Thursday, December 1, 2011

Holiday Wish List | Thoughts on the Kindle?

Last week, I endured the Black Friday madness - and survived! I'm super tough like that.
One of the things that caught my eye was the Kindle for $75 - I ended up passing on it, for a variety of reasons, the most notable was that .. it was only a $5 discount. It didn't seem necessary to stand in line for an hour to save five bucks.
Image: Kindleport.com

Now, when the E-readers first came out a few years ago, they were more expensive than they are now, which is always rule #1 with new technology: If you can be patient about getting the new technology, you can save a lot of money. But you sacrifice being the coolest kid on the block, which has never been a problem for me. :-p

I'm a bit old school. I like having books. I like the thought of having an expansive library on ornate bookshelves, organized and categorized, reflecting my outlook and interests as a person. It's amazing for novel research, grabbing that old psych textbook or history text, and verifying some things. Notes in the margins.

In this, I cringed at the hundreds of books I left behind in Florida when I moved to North Carolina. In this, E-readers were not interesting to me.

Then something happened. I was looking on Amazon at history books. History was never a strong subject for me, but because I'm writing in a pseudo-prehistoric world, I've become more interested lately in how those hunter-gatherer tribes evolved into the powerful, epic cultures that still have their mark upon the lands, thousands of years later.

I discovered some massive tomes on say, Ancient Rome, the "goto" books, the must-haves, and they were a little pricy. Unless you got the EBook - in which case, they were FREE.

Free books.

Admittedly, pricing on new release Ebooks is not very competitive, in which case, I'd just as soon have real books for the pretty shelves of my imagination/future. On the other hand, recently there've been some amazing sales - recent releases for $3, promotional sales for $1 - only in Ebooks.

Who doesn't love to save some money?

But I've never used an Ereader, so before I put that on my Xmas wish list, I thought I'd ask around and see if any of you have one, what you think of them, and so forth.

2 comments:

  1. I don't know anything about an e-reader.. or sad to say even what it is .. but I love love love my kindle.. and I've bought a lot of books for 3 dollars .. even 1.50.. the majority of new releases are 9 dollars.. I love a library.. the look of books lining shelf after shelf.. I love the hard copy.. the smell... i have hundreds of books.. and i too thought i couldn't love a kindle.. but I do!! I can see a book and have it immediately sent to me without ever going to astore.. i can start reading immediately... I love mine... everything about it... except it is the second one out.. so an older version....

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  2. Well, Songbird - the kindle IS an E-reader, as well as the Nook, the IPad, and some other items.

    I guess we're in the same boat, then... I'm seriously going to have to revisit my thinking on this. Thanks for the feedback, none of my facebook friends had an opinion apparently, lol.

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