Amazon Kindle (other reading devices available!)
They didn’t become the biggest and the best by chance.
The good thing about Amazon Kindle is that one device can hold pretty much all you need when travelling and takes up a fraction of the space in your bag.
Rather than carrying a collection of DVD movies, travel guides, and reading books.
Since I have been away travelling, the time available to spend catching up on reading, both factual as well as fiction and a few self-help improvement books thrown in, has made me realise how important having a digital reader really is.
I am very much old school when it comes to books.
From the age of 14, I liked nothing better than spending my Saturdays and all of my pocket money trawling through old dusty bookshops in my hometown and looking quizzically at the (usually) old man in charge.
Sat behind a big old antique desk covered in what looked like first-edition books from every kind of subject, smoking a pipe, and I thought to myself, “Will he let me have all 3 I want for the price of 2 of them?”
(No buy 2 get one free in those days)
After about 2 months, they got used to me coming in every week or so and started to worry less about taking my money; they even let me sit for a while and read.
Normally, this is where the story goes: I came to visit so often that they offered me a job, and I helped out, learned more about keeping books and running a business, and got to read everything for free.
Alas, when you are a shy 14-year-old, these things you read in books or see in the movies don’t actually happen in real life, well, not to everyone anyway.
So I just kept on visiting and buying and collecting.
I resisted the urge when everything went digital, saying that I preferred the smell of a book to the online version.
The feel of a book in your hand rather than the metallic feel of a tablet, not to mention the constant cleaning of the screen due to sticky fingerprints and after all, it’s better for your eyes than staring at a screen all day, right?
But everything has its place, and as I sit here on a beach in Thailand, I can read the news, reply to friends via email, write this post for my blog and then go back to reading any number of books in my gallery.
The plus side?
No extra bag full of reading materials, so I am glad I invested in one in the end.
So worth the cost, don’t you think?
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