My Favourite Things — The Amazon Kindle
The Kindle was not the first eReader that I owned. That honour went to Sony, but it was the Kindle that led me to realize that the way I read and consumed books had changed forever. Like many people of my generation, packing for holidays was a constant challenge, baggage restrictions made choosing books to take for the poolside a time-consuming process. A two-week break for my wife and I demanded at least 10 paperbacks, preferably ones we could read and leave to free up baggage space for the return flight. Suddenly I travelled with just the one Kindle, which could easily slip into a coat pocket. Perhaps more meaningfully, when I went to live in Qatar for several years, my Kindle meant that I could still have access to an English Library. In a country where access to English books was limited as there were few bookshops in the malls.
On a train to London, daring to look at my fellow passengers, I realized that around 2/3 of those reading books held a Kindle. At that point, I realized that reading really had undergone a revolution.
There were many reasons for this revolution. Many people found the ease of access to a library of books refreshing. It was effortless to purchase new books online. The Kindle itself was light, easy to hold or mount and could support text to speech or audiobooks. The Kindle was perfectly functional in a wide variety of settings, unlike my phone or tablet, perfect whether reading under the bedclothes or in bright sunshine by the pool.
The more I used my Kindle, the more I found uses for it. I found that it was perfect for reviewing documents from my team or others. When I received them in my email, I forwarded each directly to the Kindle. I could read the files that night over a coffee, listening to music or watching television. I now had one device for reading regardless of setting. I had easy access to the books I wanted and had purchased, including many authors I had never read previously.
Change came with a cost, I bought some favourite books again, and when Terry Pratchett signed a copy of “Guards! Guards!” for my son, felt that his words inked across my Kindle screen might have been a problem. I miss bookshops and killing time browsing books, judging them by their covers and blurbs, but all of these are outweighed by the many benefits. I still read the odd paperback or hardcover tome. Yet, the Kindle changed my reading behaviour forever.
