I always said I wouldn’t fall for an e-reader. They were the evil newcomers stomping all over my precious books.
I love hardcover books. There is something almost sensual about hearing that slight crack in the spine of a newly purchased treasure. The smell of ink and paper, the beauty of a dust cover, a signature from someone I admire, the weight and textures of the pages all are seductive things to a book lover like me. So I was resistant.
When it looked like e-books were here to stay and were dominating the landscape, I resisted. “No way,” I said. “Those things are an aberration.” The e-book readers became a threat to my beloved books and I shielded them protectively by ignoring the Nook and Kindle. I bought more hardcovers and happily lived in bliss surrounded by my books.
Then I got a smartphone with a Kindle app and my world tilted, shifted and changed on one train ride. I was in Salt Lake City riding the Trax to downtown and found myself swept away, lost in a book as usual only I wasn’t lugging some big book whose dustcover I was worried about damaging in my bag. It was freeing.
And so it began. Guilty downloads to the Kindle app and justifying it by saying it wasn’t an actual Kindle. Yeah, I know. Silly, right?
Then someone gave me a Kindle as a gift and I was lost. Seriously lost. I’ll never give up my hardcover books; never ever but now I can travel; hop on a plane without lugging that extra weight in my carry-on, ride trains and buses, go to meetings without having a book in my bag. I have a whole library at my fingertips in a slim little thing that slips right into my purse. I’m an addict.
The new Kindle Fire was released today and I can see the possibilities. All those cooking magazines that pile up in boxes in my kitchen now in an electronic format, easily accessible on my counter top as I try the recipes that I always mean to, but seldom do because I’d have to dig out the magazine.
I think publishers should make bundles. Buy the hardcover and for a few bucks more get the Kindle, Ipad or Nook edition. I know book lovers like me would gobble that up. I recently bought a hardcover of Sheri S. Tepper’s The Water’s Rising and bought the Kindle edition as well. I paid full price for both and often buy doubles. I WANT the hardcover for my shelves, for reading at home and that tactile thing that makes me happy but I want the electronic version for traveling, riding around town, the gym, or everywhere I don’t want to take my hardcover.
Thoughts?
