My posts may be few and far between at the moment, but I am attempting to read a novel for the first time since my little girl was born. I have wanted to read The Afflicted Girls by Suzy Witten for some time and I have finally broken down and purchased a Kindle and the e-book; now I can sneak in a few pages at night. I have finally given it a chance–here’s what I wrote about it during my first week of ownership…

“I refused to go near this nefarious device until last month. Now, I am eating my words, just a little bit (and eating a lot of humble pie!). I actually like it. I don’t believe it will ever take the place of paper books because it is, above all, a device, and as handy as it can be, it does not offer the same tactile pleasure (nor can your favorite author sign their electrons…yet) as paper. It smells like electronics, a plus if you are of the fresh-off-the-press-gadget-sniffing crowd (you know, people who love new car smell!), but personally, I prefer the real thing. The Kindle is convenient, definitely. I can see taking this on the plane or a long car ride, the Metro or a long Amtrak trip, and being able to catch up on new books. I definitely love it when my baby is sleeping on my lap or late at night when I can’t sleep. Something that surprised me about the Kindle (and other e-reading devices) is that I suspect it may be helping increase the reading rate in our country–consider this: most of the free e-books are “classics” whose copyright has expired. People love freebies, and they love filling their e-readers with content. Do I sense a resurgence of readers enjoying classic literature? That’s my hope at least!

The Kindle is pleasing to look at, doesn’t hurt my eyes the way a back-lit screen would, and I do appreciate the screen savers–very artsy! I wish there were a larger variety of them, though. The Kindle store is too easy to blow way too much money on…and the magazine and newspaper subscriptions are appealing.  It also allows one to view PDF files, which is helpful when it comes to reviewing for the HNS, and, although tedious, it does boast the ability to highlight and makes notes in the text.

Bottom line: it never will be a replacement for my treasured book collection, but I am impressed by the convenience and the ease of reading while using the device.

I guess I’ll go have the rest of my humble pie for lunch now…