New Toy
A realization came while in the midst of the household spring purge.
Since I got rid of some bookcases, and threw all their contents onto the one remaining, and will have to go through all that, I realized it was really ridiculous to keep buying books. I don't buy that many, but I seem to buy an awfully lot for someone who doesn't read much. I'm not the type of person who underlines passages. With the exception of "how to" manuals, once I read a book, I'm done with it forever. I have sometimes investigated getting a desired book at the local library, but all the copies are always checked out and I'd need to be on a waiting list. Amazon always gets purchases to my door within two or three days, even though I never pay for expedited shipping.
But it is a rather ridiiculous cost to pay for things I'm only going to read once. So, I decided to buy a Kindle. It arrived Friday, and I opened it yesterday. I downloaded a couple of books that I'd thought about buying before but wasn't sure I wanted badly enough to actually purchase. Oh, my gosh. What a niftly little device a Kindle is. What a pleasure to read something with nice big print on a bright background. With material books, it's become a challenge to hold it at just the right distance so I can comprehend the print -- which turns out to be with my glasses down my nose, so I can see better. And the lamp next to the sofa never shines just the way I'd like it to.
So, I'm a Kindle believer. I think it much more likely that I might read parts of books again, if I'm looking for something to occupy my mind while I'm just loosely paying attention to something on TV. So much more satisfying than playing with the tiny visuals on my phone, which I have to constantly expand, or hold up right next ot my face, if I'm serious about reading an article.
The one unpleasant surprise, however, was how much Kindle books cost now. I had thought they were just a few dollars each. But I guess demand has caught up with supply, so the two I downloaded yesterday were something like 11.99 each. All the more reason to re-read, rather than contanstly looking for something new.
I so love technology, and how it keeps making life better and better and better.