I love my Kindle!

I love my kindle, words I'd never ever in a million years thought I'd say. Well, my friends, it looks like I have finally crossed over into the 21st century of reading! For the past few years whenever someone has mentioned  how much they adore their kindle, or other ereader, I have gotten this look of horror on my face, isn't that blaspheme?(especially if you are a book lover?) How could anyone who enjoys curling up with a good book, curl up with an ereader?

I just didn't get it. I love the smell of a new crisp book, the way it feels in my hands as I turn the page. I love that when I am tired and ready for bed, and struggle to see the print because my eyes are glazing over, I place my book mark into my last page read and then lay it on my night stand and turn out the light.

I have been an avid reader since I was 6 years old. I love knowledge that comes with reading a book. I love the escapism that comes with reading a book. I realized a very long time ago that a library was my window to the world. I have read in my lifetime hundreds of books, from fiction to nonfiction. If I want to learn more about a topic, I read. If I want to learn more about an occurrence or happening, I read about it. If I am feeling sad, I read. If I am feeling happy, I read just because I can!

So by now you are probably wondering...why did I decide to get a kindle? Actually I didn't, a friend offered my hubby and me his, and we accepted.(A big thank you to Jared) So after about a week of it laying on my nightstand I decided to familiarize myself with it. Our friend had a few books already loaded on it and I decided to read one (Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury). When I first began it felt a little weird, it seemed cold, very stiff. However the more I read, the more I began to enjoy it. A few days later when I had finished the novel, my first thought was...WOW I need to get more books on this thing! My second thought was....WOW how am I going to afford this? One face palm later it dawned on me; I have a world of books at my fingertips every single day of the year! I work at a library! And the library has a collection of eAudio as well as eBooks.

Before this day I hadn't really thought much about our eBook collection. I looked upon it more as a nuisance than a great service, due to the fact I maintain the library's database and have to make sure that all eBook records are complete and correct.(Which isn't a horrible job, just time consuming)

I decided I needed to try to check out a few of these eBooks and see how difficult the process was downloading them to my kindle. After going to the eBook website and figuring out how to do it, I learned I was able to check out 10 items for 7 days. That first day I downloaded 4 different books that I had been wanting to read. I was able to use my library card number, peruse the catalog by marking all books available in kindle form and then choosing from a list I was able to download them and save the file to my pc and transfer them over to the kindle. With the four books loaded I was ready to roll.

At home that evening I created a monster. I read and read and read until I could no longer keep my eyes open. I was a little bit worried about closing up my kindle for the night, worried that I would lose my place, however the next day when I opened the kindle back up, it went right back to the page I was on the night before.(who needs a bookmark?)

I have to confess my kindle and I are rarely separated now. I have over 24 books loaded onto it, some are on loan, others I downloaded from free sites like www.gutenberg.org. Even Amazon offers some free books for download. Will I ever go back to a good old regular book? As long as I have my kindle the world may never know.