... and my official review is... I absolutely love it! I love to read and to buy books, but when I'm in school it's hard enough to find time to dedicate to the TEXT books I spend so much money on, so forget about leisure reading. But for some reason, having this tiny little device has made it so convenient to spend a few minutes here and there - on the bus, in the waiting room, on the potty, (you get the idea) - that it's all been adding up to that fulfillment that accompanies reading something I actually enjoy!
I've already finished one book (Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris) and am 20% done with another (Bonk by Mary Roach). I still can't make it to book club meetings but you can bet your ass I plan on reading the books!
Let me breakdown some of this device's uber cool features:
-no glare! it doesn't strain my eyes like looking at a computer monitor all day. it truly looks like pages of a book.
-adjustable font size. When I'm reading in bed at night and I no longer have my contacts in, I no longer need to search for my misplaced glasses. Just increase font size and it's like I have normal vision again! Woohoo!
-speaking of reading in bed... I don't have to flip pages! I know that sounds like I'm the laziest person in the world and I can't even be bothered to turn the pages of a book, but reading in bed is wonderfully comfortable and I can't tell you how nice it is not to have to change positions or crank my neck back and forth. This also comes in handy when on the bus if I have to stand. One hand on the rail, one hand to hold the Kindle. Genius!
-there is a little indicator on bottom that tells me how much progress I've made on a book. That way I don't get tricked into reading a 1000 page book without ever seeing an end in sight.
-Wi-Fi! I can connect to my wi-fi at home, buy and download books directly from Amazon. And they are cheap. usually around $10 but some as low as 99 cents. and I can carry all of them with me. When I go on vacation I can take 10 books if I want.
-I can also play games on it. I have a preference for word jumble games.
-auto shut off. If I happen to fall asleep while reading, after 10 minutes or so, Kindle does too.
I love it so much I bought a leather cover for it with a built-in-light in sour apple green.
The cool thing about the COVER, is that the Kindle actually connects to it at the 'hinges' so the light is connected to the Kindle battery. It looks like falling asleep while reading is pretty much inevitable in my future.
I still love all my physical books. Libraries and book shelves full of books will always make me happy, but too many of those books have been piling up on my shelves without having been read, and that is just tragic, right?
It doesn't have to be.
UPDATE: 2/18/11 - I can't believe I neglected to mention another one of my favorite features of the Kindle. The built in dictionary! I can look up words as I'm reading. So handy when you have a limited vocabulary, like I do. ;)
