Lately, I’ve been thinking about how my reading has changed over the years. I used to be a physical book only reader – with as old as I am, I grew up in The Time Before E-Books and Readers. I was the kid/teen/adult who would always carry around a book (or two) with me everywhere, just in case. Reading emergencies happen, y’know? One of my favorite things to do (and I still love doing this, honestly) was to go into a bookstore, wander the shelves and just pick up and buy books that sounded interesting to me. This did present problems when I last moved… SO many boxes of books and NO space. (They’re all sitting in boxes out in one of my sheds… one day I’ll go through them all again.) Back in 2002-2004 I actually worked at Barnes & Noble – and a lot of that paycheck went right back to the company.
When the first Kindles came out, I was so judgy about reading on a device. *gasp* The horror of it all! 🙄 One of my closest friends who knew me well and had seen me take out a book when I was bored tried to sing the Kindle’s praises to me by telling me that I could have dozens of books available at any given time! (This was around 2009, maybe? Those Kindles did not have the memory of today’s devices.) Yeah, that didn’t work for me. I teased him about just being tired of carrying books around and was very vocal about my disbelief that the experience would be even close to the same. Yeah, I admit to being that person: the one who loudly proclaims their opinion as fact and refuses to listen to anyone else. Hey, at least I can admit it now, right? (Sorry for being so bitchy about that, Joel!)
Fast forward almost 15 years later (how the hell has it been that long??? ETA at 11am: apparently writing a blog post at 1am seriously affects my ability to math. So, tired math is a thing? Thanks for not calling me out on that, people. xoxo) and I read almost exclusively on my Kindle and have amassed a collection of Kindles. I’m not a fan of reading on my phone or iPad, but I have the app downloaded, in case I need to. Reading emergencies. Do I still read any physical books? Yes, but not often. Do I still own physical books? Yeah, I do… and I’ve run out of room for the new books that aren’t in my shed. Honestly, I find that I read so slowly when reading a physical book – there’s something about seeing how many minutes you have left in a chapter or book and seeing the percentage finished that just gives me a hit of serotonin and makes me happy. I know I can’t be alone in that, heh. For instance, I started a mass market romance at some point last month and put it down, picked it up, put it down, etc. and still haven’t gotten past page 100. It’s not because I’m not enjoying it, it’s just that reading with a physical book isn’t enjoyable to me. If I were to check the ebook out from the library and read it on my Kindle, I’d probably finish it in a day or so. 🤷🏻♀️ The fact that I have over 2,000 books available to download onto any of my Kindles at any given time is just a bonus… and makes packing for trips that much easier – and lighter!
So, since I have more than one Kindle, do I use them all? No, not always, but I do use them for different reasons. Things to note: I paid more for the no-ad version for all of these except the Voyage (and I learned how to turn them off on that because princess doesn’t want to deal with ads) and I believe that I got the 32gb in all of them. (I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t want to go look up all the devices individually to find out.)
- Kindle Fire 7: I bought this because I wanted a Kindle, but I wanted to be able to see the colors on book covers and in some of the books I was reading. (Biographies & memoirs usually have LOTS of pictures, as do books on art or folk tales.) Yes, I could have used my iPad for this – and I have – but I just do not like the experience of reading on that unless needed. This is definitely out of date and the battery life absolutely sucks. It still works, but the last time I used it, I had to recharge twice while reading the book.
- Kindle Fire 8: I inherited this from my mom when her eyesight started to fail. (She had macular degeneration that was advancing quickly in the last couple years before she passed away and could not see things straight ahead.) This is just a fancier version of the Fire that I already had, but with a better battery life! (That said, with as much as I read, it’s still not great, but better than the 7.) Currently, it’s MIA – it’s probably in my office or bedroom somewhere.
- Kindle Voyage: This one was my first “paper-like” e-reader and I loved this thing. It lasted well beyond its life expectancy – Amazon stopped supporting it YEARS ago. In its prime, it had really decent battery life. It was small, but it fit in most of my bags perfectly (that whole bringing a book along with me everywhere thing). If Amazon hadn’t stopped supporting this and the battery life hadn’t diminished so much, I probably would still be using this one. I keep it around and charge it every once in a while just to see that it still works.
- Kindle Oasis: When my Voyage’s battery life started to fail, I decided to treat myself one year and get an Oasis for my birthday. (3, maybe 4 years ago now?) It took some getting used to, but I did love the hell out of it. Until it stopped charging to 100% on a business trip and started only intermittently connecting to new WiFi connections. It would only charge to 65% and nothing would reset it. After doing complete hard resets 3 times, when I talked to Amazon customer support I was told that they were aware of the issue and there was no fix for it. And no plans for one; that it may just fix itself. Ummm, okay? And they couldn’t exchange it for a new one because it was more than a year old at that point, so they’d give me 20% off a new one! Yeah, I’m not spending that much on a replacement for something that was your most expensive e-reader when I bought it. After the credit was applied to my account for my next Kindle purchase, I just was at a loss. I read on it until I’d use the battery completely, let it sit for weeks, then try to charge it and it’d only get to 65%. Weird. Luckily, I had the Fires to use and the Voyage, but still. So I put it aside and forgot about it. I’d ordered a new Kindle (not another Oasis) and was using that pretty exclusively… until I ran across it cleaning up my computer desk. I decided to charge it and leave it on the charger overnight just to see what happened. To my surprise, it charged to 100% – there have been no updates that were sent out for it, but it now charges fully again. I’ve been using it along with the new Kindle, but the battery life sucks. At least with the frequency I read at.
- Kindle Signature Paperwhite: I picked this up to replace my Oasis and wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it since I really did love my Oasis. After learning about some of its quirks, I ended up making this my day-to-day Kindle. It’s small, relatively lightweight, and fits into most of my purses. (I read while in line at the grocery stores, since most of my knit projects are a little too cumbersome to take along.) The battery life is insanely good – I can read for almost a week before *needing* to charge it. (Remember that I read 5+ books a week and it’s constantly in use.) And it charges quickly whether plugged in or on a wireless charger. I wasn’t going to pick this up, but I got it on sale… and I got that 20% off credit applied, so it became affordable really quickly!
So, as y’all can see, I’ve been married to Amazon when it comes to e-readers. A lot of it is just convenience. All of them communicate with my Goodreads profile, so the fact that I’m lazy about actually writing a review doesn’t matter, because it’ll still track that I read the book and my star rating. Also, I have multiple years of Kindle Unlimited, so that gives me access to books that are only available on that platform. However, with more authors pulling their books from KU to be able to sell them globally, or are joining programs like Kobo Plus, are you still using Kindles or have you moved to another reader? Also, are you still using KU or have you moved on to Kobo Plus or another option (e.g. Nook, Kobo e-readers, etc.)?
Hmmm, this was meant to be more of a post about how you read and it’s developed into just e-readers. Oops!
Just one final thought on how you read – it doesn’t matter how you get the material, whether it’s a physical book, an ebook, or an audiobook. Reading is reading. Everyone does it differently and that’s okay because it all counts, dammit. Don’t let anyone tell you anything different.
Bookish, Nerdy, and Curious 