The Kindle Conundrum

I have a complex relationship with technology. Of course I'm a software trainer by day, so workwise I'm pretty well lost without my laptop. The online universe remains the main conduit to the world for my job and the basis for my primary methods of communication with a goodly chunk (though certainly not all) of my personal life. Parents, family and friends who may be miles or continents away are mere clicks away whenever I want. The cell phone, iPod, laptop and GPS aren’t luxuries anymore. They’re parts of living in the society now. I’ve got two blogs of my own, I belong to a few social networking sites, and P and I text each other far more often than we speak on the phone.

At the same time, though some of the complaints of a marauding reliance on all things electronic may sound like the nonsensical ravings of fuddy duddy luddites, they aren’t necessarily off base. If you think about it, many of us are losing the art of face to face conversation, forgetting the importance and charm of writing a proper note and the appreciation of curling up with a good book. That brings me to my present dilemma: I can’t decide whether or not to get a Kindle. You’re familiar with Kindles, right? The Kindle is amazon.com’s ultra-cool, sleek, amazingly well-designed e-book reader. Amazon.com introduced its first version of the Kindle in November of 2007. They’re on version 3 now. The Kindle’s screen doesn’t look like a monitor so much as it looks exactly like ink on paper. The device is about as thick as a pencil and lighter than your average paperback. It has free, built-in internet access, and can store more than 1,500 books. You also get instant access to periodicals, newspapers, blogs, you name it. You can annotate, bookmark, browse new amazon.com offerings and download from a selection of hundreds of thousands of titles nearly instantly. The reader is $360. There’s a newer, large format edition, optimized for textbooks and full-face newspapers that retails for about $100 more. Titles are around $10 per download. The initial investment is a tad steep, but after that, it’s well worth it. The money isn’t the issue.

I’ve held one of these babies in my hand. It’s sexy as hell. There’s no other word for it. The thing just feels perfect. Light but solid, balanced and intuitively laid out. I’ve polled friends who have them, and everyone I’ve asked who owns a Kindle swears by it. They wouldn’t leave home without it, which for me is the point since much of my book reading takes place when I’m on the road, and lightening my carry on load is always key. So why don’t I own one yet? That’s the tricky part. For all my comfort with and reliance on technology, I’m not an early adopter. I don’t get gadgets for the sake of gadgetry. I’ve got a terrific cell phone which I love (and it’s a texting monster), but I don’t own a blackberry or an iPhone, and I’m not part of the twitterati. To paraphrase Seinfeld, not that there’s anything wrong with them, they’re just not me.

My problem with the Kindle has nothing to do with the Kindle per se. I love books. I enjoy the old fashioned ritual of book reading. I like checking out the cover art, and reading the marketing blurb on the back cover. I love taking the measure of a book in a store, holding it in my hand, feeling its weight, and determining whether this feels like a book I want to read. I love the ritual of reading, holding the book in my hands, turning the page, tucking my boarding pass in the back and using old boarding passes as bookmarks. I like picking it up partway through and assessing from the bookmark's position how much further I have to go to completion, and I still get a frisson of satisfaction mixed with loss when I read a book’s last lines and put it down, chalking it up once and for all in the mental read-cover-to-cover column. I admire bookshelves. Strictly speaking they're nothing but storage space, but they also tell stories in and of themselves. Although we still have a dozen boxes of books in our basement that never got unpacked when we moved to Maynard almost three years ago, I like having them, storage or not. There’s a ritual to book reading that the electronic screen can’t replicate, even a screen as admittedly great as the Kindle’s. Sony has a very good e-book reader, as do others (a coworker just got a Sony), but if I were to get an electronic reader, it would definitely be the Kindle. However, that remains an if.

The ritual of newspaper reading was easy to get over, as I have no problem reading newspapers online (I do it every day). Somehow, books are different for me. Perhaps I’ll splurge some day and take the plunge into e-bookland, but for now, I’m still conflicted enough that for the time being, I’ll stick with the actual pages, and eschew the virtual ones. I'm sure I'll break down someday, but in the meantime, if you'll excuse me, I have a paperback to finish.