E-Reading Diary, Part 1

I have officially read an e-book! After attending a scholarly publishing conference on the mostly digital future--although print books aren't going anywhere any time soon--I decided I should probably see what all the fuss is about. So, I checked out a company Kindle and downloaded Water for Elephants, a book I've been meaning to read.

The buying experience on the Kindle was a little clunky. Granted, I was using a first generation device, so it has likely improved. You navigate around the menus with a scroll bar on the right--I'm pretty sure newer models don't have that bar. I searched for the book, found it, clicked buy, and in about a minute it was ready to go. Browsing for books is a little difficult. You pretty much have to know what you're looking for or want something off a bestseller list. The preview chapters are also a little awkward--you can sample most books in the Kindle store, but instead of clicking a link to the sample chapters, you have to download them to the device. They seem to be quite generous, though.

I wasn't sure how I'd like reading on a screen, but once I got into the book, I didn't even notice I was reading in a different way. Great writing is great writing, and it really doesn't matter how you read it. Once I got the rhythm of clicking next page about a line early--there's a slight delay in the page turn, but again, this could be because it's an old Kindle--the "device" disappeared and I was just reading.

It's a little disorienting to let go of the idea of pages--there's a progress bar at the bottom of the screen, but no page counts. I usually flip through to see how long a chapter is, and I had to let that go. But otherwise, I was surprised by how much I liked using the reader. It's easier to hold in one hand than a printed book, which makes reading while eating lunch much easier. And it's lighter than most books.

I'm now excited about getting my own e-reader. I think it'd be great for travel--and just in general to always have a book in your bag. The only real drawback is the shopping experience, but having a specific book in mind is not usually a problem for me. I can always pick up a physical book when I find something new and exciting in a bookstore . . . I can't imagine switching over to e-books completely. But, I am more excited about e-readers than I thought I would be. Plus, if I had bought a paperback copy of Water for Elephants, it'd now be sitting in my pile of books to discard, so now I don't have to worry about it taking up room in my very full apartment.

I got to try an iPad recently, too, so I'll review my reading experience on that in my next post. I fully embraced technology this past week!