First Generation Kindle: The Verdict

A few months ago, I picked up an old first-generation Kindle cheap on Ebay. Now that I’ve been using it for a while, I can say for certain that I LOVE IT.

It’s a qualified love, to be sure, but when it comes to the physical act of reading, I’ll pick the Kindle every time. It’s easier to hold. I can lie down and read without having to turn over or hold the book awkwardly to get to the next page. I can eat and read easily without having to hold down the pages with the salt and pepper shakers. This might sound lazy, but it wasn’t until I left it behind that I fully realized what a burden reading dead trees can be.

More importantly, I’ve found myself reading much more than I ever did before. I find myself blazing through 600-page books in under a week, record time for me. An ideal evening now is a nice cup of Earl Gray and a few hours with my Kindle.

There are downsides, of course. First, it’s really hard to simply flip through a book. Sure, there are a lot of ways you can search a book. Beyond the handy “search” function, you can highlight passages (which are saved in a separate entry for easy access) and you can dog-ear pages. However, the simple action of “seeing how many pages are left in this chapter” completely eludes the Kindle. Want to find a specific story in a compilation? Good luck. In both cases, you’re better off reading it straight through and just stopping whenever sleep overtakes you because it's easier than slowly flipping through the pages manually.

Another problem is vanity: I love physical books. Not necessarily reading them, but I love hunting for them in dusty bookstores and displaying them like trophies for everyone to see. I like having that huge collection of Erikson dominating my shelves, so that guests can look at their intimidating size and know that I conquered that. But pride aside, physical books can hold more than just printed stories. I like thumbing through my worn copy of Return of the King and remembering when I carried it on that backpacking trek through Arizona. I like remember that compilation of Alexander Pope I found in an airport bookstore on my way down to see my future Wife for the first time. Ebooks just don't hold that.

Ideally, every physical book I find buried in a used bookstore would contain an ebook, so I could read one and display the other, but perhaps that violates the principles of cake eating and having.