Kindle For Christmas

For my birthday and Christmas, my darling husband bought me an Amazon Kindle! I've been wanting one for more than a year, so he didn't need a whole lot of guidance on my wish list. This is a very cool gizmo, but the point is not to do twenty million things like an iPhone - it won't be as fun if you're not a serious reader; it's really for reading, and that's it.

So here's my review:

Cons:

• It's not a paper book, which is a bummer because readers tend to have a thing for the paper book experience. And I flip back a lot, so I miss that.
• It's pretty expensive.
• It encourages impulse buying. A lot.
• If you read in the tub, you might want to put it in a ziplock.

Pros:

• If you buy books, it will pay for itself over time because the books are much cheaper in digital form. A few days ago I bought Bullfinch's Mythology (500 pages) for a dollar.
• No more waiting in line at Barnes & Noble, or waiting for Amazon to ship. Books download in 60 seconds. (See "impulse buying," above.)
• If you use the library - no more trips to the library! And no more waiting in line for a book.
• It's lighter and smaller than a book. And definitely easier if you're reading several things at once, it holds 200 books without a memory card.
• It's environmental - no paper required.
• The screen is gorgeous, it doesn't glow, it's flat like paper.
• The font size is adjustable, and I do find that large print comes in handy.
• You can get newspapers too. I'm going to do a free trial of the Sunday paper for Dave, and see if I can convince him to go paperless too.