The Kindle...

Maybe I was a little harsh on Resistance, rereading the last post. All I will say however is that the whole plot happens in the last 25 pages. There was a surprising twist but to be honest, I wouldn't personally say that the book was worth reading to the end; despite the twist I felt like I'd wasted my time with it.

Any way, I now have a Kindle!

It was a gift, and I adore it. I am still reading paper books - buying books from the charity shop is still cheaper a lot of the time! - however I find that the Kindle has numerous benefits.

1) Very light and comfortable to hold, which is more than can be said for some books (thinking of the whopping Birds Without Wings, for example)

2) the screen really is all it's cracked up to be. Really strange at first but easy to read, even in bright sunlight

3) The ability to choose your own font size - as well as line spacing, etc. - is really nice. My eyes are fine, but even so, larger font is more comfortable to read and the Kindle makes this very easy.

4) The built in dictionaries mean that you can look up words in the text without losing your place or anything - just a click of a button. Finding this very useful when reading the classics - there's always a word or two that you just don't hear any more and it is great being able to look them up.

5) You can also highlight sections and bookmark them, which for a Lit student like me is really useful!

6) Free classics. Lots of books for under £2. The initial investment soon repays itself if you're a book worm.

7) It keeps your place for you. I'm finding this really useful for reading the classics, as some of them I find difficult without taking frequent breaks to rest my brain!

The only things I'll say against the Kindle and my experience of it so far is that I wish there was just a button on Amazon for buying all their free classics. Instead you have to go through and 'buy', for free, the ones you want, one by one.

Also, as yet the technology does not exist for it to be able to waft old-paper smell at you. I do miss this when I am holding my Kindle.

Took me a while to register it, and find out how to turn it off! But that is just me being technilliterate.

And finally, the Amazon-to-Kindle-download-your-books-system is called Whispernet, which makes me think of Newspeak and Thoughtcrime. The conspiracy theorist in me is very perturbed by this.

Anyway, that is my initial assessment of the Kindle. Now I'm off to do some reading, not sure whether it will be of the electronic or paper kind but either one will do!