Delighted to receive this from my daughter and son in law for Christmas. Perfect for taking to Australia with me – as I went on a week's holiday last year in the sunshine and managed to get through 16 books during that time, just think how much excess baggage I would be paying if I took enough books to last me the month Down Under?
Spent most of the other day working out how to use it, setting it up and exploring. Not quite there yet and am meeting up with a Kindle owning friend next week and will pick her brains for short cuts and tips. In the meantime I have been having fun on Amazon looking at all the free e-books available. Brought them all up in price range from low to high so got hundreds of stuff costing £0.00. Bit of a bind going through it all I thought but after a while it became strangely fascinating. There is some seriously 
weird stuff there, including what appears to be a hundred volume work on the History of the Dutch Antilles. I was tempted to download some of this just to see what it was like but decided against it in the end, ditto the entire works of Bulwer Lytton (he of the immortal line 'It was a dark and stormy night'). But in the midst of all this were loads of free classics and downloaded quite a few as I like to have those handy.
As I have decided to read more Anthony Trollope this year I actually spent some money and had 50+ of his books sent to my Kindle at the cost of £3.54 which has to be the bargain of the century. I also downloaded all of L M Montgomery's oeuvre for the same price and then there was no stopping me and off I went and did the same for Frances Hodgson Burnett, her adult as well as children's novels. There were some title there I have been wanting to track down for some time and now I have them. Then I had to have all of Jane Austen for which I paid 74p. I have a feeling she would delight in that.
I have just started watching Aurelio Zen on BBC (will not start on about the God that is Rufus Sewell as it makes my fingers twitch, as well as other parts of my anatomy which we will not discuss and I need to type accurately….) and decided that I need to check these books out. Fortunately, there is one going for the Kindle at £1 so I purchased that to see if I like them or not. Thought that was a bargain too.
Now before you all think I have gone raving mad and am abandoning REAL books, fear not. No way Jose. There is something so magical about opening a book, be it new or second hand and looking inside. This was reinforced today when I received four books in the post and gloated over them all so Dear Publishers, please continue to bombard me with your offerings, I would never go over to the Dark Side.
I get so tired of reading articles on E Books v Paper Books. Why are these articles written? can only assume there is a space to fill in the book pages. There is no need to set this up as an issue. I cannot see why they cannot exist side by side, each has its own place in our reading life and I do not see the existence of these E-readers as any threat at all. I really don't think book sale swill stop completely because of this. Now, having said that I was thinking Yeh OK I am taking my Kindle with me to Oz, but I don't commute any more and don't spend holidays lying on beaches in the sun much these days and if I did I would worry about taking a Kindle on a beach, just think of the dangers of sand…..
So what will I do with it once I am back from Australia? Was pondering on this dilemma and it occurred to me that I can use it to read those books that you spot at the back of a library shelf, or you hear mentioned in a literary review, and think you might like to read but would never buy or borrow. I am talking classics here but perhaps not the sort of classic you might automatically think about. If you mention the word Classic (OK the Daily Mail book page now calls them Retro Reads….true), we think Bronte, Dickens, Austen et al but I am thinking of others and the name sof Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, George Gissing, Jerome K Jerome and others. I am probably doing them a disservice by calling them second level classics and I apologise but am trying to explain my thinking. I have read Anna of the Five Towns by Bennett yonks ago, can recall little about it, but remember enjoying it very much. The late great journalist and writer, Keith Waterhouse, loved The Card by this author and was always quoting it so that has been downloaded along with a couple of others.
Then there are authors whose books, when tracked down, are expensive and I have managed to download an EM Delafield which I have yet to read and will be hunting for more. Checking the archives of libraries all over the world for e-books is simply fascinating and the titles, not only of books, but of poetry, history, biography and newspapers and journals is stunning. I feel as if I have been let loose in a toy shop.
My lovely friend Rosemary, who came round for Sunday lunch, spotted the posh leather wallets designed for the Kindle and has ordered one for my birthday next month (a lovely blue colour) but says I can have it early to take with me and that is on its way. What with my super duper new mobile, my new notebook and now the Kindle, I am off to Australia laden with technology. So different from when I went all those years ago, pre email and Internet, when I used to write pages of air mail letters home and had to book a call to the UK on the telephone and through the operator. Technology is amazing.
Of course, I am going to need excess baggage to take all the chargers that will be going with me……
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