How Does Your Kindle Measure Up to Your Library?

Last week, the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine ran a cover story on how Amazon is changing the game for big publishing houses.  Once, Amazon was just another lucrative way for the big publishing houses to get their books into the market.  But now, with the success of e-books, physical books are a dying breed and major publishing houses see their tumultuous fate.

I was a late bloomer to this digital revolution, believing that my love for books far outweighed the convenience factor.  In fact, it was just last year, my husband, a gadget-lover, kept asking me, “You love to read, how about if I get you a Kindle?”

“No,” I replied.  “Not, for me.  I love real books.” 

I love the scent of the parchment paper; I love the feel of holding books in my hand, and even the weight of one carried around in my big pocketbook.  I love to write down the year of when I read the book on the inside cover so that I can always remember that period.I would never be an “e-reader;” I just loved hard copy books too much.

Finally one day, a Kindle magically showed up at our house and my husband,obviously undetered by my rejections, delivered it with a smile.  Instead of sticking to my antiquated mentality, I surprised myself by firing up the Kindle, setting up my Amazon account & Wi-Fi access, and began downloading in a flash.  Just a few weeks later, this light, airy, device became my daily companion while hard copy books, gathering dust in our study, no doubt stared at me, crying, “Et tu Brutus?”

And now with many, many books downloaded (including the classics that my son is reading in high school), I am a believer and a lover of my electronic wonder.

Sure, there are some things that I think soft copy books will never measure up to.  For example, when you are reading a book with a ton of characters and it’s nice to flip back and forth between pages trying to remember who all of them are.  Another annoying feature too is % complete metric.  I like to know a book is 500 pages and I am on page 258 instead of 52% through.

And more than anything, I will never get the same allure from browsing Amazon’s webpage as I do when I wander around the bookstore or the library.  Just walking around, looking at the various covers, reading the insets, author’s bios, and picking them up in your hand is a unique experience.

All that said however, the Kindle’s super compact size, its’ ease and convenience are unparalleled.  When you are a whimsical reader like me, prone to start reading anything, it’s nice to be able to read a webpage or a blog referencing a book and then, literally, within 30 seconds, be reading that book.

But most importantly, I finally asked why my husband was so adamant about my getting a Kindle.  “Isn’t it obvious Roopal? I never have to hear the crackling of your turning pages anymore while lying in bed at night!” 

“That’s great,” I said, “but what we going to put on the library shelves now?”