Thousands and thousands of books….

 

I cannot even begin to describe how much I love my new Kindle. It’s revolutionizing my reading life…

See, I read a lot (when not in baby transition). I go through 1-3 books per week on average. I read when the boys are napping, and sometimes I read while they’re playing next to me.  I’m also a speed reader, so I can cover ground quickly. Retention of what I read is another story, but reading quality fiction (and some non-fiction) is a significant pleasure in my life.

Enter the Kindle…. My parents bought me the basic model for my birthday because that’s what I asked for. I didn’t want to take notes on it, so I didn’t need a keyboard. I didn’t want to smudge the reading area, so I didn’t want a Kindle Touch. (I’d also heard that turning pages was easier on the regular Kindle, and I have tried both. I think it is.) I thought about getting the Kindle 3G because we don’t have Wifi, but it looked easy to download books via my USB port, so I thought I’d be fine with the one with just Wifi.

I’ve already read two books on it. The pages are especially easy to read in bright sunlight and direct light from a lamp…. even easier than reading a printed page. I got two books that I would’ve had a lot of trouble acquiring through interlibrary loan in seconds… for free… and they’re mine forever. There are thousands more where that came from, and I can store thousands… on my device or in the Amazon Cloud.

I’ve subscribed to two blogs in my feed reader that alert you when a Kindle book edition is becoming free (or really cheap) on Amazon temporarily. One of them is Pixels of Ink. They update free books many times a day, and the posts are very easy to quickly scroll through. The other one is specifically for Christian books, and it’s called Inspired Reads. I don’t read much Christian fiction, but if you do, this is the place for you. I’m mainly on there for the occasional non-fiction book that comes up.

Now, a word of warning. If you don’t have Wifi, and if you don’t have easy access to Wifi, do not buy the Kindle for Wifi. The idea that it would be easy to download to your USB port is a big fat lie, especially if your computer is a few years old. Kindle books are in a certain type of file that my Windows version would not recognize. From what I could tell, it wouldn’t be that easy to convert, and I would have to do it every time I wanted to buy a book.

Fortunately, I have some very kind neighbors with Wifi. They gave me their password. I went to Amazon, “bought” (for $0.00) about 12 books, and then I just walked over to their house and sat on their front porch. My Kindle had saved their password from when I’d connected the first time, and all I had to do was click “Connect to Wifi” and the books I’d bought on Amazon over the last day or two automatically downloaded…. in about 25 seconds.

I’m so excited. Can you tell? =)