What to buy me for Christmas: A new Kindle
Leave a commentSeptember 6, 2012 by jooshanoosh
Note: This is the original Kindle, not the shiny new ones. |
Amazon announced their new Kindle’s today and they are gorgeous. I have loved the Kindle since the first one launched in 2007 when they were weird and big and boxy and cost like $500. I got my first Kindle a year or so later when they were slightly more affordable (but still WAY overpriced) because my wife is generous and lovely and kind. Later, I upgraded to a newer model (because of course I did) and she took my old one. She didn’t think that she would use it much. She was a book lover. But she took to that Kindle like Walter White took to meth cooking. I think she reads about 1 book per day on her kindle and uses it a lot more that I ever do.
I wrote this post awhile back for Modern Mormon Men, where I used to be a contributor. I think it still applies. It is called (e)Book?
It’s a Book by Lane Smith |
It makes me happy when children’s books are smart and funny. It makes me even happier when they are topical and well written. (If I have to read another one of those Hot Wheels books again when on every page the cars are on a different continent, I am going to tear my remaining hair out.) It’s a Book by Lane Smith is fantastic in that regard. Gorilla (or whatever he is) is reading a book, and his friend Jackass (which is kind of a funny name to have in a children’s book) can’t seem to get his head around it. He keeps asking questions like “How does it scroll down? Does it need a password? Does it tweet?” to which Gorilla simply replies “No. It’s a book.”
I am a great lover of books. My wife and I were both English majors, so we own plenty of books. Just last week we were measuring the home office to see if we could fit another bookshelf in there. We have bookshelves in our living room, in the kid’s bedroom, in the upstairs hallway. The china hutch in the dining room holds our collection of cookbooks and food literature. The floor next to my nightstand is stacked with an ever growing and expanding collection of books I want to read. I meticulously catalogue it all on Goodreads. Our house is overflowing with books.
But I am also a great lover of technology. I got a Kindle a couple of years ago (not this new one, mind you. I covet this new one.) and have loved it. A lot of my book-loving friends pooh-poohed it when I got it and said things like “Oh, I would never want to read a book on a screen.” or “I just love new books! I love the smell and the feel and everything.” Some even asked me “Are you just not going to read actual books anymore?” I do still read a lot of actual books. Last year I read about seven books on the Kindle and about 26 actual paper books.