Kindlespiration

I have decided I quite love my Kindle.

1) I like the thrill of being able to buy a book without leaving the house and enjoy the instant gratification of having it delivered in under 60 seconds. 60 seconds!! 'I'll have that one - paid - voila! And read...' Magic!

2) I like the smallness and lightness of it. I have bought a flowery canvas Kindle cover for it (by Lente Designs on Amazon - very good value for money and vegetarian-friendly to boot) and it is still small and light. It slips into the purple shoulder bag perfectly and there's no ruckling of pages and crumpling of paper. And the book mark doesn't slip out when any process of shoulder bag rootling has to take place.

3) I like the push-button page turning. No having to hold the book open, which, let's face it, can be a chore if the book is an 800 page blockbuster that requires fingers of steel to keep the pages apart. You can lie on the living room floor (my favourite position for reading) and go 'read-click-read-click-read-click' with the merest pressure of a thumb. Or index finger, just for variety. I imagine the calorific burn is similar, so no obvious danger of developing fat hands.

4) The variable print size suits my fuzzy eye tiny reading prescription moments first thing in the morning and last thing at night when I am tired or just awake. No varifocals for me! Well, not just yet anyway...

5) Some of the free books are fabulous. And some of them are rubbish. Lots of the books are under a £1. Some of those are fabulous. And some of them are rubbish. I downloaded what turned out to be a rubbish one but it also turned out to be the best 98p I've ever invested, because as I read I thought,' This is dreadful! This woman is a much-published and professional writer. She earns her living writing. I can write better than this. Much better.' And it got me re-editing 'Indigo Antfarm, Violet and Blue,' and the first three chapters are ready to go off to agents and publishers. Just need to write a synopsis now, and if you are a writer you'll know that this is probably the most tricky and tedious part of trying to get published. But I'm so happy with the book, I may just upload it to Kindle anyhow, like we did with Nearly King Jimbo. I reckon it's worth a pound of anyone's money.

I have embraced the e-book. P'raps I'm not such a Luddite after all. Of course, I shan't reject the booky book because some books will always be better in their booky book form than their Kindle book form. But for the reading of a novel-type book (especially your light-weight holiday chicklit reads), the Kindle is great! And it takes up a lot less space on the shelf, too.