Kindling My Reading

I had been reading a lot about Amazon 'Kindle' for a long time now. They introduced the eBook reader during Nov 2007. At that time I took it mostly as hype. I was not convinced to pay a dearly 400$ for reading books.

I use to read a lot of books when I was young. I had membership in many libraries most of the time, brought home thick books and read thru them without sleeping. Books talked to you, took you to wonderful dreamy land that was lots of fun.

I do not do it anymore due to these..

• I do not have the same patience or the desire like before.
• Libraries are not easily available.
• Books are costly and bulky to carry.
• Also, almost any book I wish is available on the net.
• I can always read it on my laptop.
• That thought alone prevents me from reading it.
• Then there is 'eye strain' to make things worse if u insist on reading.

Today's youth had been far away from reading, I recently read this somewhere 'the only book todays youth read is - facebook'. True that young generation read many things during their day to day life on the net, but it never is like reading a book. One is easily diverted to other topics when reading on the web. Reading does not get into my head anymore, I find I retain very less of what I read. I guess most of you would agree with me.

I recently came across a blog post where the reader had my same feelings and he wrote about how suddenly he hopped back to reading habits and how much that changed his life by using Kindle. The more I read about the books he had been reading lately I felt a loss at my heart that how much I miss that good habit.

That prompted me to relook at Kindle. Boy what perfect time did I take. They had come up with the fourth generation of the reader and now it only costs 140$. I know it's still a lot of money, but the features had improved a lot. The memory is doubled to 4G, its wifi now, battery stays for one month worth of reading!!!, its light weight, reading outdoor in the sun is just perfect, no reflection like on an iPad or your smart phone and the best part is hundreds of excellent books are free to download.

Many people say the experience is as good as reading the real book or even better. The demo video was indeed impressive. I went out the same evening to buy one, oh dear, they do not sell it here. The advice I got, "u need to order it from Amazon". I am kind of not sure about ordering stuff from the net. My friends tell me that it might never come (not Amazon, its 'this' place).

Then I bumped into a kind new friend who is a Brit. He is going for Eid holidays home and agreed to bring one with him when he comes back. Amazon UK is little costly than its US counterpart. But since I don't have any American's handy, I decided to swallow that loss. I ordered a Kindle on his address, it should be delivered in few days at his house.

He should be back after EID holidays on 20^th Insha Allah. I am thinking to download some children's books on it and introduce reading habits to my kids. U bet I am waiting to Kindle my reading.