A love song for my Kindle

(This is not my Kindle. Mine has the keyboard. Also, my hands never look that nice.)

I am not one of the technorati. I still don’t have an iPod, let alone an iPad. I got my first cell phone in 2006 and I’m still using the second one I got, a bare-bones pay-as-you-go model that allows talk and text and that’s it. When my cheap-ass phone falls to pieces,  I’d like one with an actual keyboard so I can text without cursing, but only if I can find one for under $49.95, with no commitment to a plan. About the only “gadget” I love unreservedly is my Hobart professional-grade mixer, which can turn an unruly mass of sticky, heavy dough into four loaves of bread without the slightest effort. I love that because it’s genuinely useful, helping me do something I’d do anyway—bake bread—far more easily, with results as good as doing it by hand if not better.

All this is a roundabout way of explaining why, despite writing ebooks, I didn’t give in to the lure of the Kindle until last summer.  I was worried that I wouldn’t use it, that it would sit unloved on my desk gathering dust, like the PalmPilot I never adapted to when they were big.

But I’m here to tell you now, I’ve joined the great Zombie Amazon.com Army. I love my Kindle. I love my Kindle so much I’m actually thinking I might upgrade to a fancy-pants color one with a touch screen before the old one actually belongs in the Smithsonian.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the perverted…that would be CONverted…here. As a late adapter, I’m not saying anything new. But I’m astonished by how much I love the thing. How do I love it? Let me count the ways.

The Kindle probably kept me from going postal one morning when, thanks to a snow squall and mechanical problems, we had commuters from three trains crammed into one. I’m claustrophobic and this was not a happy thing. But I whipped out my Kindle and read Cold Mountain Poems: Zen Poems of Han Shan and remained serene (well, serene enough not to start screaming uncontrollably, which is all I could ask) for my commute.

I can have a veritable library in my purse at all times. You never know when you might get a few minutes to read, or what you’ll be in the mood for, and my Kindle  holds everything from erotica to a biography of Galileo to the aforementioned Zen poetry. If you have an ebook reader, you already know this joy. If you don’t have one yet, give in and get one. If I can do it, so can you!

Thanks to the great selection of free books available for the Kindle, I’m reading more widely. Since getting my Kindle, I’ve read traditional, non-sexy Regencies (the best are witty and fun, a la Jane Austen), Amish romances (I love the descriptions of Amish life and the coziness), mysteries, thrillers, horror, children’s classics such as A Secret Garden, and a book on the international food crisis and possible agricultural and policy solutions, along with my usual paranormal romance, fantasy, and history selections.  I recently downloaded a couple of autobiographies of pioneer women, which tie in to my love of history and my fascination with crafting and homesteading.

And  I can learn things through my Kindle, which satisfies an oddly puritanical need I have to do useful things, to be useful. I’m not sure reading a random novel is intrinsically more virtuous than playing Angry Birds, but I feel my Scary Irish Grandmother would not disapprove of the novel, whereas she would turn up her nose at Angry Birds.

So I’ve finally found a gadget other than a computer I can love. I makes sense, because, like my beloved Hobart, t’s a gadget that I find genuinely useful, because it makes it easier to do something I love to do.

If only I could stick the Hobart in my bag for bread-baking emergencies…Unfortunately, it weighs about 40 pounds.