To Kindle Or Not To Kindle

What is about a book store that makes me feel centered?  I can go into one and take a deep breath and feel refreshed as if I were breathing air from a meadow when there is still dew on the grass.  Cheesy, right?  But it's the truth!

Amazon has come out with this awesome new gizmo called a Kindle.  It's basically a paperback-sized contraption that you can download books onto and read just like a real book.  But instead of poor Alison having to lug around 8 books (yes, I brought 8 books with me for an eleven day trip) in her backpack and luggage, all I would need is the Kindle with the 8 books loaded onto it. Seems almost too good to be true.  I hear that the pages actually look like real pages and there is no strain on your eyes like looking at a computer screen.

But I love me a book!!  I love the smell of a book when you first crack the cover.  Having the next page under your finger so that you can flip really fast and not have to stop reading.  The weight of the book in your hand.  Holding the book with only one hand, properly stored in the crook of your hand between your thumb and pinky finger.

I read a lot.  Mostly when I'm trying to fall asleep.  When I'm on vacation, there is a book in my bag all the time, because who knows when I'll have the chance to just sit on the porch or in the sunroom and read for a few hours.  And those, to me, are the best parts of the vacation.  Just feeling relaxed, not worrying about anything, telephone off, cats napping next to one foot and the dog resting his head on the other.  Alone but not alone.

And a lot of times, I'll wind up falling asleep for a while as well.  So as I get sleepy, the book slips out of my hands and falls to my chest, place-kept perfectly for when I awake.  If I were holding a Kindle, I would get "thumped"!  And if I were falling asleep in my bed, it would probably fall to the ground at least once a night.

My love of books goes way past the reading part though.  I love shopping for them....all the choices!!  I love getting them in the mail and seeing the covers and the type of paper chosen for the book.  And when I'm done with the book, I like to stop and look at it on the shelf.  Like I'm giving it a loving home.  And one day, I'll pick it up and read a part again from it that I really enjoyed the first time around.  I wind up keeping my books because I love them and learn from them.  There are some that I could part with but there are some that I would have to replace immediately if they were to be lost somehow.  I guess at some point I will be gone and I want someone to be able to come in and see the type of person that I was and some of that will be shown in the types of books I read.

So although I love the idea of having a bajillion books just a click away (that actually might be dangerously expensive for someone like me now that I think about it) and the portability of it all, I fear that I would be missing out on a lot of the experience completely.  I know that I would buy the book electronically and like it so much that I would then proceed to buy a hard copy of it.

I think I just solved my own predicament.....