re-kindling the ebook

i love books. i love the smell of a bookstore, and the feel of the pages turning in my hands as i consume a book like some a predator consumes its prey. i don’t read, i ravage. i am, then, something of a cynic when it comes to the concept of digital books.

i remember the first ebook readers to pop onto the market, and even took myself down to get a look at them. i’m a big reader. i love the internet. i love new toys. how could it fail? well, i think it just couldn’t keep up with me. i read so fast that i just couldn’t get the same feeling from the digital reader as i could from a book. and it didn’t smell as nice.

these days, though, digital readers such as kindle are getting more and more sophisticated, blurring the line between book and ebook and adding a higher level of user friendliness to what was a clunky idea in the first place. they’re getting slimmer and sexier and i have to tell you when i hold one i feel like i’m on star trek. i’m kind of hoping one day to get that brighty light led look they have on star trek pads. i want to pull up some overviews of wherever i’m at which look straight out of tv. none of this boring pastel roadways and conservative graphics. no way! give me shiny!

ahem.

the kindle, to me, is the nicest of the lot. it’s got that whole ipod thing going. it’s like a supermodel with no drugs record (a rare find) – slim, smooth and inoffensive. ebooks, too, have become more and more popular, with smaller publishers often jumping the bandwagon quicker than the larger ones. i’m happy to see some books i thought were out of print are now available on ebook. though i know at this stage i’d still prefer a good page-filled book, i’m learning to get used to the environmentally friendlier (provided i don’t throw my digital reader in the bin) version. no trees were cut down to make my ebooks. i personally believe these things should be compulsory in schools. those giant backpacks kids carry around here look lethal on the spine. they could throw those backpacks away just by using ebook versions of texts. that’s simply the best thing that could happen.

i’m also impressed by the ability to write and scribble your notes into the kindle. i love scrawling my little hahas on the side without having damaged the book permanently. i can delete these and not have a single mark left on the page to show i didn’t understand what reference the author was making and had scribbled in the side so i could look it up later.

as mobile phones advance at a billion steps per year, i’m hoping the ebook reader will step up, too. i’d hate to see it slipping into my pocket, because not many pages can fit on the screen of a mobile and i’d really hate seeing shakespeare turned into lolspeak just to scrunch down onto a mobile phone. for me, the digital readers are my preferred ebook experience, not my mobile. all i want from mine is the ability to up some good soundfonts and mess with the lighting so i can get that whole star trek thing going. i wouldn’t mind seeing a comic book version around, too, so i can better handle my poison elves collection.

i am impressed with the large range of accessories, too. from lights to projectors and stands and covers. it’s just so me. i love customising things. i want my kindle to express me, so it’s going to have some rather funky little additions on it. i can’t wait to show you all.

i won’t buy so many ebooks. i’m not ready for it. although i do like getting hold of poetry ebooks and ebooks written by little indie writers or out of print books. it’s a great way to explore a genre without forking out the cash you’d normally have to spend on an actual paper book. hopefully the big companies will encourage this habit by offering better prices, too, but in the meantime, for a hoarder like me, it’s good news to my wife who won’t have so many of my books littering the floor of our apartment…

Tags: ebooks, kindle, reading, writing