Love for Books

Jeff has a kindle. My mother is dying to buy me a kindle. I've been told that books will soon be things of the past. That electronic readers like the kindle will be all around. Jeff LOVES his kindle. He reads more with it, he went on and on and on and on about how wonderful it is. How you can change font size and bookmark pages and really I kind of only half paid attention because I still don't want a kindle.

I did, recently, TRY the kindle. Jeff downloaded "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" for me. I was going to my first book club and hadn't had a chance to actually go buy the book at a bookstore - so Jeff got it. Last night I used the kindle to read the book. Now the book, I loved it. It did, however, take me a little while to get into it because of whole reading on the screen thing - I don't know, I think I missed the whole having a layout of a physical book. Since the story is told in a series of letters from different people, and it took a while to follow along electronically. In a physical book, I'd be able to kind of glance over pages to get used to it, and while I could go back and forth with ease with the kindle, I still missed having a book.

I love books for various reasons, and I never quite knew how attached I was to having a PHYSICAL book until I used the kindle. My favorite books are completely wrecked. The spine is bent. The pages are bent down. Sometimes they are wavy because I've taken them into a bath where with hot water and bubbles I indulge myself in my two favorite pastimes. Long, hot bubble baths, and books. My favorite books have been read and re-read. I tend to read really quickly. The more I like a book, the faster I read. So re-reading will sometimes let me pick up things I hadn't noticed before. If I'm re-reading Agatha Christie for example, I already know the ending of the mystery and I like to go back and see if I can spot things that were clues that I hadn't seen previously. I like to see how the plot points were laid out ahead of time, waiting for me to puzzle them together. It's always fun. Fannie Flag for example will carry her characters over from book to book and I like seeing how a minor character in one book, becomes the main player in another. I like holding the books and randomly picking a page and starting to read. I like browsing my shelves and seeing what I'm in the mood for. I enjoy going to bookstores and looking at colorful covers, reading backs and pages, sometimes I discover a new author I had never previously considered. I like looking at staff favorites for the same reason. I love physical books so much I am sorely tempted to buy a REAL copy of "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" even though I own it in an electronic version.

There is one thing, if having a kindle gets more people to read, more people to explore different authors, different subjects - well I'm all for it. But for now I think I'll stick to actually owning the book!