I bought a Kindle about a year ago. And honestly I used it for about a week, then the novelty wore off and it became of piece of the shifting landscape of my apartment. And there is stayed in a stack of stuff for about year.
In February, I went on a ski trip in Italy and I only packed one book with me for the trip, Game Change. I often don’t have the luxury of laying around and reading for pleasure when I am not on vacation so I thought one book would be enough. But between the compelling narrative of the Game Change and my jet lag in Italy, I had hours to do nothing but read and wait until everyone else wake up. Needless to say, I finished Game Change in three days, much to my surprise and disappointment.
I was disappointed because I didn’t pack another book and I was staying in a small ski village with one book store. The English language section of the store was so bad I couldn’t find one book worth reading. It was an Italian book store after all. I laid in bed wishing I had packed my stupid Kindle.
A few weeks later my dad and I went on a three week tour of Europe. Before I left, I loaded up three books on my Kindle. And I spent a lot of time laying in bed reading with jet lag again. I read on plane and trains and airports and train stations. My little Kindle always had a good story to share. And I really felt like I had discovered the beauty of owning a Kindle, but my Kindle had one more trick up its sleeve.
When I came home, I was half way through a book. So I downloaded the book into my Kindle iPhone app and read it my phone on the subway. Then one night I picked up my Kindle to read some more of the book and the Kindle synced to the page I was on in my iPhone. And there I fell in love with my Kindle.
For me, the beauty of the Kindle isn’t about it’s storage capability or the portability of the device itself, the true beauty is having a book freed from it’s physical limits. I can read the same book on either device at the same time. And the book will always open to the place where I stopped reading, regardless of which device I used the last time.
Real books are better than eBooks for a lot of reasons; but I found one good reason to celebrate eBooks.