Reading heaven. I love my Kindle?

I can’t imagine life without my Kindle although I haven’t always been a great lover of books. School bored me and I learned to read largely through the comics I collected and swapped in my early years. In my late teens, I was starting to read books with earnest and rarely ventured anywhere without a paperback on hand. Even as a soldier in the field in the Vietnam War I carried a book, to read when safe, and then to swap with others.  The same dependence on a having a book packed applies today.

As a university student, I belatedly discovered literature, my major, and intoxicated browsed the shelves of the Uni Bookshop searching for what I could afford to buy next. Of course, garage sales and markets quickly became another source of cheap reading matter. My personal library grew alarmingly making moving house, moving interstate, or overseas a grim business as I didn’t want to part with any precious books. It was understood that all books with literary merit were there to stay as they had my fingerprints all over them. They were in my memory, my blood, my DNA. I was the arch collector and each book was stamped with my name and address. Yeah, borrowed books don’t always make it back home where they belong.

When I reached the homeownership phase of my life my books merged with those of my wife, and then our children. The shelves were bulging with the latest additions piling up vertically in front of others nesting in the back of shelves. I never had time to sort them in any order. From time to time, less desirable popular trashy books were donated to garage sales thus both easing bookshelf pressure and allowing for new purchases.

So, reading has long topped my list of interests and I always have a book on the boil.

Enter the Ebook and in my case the Kindle, and what a revolution in reading it has been. Many traditional readers have scoffed at what they regard as a passing phase, decrying the loss of a paperback to cuddle up with. They also come up with other dismissive reasons, eg mental retention, the smell of paper etc. to cry foul at these electronic interlopers muddying their reading turf.

Such criticisms don’t work for me with the exception of those delightful and beautifully illustrated volumes published by the likes of Dorling Kindersley.  Such lush artwork just doesn’t work well on Kindle screens. Works of fiction, however, read well on eBooks with zero loss, as far as I’m concerned, to the reading experience. A good book is fine in black and white.

There are many advantages to binge reading on a Kindle.

Dictionaries and links to Wikipedia are a godsend allowing a reader to quickly check spelling and facts with a single tap. Previously a substantial dictionary at least had to be nearby and checking took much longer breaking one’s concentration and reading pleasure.

Light and portable a Kindle can hold a large library with no increase in weight whether in the hand or backpack. They simply don’t take up valuable space.

Ebooks can be read in darkness with adjustable in-built lighting. Equally, they can be read in bed, or in an aircraft cabin, without turning on a light and disturbing others.

Multiple bookmarks can be made, and one can search an entire volume for all cases of a search criterion, character, place, incident etc.

Unlike paper books, there’s no issue with dog-eared pages,  moldy pages, or those that detach and fall out. You don’t fold Ebooks. 

Ebooks are always new. They don't wear out.

You can write notes or read highlights others have made.

You can read books on other devices: computers, phones, and tablets.

Ebooks are so much cheaper and eco-friendly. 

I brought to bed a book recently and my wife grabbed it to dust it off. No dust on Kindle books. 

What’s not to love about reading on a Kindle? Back now to my current book, The Devil's Grin, a dark Victorian crime novel, and an excellent read that co-stars Sherlock Holmes.