Friday, August 26, 2011

My Kindle... one year later

It’s been just over a year since Mike got me an Amazon Kindle for my birthday, and I am still loving it! (I do have some pangs of envy for the Barnes and Noble Color Nook, because it is like an iPad and book reader in one, and touchscreen; but for reading books, I still love my Kindle.)

I now have more than 100 items in my Kindle. Barely a dent in its 3,500 book capacity. What surprises me is the range of what I have, and how much of it was free. I peruse the Kindle free list every couple of days, and it is rare for me to not add something. Many of the free books I have read have been really good. Of course, their list is achieving its purpose, because there are a couple of authors I have now paid to read their other books.

I have created seven categories in my Kindle: Books Read, Games, Non-fiction, Religious, Children’s Books, Cookbooks, and Kindle Info and Dictionaries.

Books read is obviously the books I have finished. There are 20 in there, which is not bad for me for a year because I also read some “real” books during the year that I actually had to physically hold their full weight and turn their paper pages. Gasp!

Some of my favorites for the year include:

Games was a surprise for me, because I didn’t realize there would be any. Originally there were a couple word games available, they were fun to play and worked my brain, and then more and more came on the market. I only get the free ones, but I have seven in there now (some of which have multiple games in and of themselves.)

Non-fiction includes a number of writing skills books, organizing, history, etc. I think all of these were free.

Religious… again, free books. I have some in there dealing with various issues, and I also have some study guides and the actual Bible. The thing about this category that brought me a big chuckle this year is when I got an email from Amazon stating that there was a revised, updated version of the Bible available. I thought, “Wow, really?! Suurrree.” As I read further it turned out that the version I downloaded had some typos, and the new version had corrected those.

Children’s books includes a number of classic children’s tales. I figure this way I always have something I can read out loud to the kids.

Cookbooks. The Kindle is not the ideal way to look through a cookbook, but these were all free and I have tried some of the recipes.

The last category on Kindle info is just the files that come on the Kindle on operating it, etc., as well as dictionaries.

I use it a lot, and continue to love to read. I love that I can click a book on the Amazon site and within a minute it is right there in my hand. I love that I can easily carry around hundreds of books and have my choice at any moment. I love that I have put the Kindle application on my phone and I can read my books on there, right from the very page I was on when I turned my Kindle off. (And then when I turn my Kindle on, it opens to the page I left off on while using my phone!)

Ahh, technology!

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