The Kindle is Kewl!!!

Kindle = Kewl

     I made the beginning transition from book toter to Kindle carrier this week. I'll admit that I had a momentary bout of buyer's remorse when I started examining the Nook color, but came to my senses when reminded that my goal is to read from a portable device -not access email and play games in-between the reading. So, what are my early thoughts? The Kindle is (pardon my adolescent-ish behavior) Kewl!

     After the initial hours of playing with every feature I could find on the unit, I eventually settled into reading from it -go figure. The fact is I've been reading a great deal this week because of the Kindle. The special e-ink gives the screen a fake look (as if someone typed on a plastic overlay) but it's perfect for reading. "Page" turning happens quickly, which is good because I'd read  that this was an issue for some of the earlier Kindles. The font size is completely adjustable too, another helpful feature when reading for prolonged periods. Probably the most influential factor to my heavy use of the device has been the variety of material it can hold.

     Next to my bed is a stack of books, somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty. I'm reading from more than half of these at the moment, a habit adopted years ago that, surprisingly, hasn't confused me. (A common reaction when people hear this is, "Oh, I couldn't read more than one book. I'd be too confused." The fact is it's the same as watching 10 TV shows. It's about interest not memory. Trust me, you can do this too.) Now, twenty books makes for a nifty pile and quite the project when I want to quickly switch to something else, or try and take more than three of these with me somewhere. The Kindle solves all of this. My Kindle has over twenty reading items at this moment, and I find myself jumping from one item to the next. While it sounds like inattention at work it's had the net affect of keeping me reading longer.
     Just this morning, I read a bit from the Wall Street Journal, then switched over to a Sherlock Holmes story (free), then back to WSJ, then to a PDF document (which I converted to a book format using Calibre), and then over to a contemporary novel. I don't think I moved physically more than three inches in the process. If I had to round up these materials the-soon-to-be-old-fashioned-way, I would have had to collect my laptop, a newspaper, and two books. I have enough trouble rustling up a spoon for my cereal in the morning. Most likely I'd have just read the newspaper from front to back -even the stuff I could care little about. So, for now, the Kindle has translated to more enjoyable and purposeful reading for me because I can access anything I'm interested in reading anywhere. Yes, this is no different than when we all began converting over to MP3 players and no longer had to worry about shelves of albums to sift through and be in a range of to enjoy.

     Another additional benefit -and this is purely a theory- is that I'm reading faster. I'm not a terribly quick reader in general. I'm probably average. But, with the Kindle screen being smaller than a book page, and the size of fonts able to be increased so that only a few words per line show at a time, the outcome is reading more quickly. The reason is quite literally because less eye movement has been needed. It seems like a small point to make but moving across from left to right to follow strings of words and then zip over to start the next line is an unnecessary task. I've noticed that in recent years, I hardly look at the edges of my reading. I try to shoot down the middle and feel almost a sense of anxiety (or is it merely irritation?) at having to move my eyes side to side. When we read it's natural to try and see things in chunks, anticipating what will show up next. So, a narrower column of words seems to work better for reading and sense-making than having text spread across several inches just outside of our visible range where it becomes necessary to shift and refocus our attention. 

     I'm not completely done with books and I know it won't be long before I'm using a Kindle color (rumor is their Chinese manufactures are playing around with new color screens) but I'm satisfied owning a Kindle. Looking forward to taking is me...everywhere.