Kindle
 

I got a Kindle for my wife.

I'm thinking it was a pretty good trade.

Anyway, in some ways I am anti e-book. I like owning a book that you can put on your bookshelf, and can lend out if you want. I like having a physical book.

But the Kindle has some advantages. You can get a lot of free books (ones from which the copyright has expired). I think 1923 is the key date.

You can also check your email, and do a little websurfing, although it is not ideal for that. The cool thing, however, is that it doesn't charge a monthly fee for that. In fact, I pulled up cougarguard last night on the Kindle.

At the $109 I paid, hard to beat.

But when push comes to shove, I'm still buying the paper versions.

My grandpa, a widower, has two of them. He's 87, a retired attorney, and used to reading a lot. He reads about 6-7 hours a day now, all on his Kindles. He went with me to Costa Rica in May, and after I read all of the books I brought with me, I used to one to read an old Clancy novel that I hadn't read since high school, Without Remorse. I liked the Kindle, but two things make it less than ideal: 1) I remember things in books visually. If I try to find something, in my mind, I can see it on the page, so I will remember if it was on the right or left page, top or bottom of the page, etc. The Kindle would limit that if I tried to use it to read novels or academic texts for work (another issue would be that I couldn't write in the margins if I wanted to teach the text). 2) I don't know if they've fixed this or not on newer models, but you can't read them in low light, which I'm sure they will remedy soon enough.

My wife is reading "Tarzan of the Apes" on the Kindle right now. That makes me happy. It's the first novel I ever read.