Kindle Junkie

I love my kindle. It goes everywhere I go, I spoil it with new covers and skins, and I fall asleep most nights with my Kindle in hand.

I do a lot more than just read on my Kindle. Lately I have been studying the Margie Lawson packets that I formatted to my Kindle. I’m able to highlight my favorite parts to read later on. It’s easy to take the highlights you made and drag them onto your desktop to read as a text doc. I take handwritten notes, and it’s much easier to do while only holding a slim Kindle and clip board, than to handle a clip board and 3-ring binder of 300 pages or more.

I love the text-to-speech feature. I jack my Kindle into my surround sound system in the living room, and listen to books while I do my every day chores. The voice that reads to you is monotone, but you soon get accustomed to that. There are also audio books you can buy from Audible.com. I loved getting to listen to Stephen King’s On Writing spoken in his own voice.

Most people love the touch and smell of paper books. Don’t get me wrong, I love the feel of pages that slide through my fingers as I turn the page, though I don’t miss the smell, since of course I am nose blind. Reading on a Kindle however is an experience of it’s own. The softness of the silicone skin, the press of the button, the instant flip of the page, and the light weight of an entire library.

As a writer, the kindle has been a great tool. I have 63 writing books on my Kindle (many found for free or under $4), 2 Margie Lawson Packets, Poets & Writer’s Magazine,3 friends manuscripts,and several Blog clippings that I like to go back and read for help or inspiration. I even take notes on a notepad by 7Dragons I bought on the Kindle. So when I’m reading in bed and have an idea for my WIP I don’t have to get up and hunt for pen and paper to write it down. I’ve even woken from a particularly fantastic dream and grabbed my Kindle to jot it down before it slipped away from me. Oh, and reading your own manuscript is super useful! It's much more different than reading a print-out, and you are able to listen for the rhythm and cadence of your story in text-to-speech mode.

If you haven’t gotten a Kindle yet, I hope you do, I hope you find it as wonderful as I do, and I hope you fall in love as I have.

What method do you prefer to read by? Old school paper, or do you have an e-reader, and if you do, what kind?

Ta!

A.McBay