As I see it I today, the ability to read awoke in me
some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. – Malcolm X
I don't usually salivate over gadgets. I refuse to use iPads and iPhones or change my old, outdated, probably phased-out Nokia cellphone because I don't feel comfortable using the touch screen technology. But one gadget got me giddy with g'delicious excitement because it brings back a past love hurtling into the present -- the love of reading.
When my friend Ginger in Singapore whipped out the little gray matter from her bag, I was hooked. I started googling about it, kept going to Amazon comparing models and plotting how I can get one. I asked my stepdad if he had one he wasn't using but what he had was the first model which was too big and heavy. I wanted one handy like Ginger's. I ended up asking my generous aunt from New York who was only too happy to order one for me plus put in the fourteen books I craved for.
When I was single, buying books was the regular reward but after getting married and having a son, I had to exercise greater fiscal responsibility so buying books for personal consumption became a rare treat. Money was better spent buying books for Joshua. However, with the Kindle, you save on cost, space, weight plus you have the luxury of a multitude of choices at your fingertips whenever the reading bug or waiting hassle hits you. There are different genres to choose from depending on your mood - fiction, poetry, scientific, spiritual, business, psychology as you can fill it up with as wide a range of interests as you desire.
Holding the Kindle in my palm takes me to the future of reading. I never thought I'd feel this way about an electronic device because I always had a strong bias towards the physical book you can smell and touch, the well-designed cover you lust for, overflowing shelves and heavenly bookstores that satisfy a primal need, but the allure of Kindle is too much and it provides a surprisingly easier range of reading positions, plus I adore the e-ink. It mimics the sensation of reading words on paper without the glare of a typical computer's back light which strains the eye. Sales of kindle books have outstripped those of paperbacks and hardbounds in Amazon.
I've been sinfully over-searching e-books in Amazon, abusing the kindness of my Dad since he lets me use his credit card to purchase online. I keep emailing him this would be my last order but then the marketing arm of Amazon is just too clever at second-guessing my psyche, emailing me about bargains like a $1.99 book related to the one I had just finished reading on the Kindle. I don't know if a human being or a machine is figuring out my reading preferences but it sure is mighty powerful. I haven't even begun to discover the joys of free e-books because I haven't yet found those that I want but I've been diligently searching websites. There's plenty of time for that although the whole love affair with books takes away hours from sleep -- just like the good old days.
(The first photo is of my Kindle. The others are courtesy of Book Riot.)
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