Another “Innie” Device

I broke down and bought it.

Not sure yet if it’s a worthwhile purchase, as I was quite conflicted before deciding to take the plunge.

I shopped and shopped for over a year, placing it on my Amazon wish list, then removing it, then putting it on again.  Finally, after reading all the pros and cons I could possibly find, I took the plunge.

I purchased a Kindle 2.

That was on a Monday.  It arrived on Wednesday of the same week (thank you, UPS!).  I was very very excited about it after I’d made the decision and could hardly wait the two whole days for it to get here, visions of sugarplums dancing through my head.  Or perhaps it was the idea of being able to store 1000 Gb of reading on it, including .pdf files I could potentially transport to and from work.  Whatever, it was exciting.

Sharply packaged, like my iPod was, it enticed me like a new electronic lover.  (it’s absolutely no secret that I’m a techno-geek)

My initial reservations were losing the tactile experience of reading a hardcover novel, or trade paperback (my favorite!). I ventured into online discussion groups for which the Kindle pros and cons were the sole topic.

Setting aside those reservations, I plunked down the $359.  The day after it arrived, Amazon announced that the Kindle price had dropped by $60.

Those bastards!

You can believe that I was on the phone faster’n a shopaholic at the Penney’s sale table.  A starving man at a buffet.  Choose your analogy.

I thought they’d make me return the one I’d bought and re-purchase it to get the new, lower price.  They didn’t.  They were very accommodating. They refunded the difference.

Spent the day Wednesday shopping for books.  The first purchase was The Introvert Advantage: How To Thrive In An Extrovert World. I thought it ironic that I would choose that first, for reasons that may be obvious only to me.  Unless you’re a fellow “innie,” of course.

So I didn’t mind at all the loss of tactile pleasure in reading on a screen as opposed to a page.  In fact, because I get a lot of my books from a library first, I didn’t at all miss the smears of someone else’s foods on the page, their (incredibly annoying) notes in the margins, the highlighted passages (in a library book?  Really people?  Have some frackin’ respect!) and worst of all, the stench of a chain smoker’s habit soaked up by the paper.  There have been times I couldn’t read a particular book because of the overwhelming smell.  I will not miss these things.

Will my Kindle replace books?  No.  I will continue to buy books, and store those I want to read over and again in the device.  With its groovy black leather (!) cover, the Kindle is a good investment for those of us who read a lot.  After thirty-some years of reading books, I know I will be able to change.  Hell, I was able to adapt to cordless phones, microwaves, VCR-turned-DVD players, pagers, cell phones, and doing so much of my work on a computer.  The Kindle is a logical next step.