Reading Week!: the inevitable e-reader issue, review of the Kindle Paperwhite

For Christmas this year my mother surprised me with the new Kindle Paperwhite. I felt like I did at age 6 when I received my beloved Bitty Baby doll - pure joy and immediate love. Up until this past year, Rosie, my Bitty Baby, was hands-down my all time greatest Christmas gift. Now poor Rosie has been demoted and I am completely infatuated with the Kindle, making her (yes, she's a girl - she has a pink case so obviously) my new favourite Christmas gift.

Not-so-quick and dirty review

Look how pretty! 

Aesthetically this Kindle is very pleasing - small and slim, sleek, very minimalist with a screen just slightly smaller than an average mass market paperback page. I'm not sure how it compares in size to the other Kindles but I love its compact size. It feels as though I'm carrying a small paperback book, especially when I have it in my bright pink case (by Marware). I also love the paper and book themed images on the resting screen - pencils, fountain pens, etc. (the one I don't really get are the children's blocks - they have the alphabet on them, but still not particularly book related). As far as I know, these images are different from the other Kindle models, which show pictures of authors on the resting screen. The touch screen is a great feature as I never liked the older versions with keyboards. Also, obviously I need to comment on the unique "paperwhite" screen - it's very nice. Didn't say I would have a particularly useful comment, did I? I like that I can adjust the lighting of the screen and it is very easy on the eyes. In a dark room, it is actually suggested to use a lower light setting so you can read without straining your eyes, which I think is fantastic.

Using the Kindle has been very use-friendly. I like that I can organise my library into collections as I am a total organisation freak - also keeps the home screen from becoming cluttered, which is one thing I really hate. I won't go into detail about every little feature, so I'll just go over a few of my favourites and a few of my not-so favourites.

The good:
- At any point in the book you can touch the top of the screen to pull down a menu, from which you can navigate throughout the book or back to the home screen or store. You can also search the book for certain words (great for students analysing texts). There's also an X-ray feature that I don't really use, but it shows how often a certain character appears in that chapter or on that page.

It just wants to fit in with my other books
(theme: pink)

- I actually really like the highlighting and note-taking features. I am definitely someone who marks up books, and honestly I'm not going to lie and say this is the same thing because it's definitely lacking in comparison to my intricate system of annotation. However, I do really like that all of your notes and highlights can be viewed together in one place. This is really useful for students writing essays who don't want to be constantly flipping through the book to find that passage to quote - just go to the Notes page for the book and they're all there.

- I like seeing the percentage of how much of the book I've read. When I'm reading a book, I constantly close it up to see how far along my bookmark is. The Kindle just gives me that information right away - something I never would have thought of as a part of my reading experience but appreciate now that they've included it.

- I also love that you can get samples of books before buying them. When I'm browsing through a bookshop I often want to sit down and read the opening pages (sometimes I do!) but feel to awkward or rushed, like the booksellers will come up and charge me for reading the book without purchasing it first. This feature is just so great for indecisive people like me, very big thumbs up.

- The lending library for Amazon Prime members is also a really great perk. I'm a big fan of Amazon Prime in general because I'm very impatient when it comes to delivery times. The Kindle library is just another reason I'm glad I subscribed to the service. Perfect for those books you just want to read for fun even though you know you won't love them enough to pay money to own it.

Could have used the professional
photos but I decided to go with my own
shitty pictures

- I have also been using my Kindle to read documents quite a lot - if I'm assigned an article to read for class, I can download it on my laptop and then send it straight to my Kindle. I don't have a printer so this is a real life saver. I can highlight and make notes for class and then bring it to seminar bc it's a lot less of a hassle than carrying my laptop across town.


Ok, now onto the few complaints I have and they are all minor.

The bad:
- The touchscreen mechanism for turning the page is a bit iffy for someone like me who is very imprecise with all movements, even when it comes to touching a screen (seriously, how was I so good at the piano?). So I'm meaning to touch the right side of the screen to move forward, but I'm an imbecile and think just poking the screen anywhere will suffice so I end up going backwards or pulling down the top menu. Obviously I am just a little impaired, so for any normal human being the system should be very easy - left side to go backward, right side to go forward, top for the menu. Although I suppose it would be a bit confusing for someone reading in Hebrew or Arabic...

- The page number is not displayed unless you pull up the top menu - again a minor complaint, but annoying enough to notice. Yes, I like to see the time remaining and the percentage left in the book, but to eliminate the traditional mode of signifying your place in a books just seems stupid. I know we aren't holding a physical book with pages to flip, but if I were to cite a quotation on this page I would need the number. Not to mention the fact that we habitually think of books as made up of pages, that's how we mark our progress. Just because the format has changed, doesn't mean the ingrained way we comprehend the reading experience (or the book itself) has changed.

- My only big complaint with my Kindle experience is the battery life. I was told the battery would last as much as 8 weeks and I've found that to be false advertising. I've only owned my Kindle for 8 weeks and I've had to charge mine at least 3 times. Now, my suspicion is that I use up the battery life by browsing the Kindle store for new books. I know that I already browse Amazon for hours just looking up new books (adding them to my enormous Wish List) and Lord knows I can't pass by a bookshop without stopping in for "a few minutes" that somehow turn into a whole afternoon. So I suppose my addiction to browsing for books has crossed over to my Kindle, which isn't necessarily what it's meant for. However, I do feel that the 8 weeks promise was not accurate and it definitely annoys me. Yes, compared to my laptop and phone it has an amazing battery life. But I just hate feeling like I've been lied to, even about as trivial a thing as the battery life of my Kindle.

My other books have accepted
the Kindle as one of their own.

And that's all folks. I wanted to share some thoughts on the evolution of the book and the materiality of text as I spend quite a bit of my time contemplating those ideas as regarding the emergence of the book in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That will have to be another post for another day because who knew I could talk so long about a little e-reader. Hopefully it's coherent enough to be helpful.