Reading on a Kindle

When the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook first came out, I couldn't imagine using one to read on. I love to read and love the feel of a solid book in my hands. At one point I finally had a chance to get a Kindle and fell instantly in love. I have had it for 3 or more years at this point and my actual style of Kindle is no longer made. I have a Kindle Keyboard which makes it easy to type into the Kindle if I am looking up an author or a word from the dictionary. Even when reading a 'regular' book now, if I run into a word I don't know the meaning of, I will look it up in my Kindle rather than having to get up and pull a very heavy dictionary off the shelve, look up the word and then put the dictionary back without dropping it of breaking a fingernail. I have found that the Kindle is a blessing to my arthritic hands and if I read all evening my hands aren't screaming at me like they would a regular book, especially paperbacks.

Amazon has come out with another model of a Kindle that is reasonable priced and offers almost all the conveniences that I have wished for in my Kindle (or any book for that matter). The ability to translate a foreign language into English, instead of getting up, finding the right dictionary from our 7-8 English to Foreign Language dictionaries, and looking the words up in that super tiny font that they think all high school and college kids have the ability to read. No longer do you have to jump through several pages to get your word definition as it will display right on the page you are reading. There are other things that make it so much easier to read and understand what you are reading. I still wish they would have an on board atlas for looking up current spots on a map as well as places that no longer exist since World War II. Reading any book before the 1950's, it is especially difficult to figure out where in the world the characters are. I don't know if they are working on this, but I suppose it would be a complicated project because of all the changes over 100's of years of time.

With the holidays coming you may want to consider a Kindle for you child that is meant for children only. It is the regular Kindle only bundled for children, with a 2-year long guarantee period, it has the ability to not allow a child to download 'adult' books, it is thinner and lighter for a child to hold, and it can help a child set reading goals. It comes with a vocabulary builder, dictionary, etc. It doesn't have games or email which means when you child is looking at their Kindle, they are reading! I have always felt that books are one of the best presents for children and so you might want to think about this gift for your child with the holidays coming!

Deciding to buy one now you can save up the money as well as being on the lookout for any sales that Amazon might have on this Kindle. If you have been good all year, you might want to do the same and move up to the newer Kindle as well.

The Joy of Kindle Unlimited!

I love to read. I mean it. I read lots and lots of books. While I thought I would never enjoy reading on a Kindle, I discovered it was much easier to hold for my hands. I could read while eating since I don't have to hold pages open and with Kindle Unlimited I have so many books at my finger tips I'm in readers heaven. I truly thought that the only 'free' books would be cheap romance novels written by 6th graders. Instead I have found some terrific authors that write serious pieces of work.

Before you download any book to read on the Unlimited program or buy for that matter, most have book samples to read of around 5-10% of the book. If you get through that sample and go argh! because the book is so enticing, exciting, etc. when the sample is finished it is so great to be able to download the book and find your places and continue reading. This is one thing that I would like to see improved since the Kindle can keep track of our places in all the books we may be reading at one time, I don't know why when we finish a sample and then download the book we have to manually find our place where the sample left off. Perhaps there is a way and I just haven't found it yet on my Kindle keyboard which I don't think they make anymore and if someone knows how to do that, please let me know!

I read serious books as well as cozy mysteries and vintage books that are hard to find in print anymore. My constant companion when reading any book taking place in the US is my large print atlas (10 cents at the thrift store!). A book that takes place in other parts of the world I have an atlas for that as well, but much more difficult to find some countries that keep changing their names and boards. The worst being the former Soviet Union and the eastern side of Europe where battles seem to be continually fought and the boundaries keep changing. It would be nice to have an atlas built into the Kindles as well with maps for the different time periods. But even with a current atlas that shows only our more modern world, I'm still learning more geography. One of the last books that I read to review on Amazon, took place between 1912 -1922 mostly in Russia and India where boundaries constantly where changing then. It was hard to follow the character's travels without getting lost.

Now that was a 'serious' book which meant I had to clear my mind out before reading another serious one and so I found a new cozy mystery writer who writes in a series and so far I have been able to read her books for 'free' through the Kindle Unlimited program. Why do I need to clear out my mind? Many times on the Amazon review program that I am on I get books by new authors and lets just say they may never get past that first book. I rarely ever do reviews here of books that were disappointing to me. I would prefer to review here books and products that I truly like and if most of my recommendations are ones that you find that you like as just as I do so why bother with the lousy books? You can always find my reviews on Amazon here.

My Kindle and Me

Been a long time since I posted, but not a long time since I read a book. I've actually read a lot of books, but get side tracked from writing up reviews on them. anyhow, for my birthday I received a Kindle Keyboard 3G .  When Kindle's first hit the market, I thought that there was no way in the world that I would ever want one. I love books, I love reading books, holding books,and having selves full of books all over my house. Then I started noticing just how sore my hands were getting when I read, especially books like thick paperbacks that are constantly fighting you. With severe arthritis, the last thing I wanted was more pain in my hands. I was also having authors asking me to review their work that was, surprise, only available on a Kindle or e-reader.

So I checked into Kindles, studied the descriptions and realized that since we are too far out of town to get WiFi and we didn't have it at our house, I would need a 3G Kindle so I could actually connect to Amazon's Kindle store. So with hubby's blessing I bought one and expected to only read some books on it. When it showed up in just a couple of days, I had fun figuring it out. I was happy to see that I had a dictionary on board and that turned out to be one of the first things that really got me happy. Now instead of having to pick up our 5# dictionary, I can look up words on my Kindle. I also found that I was able to download for free many of my favorite authors like Jane Austin, Charlotte Bronte, Jean Stratton Porter. I found that my Kindle would alert me to my newer favorite author's latest releases and I was able to use it get a sample of their books to be sure whether or not I had read it yet or if there was another book in the series that I needed to read first.

This past week really showed me though, just how nifty a Kindle can be. I had checked a book out of the library, Jane Austen's Guide to Dating , when I started reading it, I kept finding references to Northanger Abbey one of Jane's books that I had read but only once so the references were obscure to me. So I pulled out my Kindle and looked up Northanger Abbey and started reading it. The book itself kept making reference to yet another book that the young ladies in the novel were reading. So I wondered to myself, could that be a real book? I looked up Udolpho on my Kindle and sure enough it was there!  Now I know I can find a copy of all Jane Austen's works at my local library, but the chance of finding this book that a book written in 1818 was commenting impossible and yet here I now have it on my Kindle! If my Kindle only had a good US and world atlas and a dictionary of old fashioned word usage it would make reading really fun. I think using my Kindle for more than reading, had made me realize what a valuable addition to my reading it can be even when I have  my  nose buried in an old fashioned book. Is this 6 degrees of separation when it comes to books?