Anyone who knows me knows that I am an avid reader. I majored in English because I love to read. I want to be a writer because I love to read. Nothing makes me happier than sitting down and losing myself in a novel.
So when e-readers started to gain in popularity with Amazon's Kindle and Sony's E-reader, I was incredibly resistant. How could people replace the tactile sensation of reading with a piece of plastic? What about trying to find your favorite passage in a book based on your recollections of where you were reading? How about my shelves and shelves of books that I've read? If I go digital, I won't have the satisfaction of seeing that.
These reasons, as well as the old person in me who hates change, resulted in my complete dismissal of e-readers as a revolutionary device. I wasn't interested, so I couldn't care less about it. Until I went to Seattle last year.
While visiting my aunt, we were wandering around town window shopping when she suggested we go into a local bookstore. As I browsed the shelves, I saw Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, which I had never read. A big fan of his work, I decided to buy the 900 page tome despite the fact that I was travelling for the next week and it was a massive brick of a book. For the next seven days, it weighed down my bag as I walked around Seattle, but I kept carrying it in case I became bored and wanted to read something.
The thing that convinced me completely was actually holding a Kindle in my hands and seeing how it worked. Since it's only sold online, I never had a chance to see what the Kindle was really like; but a friend of mine owned one and was entirely satisfied with it. Once I saw how easy it is to use, how quickly you can download books, and how compact and convenient it is, I immediately decided to get one of my own.
My Kindle has actually made reading much easier for me. Since I live in the Richmond of San Francisco, there really aren't any bookstores nearby, so buying a new book is difficult. On top of which, I don't have room for more books; my bookshelf is barely large enough for me to keep my favorite volumes on hand (the rest are in storage in Lodi). Now, I can download a new book in seconds from anywhere for as low as $5 sometimes (though the average seems to be $10 right now since I read a lot of recently released material as well). I'll still buy physical copies of books that I'm absolutely in love with, but the Kindle allows for me to download my favorite authors' new work the second it's available. Plus, I can highlight and take notes of passages that I like without the stigma of vandalizing my book; and the Kindle keeps all of these in once easy-to-access file.
It does have downsides, of course. I can't share my library with anyone else, you can't borrow e-books from libraries because of Amazon's stance on DRM or something, and some of the newly released books are as much as $15, which I think is way too much for a digital version since print versions of new books are sold for as little as $20 despite a list price of $40.
Even with those downsides, I absolutely love my Kindle. It's changed the way I read, the way I take in information, and since I have a ton of Amazon credit from various online surveys that I participate in, I have the funds to buy as many books as I want for a while. Anyone else have any thoughts on the e-reader revolution? Feel free to comment!
