Maybe it’s the effects of nostalgia setting in…looking at paperbacks of the past through red wine-colored spectacles.
I’ve owned my trusty Amazon Kindle 3 for 2 months and I’m on my third book, the last book of the Stieg Larsson trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. After a couple of months, it is fair to say the newness of my Kindle has worn off. I miss this part of reading books.
Reading books in the form of paperbacks instead of an electronic reader gives one a sense of novelty each and every time you start a new book. I realized I miss admiring the artwork on the cover, the font used for the words and even the different textures and color of the paper. Having worked on the publication of newspapers and even a technical reference manual, I can appreciate the thought that goes into the multitude of decisions when publishing in paper. Perhaps you can’t relate to this. The feeling is akin to what most folks describe as the “new car smell”.
With an electronic reader, once the new gadget glow has worn off (for me around 2 months), you may be reading a completely different novel, but the form factor is still the same. The soft, dull texture of my graphite-colored Kindle has passed its days of being novel and I have not owned it long enough for it to be familiar, like a well-worn pair of jeans or sneakers.
To help me make this transition, I finally decided on a Kindle case. For a while, I was certain I was going to get the leather Amazon Kindle case with light in black. But after some more consideration though, I liked the fact that the M-Edge Latitude Kindle Jacket allowed you to zip around the entire case. It just seemed more rugged when thrown into my laptop bag or my purse. The other thing I liked about it was that the light which can be purchased separately slips into the case, uses standard AAA batteries, and you don’t have to decide to get the light when you purchase the case. Also, if there is a problem with the light, you can purchase a replacement.
My thoughts about paperbacks may just be a romanticized version of the true experience, remembering only the good and missing out on all the challenges of paperbacks. How thick and heavy they used to make my laptop bag on travels. To come to a fair assessment, I would need to revisit the past and read a book in paper form.