Falling in Love with My E-reader All Over Again.

I’m not sure what it’s been about this year, but I feel like me and my e-reader have gotten to be best friends.  Even though I’ve been a “Kindle” or “e-book” person for the past few years, my love of my kindle, lovingly named Carmilla (I name all my electronics after vampires) has really increased this year in particular.  So, fully expecting to receive some friendly wrath from all of you “I just like the way a real book feels…” people, here are my top 10 new reasons I love my Kindle.

1)  The Oxford-English dictionary is programmed in.  I like to jump around between YA novels, fluff novels, genre novels, and literary fiction.  This means that, depending on what I’m reading, I come across lots of words or abbreviations I’ve never seen before (or more honestly, I have seen before and have been too lazy to look up.  A horrible confession for an English teacher to make).  Now all I have to do is click n the word and up pops the definition.

2) Free Classics.  E-books offer the classics for free (or almost free) and while I haven’t made as much headway into these books as I would like to I have taken the first step and actually own them.  Something I wouldn’t have done if I couldn’t store them all on my Kindle or had to pay a high price for them.  I’d rather read the classic and then decide if I want a bookshelf copy after I’ve decided if its a book I enjoy.

3) Indie Books!  Now…there are a lot of people who probably consider this a downfall of e-books and a sign of the slow death of the publishing industry and “good” books.  My response to them is how many of these books have you actually read?  Sure, some of them are really bad…but not all of them are.  Sure authors aren’t making as much money…but not all writers care about that. In fact, indie published authors are more likely to be an active participant with their readers.

4) Library Books.  This is my personal book-miracle.   The books can be checked out for 21 days at a time, downloaded through amazon directly to your kindle, and with all the perks of a real kindle book.  Yes, the wait time for a book can take awhile, but I’ve compared between e-books and print books and the difference in wait time actually comes out in favor of the e-book.  So go dust off your library card!

5) Changing font size.  I’m not sure why I feel like this is such a big deal, but I like being able to change the font size of a book.  I can get rid of that obnoxious between line space and even shrink up the font if I’d prefer, or, if I’m reading with a headache I can expand the font size and save my eyes.

6) Goodreads.  No, this isn’t actually an “e-book” site, but I do have the app on my kindle fire and I can talk about books with other people and post my favorite quotes and progress (not to mention another place for reviews).  I also have a fancy “verified author” account, which has it’s own benefits.

7) It fits in my purse.  Coming from someone who tried to carry around a print copy of Les Miserables so I could pull it out and read it “discretely” when waiting in line, having all of my books in something compact, lightweight, and easy to pull out is a big deal.

8) Enhanced Content.  Alright, I don’t particularly like enhanced book content, but I love it in my magazines.  I read the New Yorker (I want to say every week, but that’s a lie, I have about 3 months worth of back issues to get to) and the Kindle version includes extra content, video clips, picture slideshows, and oral readings of poems and fiction by the authors.

9) Sync to twitter!   As of the last kindle update there is now an option to share your quotes with kindle owners reading the same book and to post that quote on your twitter and facebook account.  I love anything that promotes community reader and this made me very, very happy.

10) Self-citing quotes.  This will probably only come in handy if you’re writing a paper, but, if you copy a kindle quote from the kindle PC page to a word document it includes an MLA citation after it automatically.  Fabulous.

Now that you have some of my favorite e-reader/e-book perks go make the choice yourself!  And enjoy the last day of your weekend, hope you’re reading a good book.  I also have a big announcement to make on Monday, so be sure to check back in tomorrow to share in my real-world excitement (okay, it’s not really a big announcement as much as it is a ‘if I put this in writing I actually have to follow up and that kind of motivation keeps me working’  but I am still excited to announce it and want to share it with all my favorite readers).