Leaving on our trip without books is absolutely unthinkable, given how much I love reading. I was the kid who stayed awake at night under the covers with a flashlight, reading. I’d read the back of cereal boxes if nothing else was available. I read voraciously – at one time I read a thousand pages a day; I’d walk down the aisles of stores with a book open in front of my face.
I get heart palpitations at the thought of being without books.
Chelsea is nearly the same, though she’s willing to spend time playing Angry Birds, Scrabble, Dropword, or just listening to music. I’m not so much interested in games on a little screen. Give me books.
During the first part of our trip from 2007-2009, we got really good at tracking down free or low-cost paperbacks. We discovered campgrounds frequently have books left behind by other campers; libraries often sell old paperbacks for less than a dollar or they allow an exchange; many small stores will have a shelf or two of books. People with whom we stayed would often give us books, too.
Then of course there was Sean Gayle of Patti’s Book Nook in Gueydan, LA, who let us borrow, read and return, borrow read and return, borrow read and return. Sean gets our highest lifetime book award – our “Book-Loaning Hero”.
We eventually got to know which books had the highest exchange value, so by the end of that leg of our trip we were carrying no fewer than twelve paperbacks in their own dry bag. Not only is it bulky and heavy to carry that many books, honestly – how many times can you read the same book? Time to explore the “new” technology of the e-reader.
As always, I did my research and learned all about e-ink, color readers, reading with them in low light and bright light. I thought I’d read it all; I thought I’d read every available review on the Web. So I chose the Kindle, completely unaware that in only six weeks or so Barnes and Noble was coming out with a new version of their reader. Grrr….
Though I was initially very resistant to using an e-reader, I’ve changed my mind.
- The e-ink readers are much easier on the eyes than regular paperbacks, the quality of which can vary wildly. The font sizes are easily changed, and they are much easier to read in low light. They are surprisingly easy to read in bright light too, and it’s easy to tilt them if light is causing a reflection.
- It’s nice to have the size of the “book” always be consistent. It’s easy to tuck them in anyplace a regular paperback would go.
- The weight of the “books” is always consistent – a huge book like Lord of the Rings Trilogy is the same weight as a Sue Grafton.
- We love having so many books available to us at the same time. Chelsea has books she’ll read at night, and others that are strictly daytime books. We don’t have to get up and go get another book when we want to change, and we don’t have stacks of books sitting around.
- We can organize the books on the Kindle however we want – by author, by genre, or by how much we like it – whatever our hearts desire.
- The battery life is great.
- We love having a dictionary readily available.
- I love the ability to highlight a sentence or two and refer back to it easily later.
- The wireless is easy to turn on and off which makes it easy to download books to it. (We didn’t find the 3G necessary at all, since we have wireless as part of our DSL at home, and we won’t have 3G when we leave the country.)
- There’s a huge supply of books available, and it’s growing daily.
- It will take PDF files.
- For us of course, the big factor that trumps all others is the fact that we can carry up to three thousand books in our Kindle for the weight of less than a pound.
By now we have gotten pretty sophisticated at using our Kindles. We’ve discovered Kindle Nation, which provides a near-daily list of free books. We know how to get low-priced books. We’ve borrowed a book from another Kindle owner. We’ve downloaded a few Google free books. We’ve read dozens and dozens of books. And we’ve got our observations on all of it.
First on the list are the “extras” offered, such as Internet access for web browsing and social media. For us that’s useless, and unless the e-readers change pretty fundamentally, that will never be a feature we want. If I want Internet I’ve got my smartphone, which is much more full-featured and does a much better job at it. We don’t read magazines and newspapers on the Kindle, so having links to click is not a draw for us.
We are interested in reading, and reading only. We want a dedicated e-reader. Reading with the smartphones is too tedious (never mind using up precious battery life), and we don’t want to have to drag out our laptops every time we want to read.
While an iPad or other tablet would be nice under a lot of circumstances, tablets are not a full computer, and we need a full computer given that we work on the road. We already have our smartphones that will fulfill the capabilities of an iPad. So, already having smartphones and a laptop, we want a straightforward e-reader.
Next on the list is how bad much of the (older) scanning quality is. Some of the books that were scanned in the early days are actually distressing to read, there are so many errors. Letters are missed, letters are run together, punctuation is incorrect, spacing is atrocious, and on and on. Apparently you’re on your own if you bought a book like this; Amazon will not give refunds (though that may have changed recently).
We discovered one author we really liked on a free books list, so much so that we went on and bought her next two books. Yes, the scanning was not up to par, but we ignored it as we really liked the books. Much to our surprise, Amazon sent us a notification that the book has since been re-scanned and we can download the new version at no charge. However, that’s only one of many lousy versions we’ve gotten.
The good news is that the scanning is getting better and better, and many books are now coming out in e-reader format, without having to be scanned.
Read on for our experience on the Kindle itself.