Me and My ER

For anybody who tuned in late, my blogsisters and I are writing about e-readers this week.

Due to the subject matter, I made a real effort to find my Kindle. The fact that I didn’t know where it was kind of clues you in to how much I like it. I did find it – buried under some stuff in a basket. I couldn’t believe how clunky it looked compared to the ones they’re advertising on TV now and it’s maybe two years old.

If I had realized, and I should have since that’s how it seems to go with all electronic stuff, that it was going to be outdated in a few months, I never would have bought it. But Oprah did a show raving about Kindles and had a special offer that if you ordered one within the next 24 hours and put in some code, you got a bunch of money off.

So far I have two books on it. One I read and one I only read a little of. Someone I met in a bookstore told me that once I had a book I really wanted to read on the device, I would forget it was a device and get lost in the book. That did happen with the book I read, which was Stephanie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn. I was going to Chicago and faced with lugging the hardcover version (which I’d already begun) or taking along the much smaller Kindle, the device won. I admit to getting caught up in vampires - enough so that there’s vampire who crochets in You Better Knot Die.

The other book on my Kindle is The Friday Night Knitting Club. I don’t know if it was the book or the device, but I had to force myself to read fifty pages. While trying to get into the book, I noticed things I didn’t like about the Kindle (though to be fair some of those issues have since been worked out). There were no page numbers, just position numbers and I felt somehow lost, like I couldn’t tell where I was in the book. I don’t recall a book cover. (I’d check, but I’m charging it now since the battery was deader than dead), or if there was one, it was in black and white and not memorable. Despite the old saying about not judging a book by its cover, we do. When you’re browsing, they clue you in on what kind of book it is. Covers help sell books.

For both the book I liked and the one I didn’t, I found the page turning tabs annoying. I kept hitting them by mistake. And since the big plus is supposed to be for travel, I didn’t care for having to turn it off and stow it for both take-off and landing. Particularly landing. Reading is a good distraction from my ears closing and sometime hurting, the bumps as we go down through the clouds and that wait for the big bump when we hit the ground. Luckily, they don’t make you stow your crochet hooks.


Who knows what will happen with e-readers. Ten years ago, I heard a very big New York agent give a talk on e-readers and he virtually said paper books were done for. But they weren’t. There were a bunch of e-readers that came out then and then went away.

I am all for being open minded. I’m going out of town next week and I’ll take my outdated clunky reader with me. I certainly am not going to be fooled into upgrading to another version, only to find out that its out of date in a few months. The one I have does the main job its supposed to do, which is you an download books and read them on it.
Wouldn’t you know just when I’m going away there’s going to be excitement on my street. A TV location person came by the other night to tell me that they’re going to be filming a crime scene investigation for Criminal Minds down the street. There’s going to be yellow tape, emergency vehicles with flashing lights but no sirens, and of course a body.

What do you think of E-Readers?