A tale of two Kindles...

I may seem to wax poetic about ereaders, and Kindles in particular here a bit.  Okay, more than a bit.  Probably more than just about any other topic these days.  But in any case....

We spent the weekend down with the in-laws, and during the excursion, my wife left her Kindle at the house.  No big deal, as her parents are book junkies just as much as we are, and when it happens, she's usually able to find something to read.  And probably, it's not a bad thing as her parents have different reading patterns, so if you recall my prior Venn diagram, if you add in her parents to that diagram, you'll see another area of her reading that overlaps, and makes her circle fuzzy.  (That doesn't sound dirty does it?)  In any case, she picked up Eat Pray Love, and devoured it over the course of just a few days.  Which meant that when it was time to go to bed she needed to read something else.  No worries, we were home, and she had her Kindle.  She snuggled up all ready to read herself to sleep as is her habit, and she picked up the Kindle and....low battery. 

This doesn't happen all too often.  But it is the hazard of digital reading.  I couldn't figure out what I'd done with her cable to charge it, and she was too tired to start digging through my stacks of physical books, so I took out my Kindle, checked the battery, and handed it over.  I have somewhat different books on mine, we have some in common, but they aren't identical.   For one thing, I'll often snag and download freebies to check out later.  And by later, I mean, who knows when.  So she went through my collection, found something and settled in to do some reading.

Had I been properly prepared, I'd have all her books also on my Kindle, and making use of the Sync feature, she'd have been able to pick up any book she was reading right where she left off.  Short of that, I should have been able to download any book she was in the middle of reading in just a moment.  And I could have, had we both not been rather tired, and not thinking all that clearly so late at night.

So, even as we are in a transition into a digital reading household, the transitory period is not without its flaws and challenges.   I would complain, except that on her device, this is perhaps the second time I can recall where we explicitly ran afoul of the battery life.  (The K2 has quite good battery life.  As opposed to my K1, which has a considerably shorter battery life, and some design issues which I suspect leads to a drained battery when I leave it in my knapsack.)

My wife told me last night that for the first time, she wished specifically that she could have read a book (referring to Eat, Pray Love) on the Kindle.  She wished she could have highlighted parts to go back and re-read.  Not that you can't do that with a real book, but that it would have been easier on the Kindle.  Interesting to observe the changes technology makes of our habits.

So what about you, has digital reading affected your habits and preferences?  

A tale of two Kindles...

I may seem to wax poetic about ereaders, and Kindles in particular here a bit.  Okay, more than a bit.  Probably more than just about any other topic these days.  But in any case....

We spent the weekend down with the in-laws, and during the excursion, my wife left her Kindle at the house.  No big deal, as her parents are book junkies just as much as we are, and when it happens, she's usually able to find something to read.  And probably, it's not a bad thing as her parents have different reading patterns, so if you recall my prior Venn diagram, if you add in her parents to that diagram, you'll see another area of her reading that overlaps, and makes her circle fuzzy.  (That doesn't sound dirty does it?)  In any case, she picked up Eat Pray Love, and devoured it over the course of just a few days.  Which meant that when it was time to go to bed she needed to read something else.  No worries, we were home, and she had her Kindle.  She snuggled up all ready to read herself to sleep as is her habit, and she picked up the Kindle and....low battery. 

This doesn't happen all too often.  But it is the hazard of digital reading.  I couldn't figure out what I'd done with her cable to charge it, and she was too tired to start digging through my stacks of physical books, so I took out my Kindle, checked the battery, and handed it over.  I have somewhat different books on mine, we have some in common, but they aren't identical.   For one thing, I'll often snag and download freebies to check out later.  And by later, I mean, who knows when.  So she went through my collection, found something and settled in to do some reading.

Had I been properly prepared, I'd have all her books also on my Kindle, and making use of the Sync feature, she'd have been able to pick up any book she was reading right where she left off.  Short of that, I should have been able to download any book she was in the middle of reading in just a moment.  And I could have, had we both not been rather tired, and not thinking all that clearly so late at night.

So, even as we are in a transition into a digital reading household, the transitory period is not without its flaws and challenges.   I would complain, except that on her device, this is perhaps the second time I can recall where we explicitly ran afoul of the battery life.  (The K2 has quite good battery life.  As opposed to my K1, which has a considerably shorter battery life, and some design issues which I suspect leads to a drained battery when I leave it in my knapsack.)

My wife told me last night that for the first time, she wished specifically that she could have read a book (referring to Eat, Pray Love) on the Kindle.  She wished she could have highlighted parts to go back and re-read.  Not that you can't do that with a real book, but that it would have been easier on the Kindle.  Interesting to observe the changes technology makes of our habits.

So what about you, has digital reading affected your habits and preferences?