In all the fuss and flurry of trying to promote In Her Name, it suddenly occurred to me that I haven’t really mentioned too much about the device that finally motivated me to get the book published: the Amazon Kindle.

I’m not going to go through all the pros and cons of the device, as you can get that yourself over at Amazon. But what I will tell you from personal experience (my wife and I both own Kindles) is this: it makes the reading experience a lot more pleasant. Let me tell you why.

First and foremost, the electronic ink screen and easily adjustable font size are a lot easier on my eyes than most “dead tree” books. If my eyes are tired (which they frequently are after a day at the office, staring at multiple computer screens), I just bump up the font size a bit. If I need to do something with my hands, like pet one of our rambunctious Siberian cats, I can set the font size larger and then prop the Kindle up on a table with the cover I use. I can still read, and the cat gets some attention and doesn’t chew off my ankle.

Second, while I love – love! – hardbound books and it’s way cool to have a library full of them, they’re also a royal pain in the rear end after a while. One of the things I hate is taking a bunch of books to a garage sale or (if they’re stinkers) throwing them in the recycling. But that’s where most books eventually wind up. The Kindle (and other e-readers) do away with that. I’m concerned about being green, and to me that matters.

Third, the connection to the Amazon Kindle store. Love Amazon or hate it, they’ve got tons of books available – 229,000 as I write this! And you can download any of them over the Kindle’s built-in networking at the click of  a button. You can also get tons of free books, too. And you can carry a bunch of books around with you! So if you enjoy reading on long trips, but hate schlepping all those books along, get a Kindle!!

Another advantage that my mom actually brought up when she was trying to read a particularly large book was that the Kindle is a lot easier to handle than the typical dead tree epic fantasy tome. Hmm…

The Kindle also has a lot of other extra features built-in, like a dictionary so you can look up words as you’re reading, awesome search functions, notes, and all kinds of other stuff.

But the bottom line is really this: it makes reading easier and more pleasant. Yes, it carries a pretty hefty price tag, but if you’re an avid reader it’s well worth it, so check it out!

Bookmark It

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Tags: Amazon Kindle, Electronic Ink, Siberian Cats

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.