I love all kinds of books: mysteries, science fiction, novels, non-fiction, poetry, true crime, history, travel, cookbooks, sports stories, animal stories, and will even pick up a romance novel from time to time. I've read most, if not all of the classics, either because I had to, but mostly because I wanted to. When I was preparing for my move to Florida, and was thinning out my books, I had 5 copies of "The Picture of Dorian Gray", I weaned it down to 1. I have a set of the complete works of Shakespeare, and one of my favorite graduation gifts was "Bartlett's Famous Quotations."
I now find myself in a dilemma though. I am a fan of Amazon.com. I have bought many books, toys, electronic gadgets and even a Weber grill off of the site. As you may know, Amazon has a device called "Kindle" which is a little handheld device about the size of a small paperback on which you can download books, newspapers from all over the country and the world, and magazines. It downloads the book wirelessly, and all "bestsellers" are only $9.99. The Kindle holds 1,500 books, although if you get the newest model the "DX", you can have 3,500 books in something the size of a magazine. Considering most of my 3,000 pounds of books have been in boxes for the past 4 years, I have been contemplating purchasing a Kindle.
But here are some of my issues. One...the Kindle is expensive. The basic model is $299 and the "DX" is $489. That's a lot of money that I could spend on books, because this basic price only buys the "reader." I'd still have to pay for books and I'm probably not going to be on Oprah's "Favorite Things" Show where she would give one away. Why would I pay $10 to buy books I already have, just to save some space, knowing I will probably not get rid of the physical copy of the book? Another issue is that I stare at a computer screen, two, actually, all day at work and spend time on the computer at home, so why would I want to read books off of what is basically another computer screen? Plus, call me old-fashioned, but I love the smell of a book, I like cracking open the spine, I like being able to write notes in the margin or highlight a passage if I need to, and I don't believe you can do that on Kindle. I also believe in bookstores. When I was growing up there was a small bookstore in my small town and the two ladies that owned that store became lifelong friends. They would also order you any book you needed and you would have it in a couple of days. Now, we're left with Barnes & Noble and a few Borders, which are more cafe's/music/movie/stationery stores than the bookstores I grew up with. If I get a Kindle, I will be helping to eradicate the bookstore all together and I don't believe I want to do that. But I'm sort of a tech geek as well, and to be able to have one of the first "digital" readers would be kinda neat. I've heard rave reviews of Kindle, but I've also seen a lot of them for sale on eBay. I also think I would rather get a paper cut than to go blind while reading a computer screen. Yes, the Kindle would be great for travel, but since I haven't travelled very far lately, that's not a reason, plus when I went on the few cruises I went on, I enjoyed taking a book and then leaving it at the ship's library for someone else to enjoy. I also know I would fill up my Kindle and would feel really badly about hitting the "delete" button rather than donating the book to a retirement home, or for needy kids or a local literacy program.
So I'm going to keep pondering on this. I can always put a Kindle on my Christmas wish list.
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