in my shelf (even though that’s not the philosophy of bookcrossing, I must confess) and I just love to hold a book. On the other hand I read a lot and many books are just not worth being printed on paper (especially American mass market paperback…bad ink, thin paper, and not really worth being called a book). But mostly it’s a matter of space. I collect so many books every year - a lot of them are at home in Aalen, many are stored in boxes at Marc’s aunt and some I have here in SLC. And how do I get them to Germany once I move back, especially now that your only allowed to bring one bag!? In such a case an E-reader seems like the perfect solution - perfect for people who move and travel a lot. And I can’t wait for the flight back to Germany in December…with the slim Kindle in my backpack - and no need to carry several kilograms of books - how sweet.
But I will definitely stay a book person and read “real” books as well….why don’t go both ways and we’ll see what the future brings….