When I first got my Kindle, I was concerned that it would never really replace books in my life and I was afraid that I had made a significant financial investment in something that would just sit on the shelf, so to speak. Of course, the fact that I have literally thousands of books just sitting on the shelf now or stored in boxes in a storage unit doesn't seem to bother me at all. Still, I suspected there was something about the whole experience of reading a book that could not be replaced by an electronic device – turning the pages, flipping through the pages to see the size of the chapter ahead, skipping to the very end to cheat and see how the story turns out, folding down the corner to mark your place, breathing in the smell of paper and ink, dozing off with an open book on your chest, curling up with a child and passing a book back and forth between you – Could an electronic device ever replace the amazing experiences that come with real books?
Yes, I was skeptical. On the other hand, I'm always reading five or six books at a time, and carrying that pile from room to room in the house or attempting to travel with it was getting old. With the Kindle, I could have my whole library with me at any time, tucked nicely into my purse, waiting to come out and be of service when I was ready. For a book hopper like me, the Kindle was perfect! Sure, there were some things about hardcopy books that I missed, especially in the beginning, but as I got better and better with the features of the Kindle, these differences bothered me less and less.
And then came the iPhone. At first, I just downloaded the Kindle app and enjoyed that I could get my entire Kindle library on my iPhone, but I was sure that I would never use it because how could anybody comfortably read an entire book on that tiny screen? Then, one night, I was watching TV and saw an interesting book advertised. My iPhone was in my hand, so I opened the Kindle app and downloaded the new book. Then I opened the book and began reading it. A few hours later, I was finished. Wow! That tiny screen didn't bother me nearly as much as I thought it would. "Getting into the flow" of reading was just as easy on the little screen (with the font adjusted to "large," of course) as it was when I could hold a paper novel in my hand. And on my iPhone, I can download tens of thousands of books in free collections or very inexpensively through other apps. (If you're a book lover like me, you understand how just having all those books means something. I can't explain it, but it does.)
One of my favorite features for reading on the iPhone is that I can see what other people have highlighted in a particular text (and how many people have highlighted that particular section of text). For some reason, this helps me feel more connected to others who have read the same book, almost like it's a shared reading experience.
I still choose to read hard copy books from time to time because there still is no substitute for that old-fashioned experience of holding a real book in my hands, and I still choose hard copy books most of the time for my six-year-old son (although I have to admit that the newfangled interactive books online and available through the iPhone are very, very cool), but there is no doubt in my mind that the iPhone and the Kindle (and other e-readers like them) are here to stay.
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Read more of A Writer's Journey.
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