"KINDLE!"

[this post has nothing to do with running]

How do you feel about your Kindle? I can't fall in love with mine.

It occurred to me today as I sat in my bath reading Tolstoy’s The Cossacks that my Kindle makes me feel uncomfortable.  Why?  It has so much going for it.

1. It is lighter than a book.

2. It is backlit, so you don’t need to sit at awkward angles to catch the right light on the page.

3. It fits in a jeans pocket.

4. I can carry my library around with me.

5. I can make the font bigger - tiny font was the reason that it took me about fifteen years to get round to reading Crime and Punishment.

6. I can highlight passages that I can easily refer back to

7. I have no emotional connection with it, so when I do finally drop it in the bath I won’t care.
8. you can flip back and forwards between footnotes and pages.
9. you can 'search' a book.

When I first thought “You know, I just don’t like this thing.”  It was because I was sick of the light catching the entombed “KINDLE” logo that shouts out at me from below the screen.  "Kindle!" it screams, with every glint of light, like a crap toothpaste commercial.  I bought the thing, is it really necessary to advertise itself to me?  I have thought of attacking it with a piece of sandpaper but that would ruin it.  After that I started thinking that all the reasons I thought I liked the KINDLE! are actually quite tenuous.

1. Books aren’t heavy.

2. The contrast level between ink and page is still not matched by the KINDLE!.

3. But I never carry it in my jeans pocket.

4. I have never wanted to carry a library around with me.

5. Fair dos - this one is just better.

6. I highlight so many passages that it becomes completely meaningless to highlight passages. When I write in one of my books, I know that I really mean it.

7. I have never dropped a book in the bath, and what’s more, I like having emotional (real) connections with things.
8. Real books are much quicker at this.
9. ... really slowly and unreliably.

I’m also currently reading Susan Greenfield’s The Private Life of the Brain, and on the cover is a Penguin logo.  Is this any different to KINDLE!?  At first I thought not, then I realised that it differs in a number of ways.  The Penguin logo is not on every single page of the book, when I’m reading I’m not distracted by the Penguin.  Even if the logo were on every page, Penguin were the organisation that invested time, energy and money in the publication of this book.  By paying for this book I’m contributing to the continuance of a company that wants to produce more excellent books like this one.  I am also paying tax. Penguin pays its tax.  The shop that I bought it from pays its corporation tax. KINDLE!, does neither of these things.  It contributes to a fast-forming monopoly and does not use that money to invest in the writing of the future.

My KINDLE is going to be my emergency reader from now on.  I have flirted with the digital life, so it’s vinyl for me.

"No, it's not you. It's me. I'm just not ready for this level of commitment..."