Why I Love My Kindle

I have seen dozens of articles and blog posts professing people’s love of print books. The smell of the binding, the feel of the pages, the general tangibility. But I haven’t really seen a whole lot of screaming from the mountaintops about e-readers, despite them being a growing phenomenon. Maybe it’s time I chime in.

• I read SO much more now that I have a Kindle. Before I received a Kindle Fire for Christmas two years ago, I read, but not really. I don’t have the space for print books. I don’t have the disposable income to buy them all, even if I did have the space. And the library? They don’t always have what I want to read. When they do acquire a hot bestseller, someone else has borrowed it and I have to conjure up every ounce of patience in my soul to wait for it to be my damn turn to read it. Meanwhile, the first year I had my Kindle I read 75 books. The next year I read 59. That just wouldn’t have been possible without my Kindle.
• If I finish a book while I’m out I can just start another one. One of my readers commented on my post listing the titles I’m most looking forward to this year. She stated that when she’d read Maze Runner she’d been on vacation and couldn’t get a hold of the next book in the series. I then shared with her the time I sat for jury duty, waiting for hours to see if I would be called. I finished the book I was reading and then promptly started a new one. Time flew by for me. For those who’d finished their newspapers, magazines, and print books? Not so much.
• I don’t have to travel with a crap-ton of heavy books. Have you read Under the Dome by Stephen King? That thing is well over a thousand pages. Imagine sacrificing space in your purse or suitcase for the print copy of that gigantic tome. Not fun. But when I read it on my Kindle, I could bring it everywhere, without messing up the alignment of my spine.
• I don’t have to go seek out the books I want. Before my Kindle, if there was something I really wanted to read, I had to go to the bookstore and look for it. If that bookstore didn’t have it, I had to have it ordered so I could pick it up later or go to another location entirely. I could order it myself online, but then I’d have to wait for it to be shipped. What a pain, no? Now, if I read an article about a new release or someone recommends a title to me, I simply pick up my Kindle and search for the damn thing. I can have the whole thing or just the sample in minutes.
• E-books are cheaper (for the most part). Paperback books are often $10 or so. Hardbacks are normally twice that. Like I said, I just don’t have that kind of money lying around to buy every book I’d want to read. Especially not when its first released. I mean, I just read Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code last year. Why? Because when it came out it was more expensive than I would have liked. Now, are some ebooks still $10 or more? Yes. Stupid traditional publishers still price them that high, despite the low-cost of production, because they have so much overhead to cover. However, since I can read so many other books for far less than $10, I feel fine splurging every now and then on a pricier book.

So, which camp are you in? Pro-print or All-hail-e-reader?