Kindle: A Photo Essay

Well, I did it.  I took the plunge.  I bought a Kindle:

I fought against it for a long time.  For a variety of reasons.  But, the day has come to face it: e-readers are the wave of the future, so I did some research and decided on a Kindle.  The main reason I like Kindle is because it uses a technology called “e-ink” as opposed to other e-readers which use technologies that contribute to eye strain.  Due to aging and my other disabilities, eye strain is an issue for me at times.  So, Kindle it is.

You can buy a real nice leather case for it:

All in all, it seems to be a pretty neat thing.  I’m still getting familiar with it, and bought two books right away.  The first one, of course, is the Qur’an.  And I bought a novel I have to read for a class.

But despite all of the advantages of e-readers, I think it’s still going to take some getting used to.

One of the advantages of a Kindle is that you can stick it in your bag and have all of your books with you so you don’t have to drag your entire library around.  Below is only “part” of my library 🙂

Kindle books are cheaper than print books, and you don’t have to pay tax or shipping & handling.  There’s no waiting for your book to arrive with Kindle, because once you buy, your book is downloaded to your device immediately.  And if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate more space in your house.

But my books are part of my memory.  They document parts of my life journey.  My books are sort of a visual reminder of different phases and stages of my life.

For example, these books were helpful to me when I was going through menopause:

These were real helpful to me when I started to work in corrections, translating for Hispanic inmates.  The big black dictionary on the right side, by Velazquez, was given to me by my former husband who used it when he first came to America.  He is now deceased.  Kindle couldn’t do that for me, unless it was his Kindle.

Any visitor to my upstairs library would notice immediately that Isabel Allende is one of my favorite authors:

Here are some of my reference books from college.  Look how dog-eared the dictionary and thesaurus are!

Some more dog-eared books from when I was Jewish.  Dry rot from decades of being in the synagogue before they were given to me.  The kind of books that you pass on, not throw away or put in a yard sale:

Can the Kindle chronicle major family life events?  Here’s my Jewish Bible, opened to the section where I recorded family deaths. 

And sometimes, in my grief, I scribbled quickly, not bothering with the neat penmanship of my childhood.

Do you think I could sit my Kindle up next to me so it could keep me company while I sew on my antique Singer sewing machine like my books do?  Would it be the same?

I doubt that my Kindle would give me the extra extra large print that this set of nine-lines-per-page Qur’an does:

And could I use my Kindle to protect my leather chairs from my cats the way I do with books?

Will the day come when covers for the Kindle will be as beautiful as these?

Last, but not least, will there ever be Kindle furniture?

A Kindle door stop (table pushed up against the door with books up against the door)?

A Kindle book stand?

A Kindle bookshelf?

A Kindle telephone stand?

A virtual book is just not the same as a real one.

Will Kindle and other e-readers do away with books?  Will books become an antique of the past?  We’ll see.  I hope not.