Pining for the West

I must admit that I never thought that I would buy a Kindle because I’ve always had a bit of a love affair with books. I love the feel of them and yes the smell of them too. I like to keep them in pristine condition and I even manage to keep the spine of thick paperbacks intact, which is often no easy task as they’re so meanly and tightly bound.

I saw someone on TV a while ago and he was preparing to read an extract from a book. He opened the book in the middle and immediately bent it back as far as he could and cracked the spine. I can’t remember who he was, I must have blocked it out. It seemed like it was his way of rolling up his sleeves to be ready for work. I’m not in favour of the death penalty but really – he deserved to be put up against a wall and shot! So, that’s my attitude to books, even mass market paperbacks and that’s why I was so against Kindles/e-readers.

However, although I’ve only read one book on my Kindle so far I must admit that it was quite a positive experience. It’s so easy to handle and if you have problems with your hands, which so many older women in particular have I think after a lifetime of housework, DIY -ing, gardening and such, then you will probably find a Kindle to be a boon. It’s lightweight and its great to turn pages with just a touch. A Kindle/e-reader must also be brilliant for people who have restricted movement, maybe after a stroke or something, when holding a book and turning pages might be difficult. It’s easy to pop it into your bag just before you leave the house which is great too. I don’t know about you but I’m always running around at the last minute to pick up a book to take out with me, it’s handy to have one if you get stuck in a queue somewhere. You don’t want to be dragging a massive tome around though so a Kindle solves that problem.

The only thing I have against a Kindle is that as far as I can see you don’t get any information on the book you are reading. I would have liked it to begin exactly as a real book does with the date of the book’s first publication and such, and I always like to see who a book has been dedicated to. I missed that info.

You’ll think that this is mad but I would also have liked more in the way of instructions than came with the Kindle. I know that sounds daft when the gadget is an e-reader and you can obviously get the instructions from the screen but as I’m not technologically minded I have an aversion to tinkering with things like that in case I do something which damages it. Of course Duncan came along and had to see what it could do – which was a revelation to me. It’s more than an e-reader, it’s really a wee computer and you can access the internet to read blogs and the like. I can see myself getting quite fond of it though and I’m making myself some Kindle cases, wee sleeping bags to protect it, I haven’t gone as far as to name it/her/him – but you never know, I just might!

I’ll still be buying some real books but they’ll be special editions of books which are so lovely I just want to hold them, Folio books or similar. I can’t imagine ever buying a non-fiction book for my Kindle because for me things like gardening or history books or luscious coffee table books are all about the feel of them and their lovely glossy paper and of course I have to have a sniff of them now and then and lets face it there are definitely worse thing to sniff!