AmazonKindle Paperwhite (8 GB) – Now with a larger display, adjustable warm light, increased battery life, and faster page turns – BlackReducing CO2

I am someone who believes that there is something profound and special about a physical book. My favorite part about a book is its smell. It's not wrong to describe the smell of walking into a Barnes & Noble as pure euphoria. New books smell like potential, beginnings, and the possibility of something grand. Old books smell like legends, ancient wisdom, or forgotten secrets. Books have a weight to them as well. It's reassuring to know that this book you're holding is real — it takes up physical space in the world and this makes it undeniable. It's as if the power of the stories and ideas within are so strong that they have materialized into matter out of the aether. It's hard for me to hold, say, a Bible without a sense of reverence and awe. Even today when I walk into a large library I can't help but feel like I have walked into a holy place — a place of worship. Being surrounded by books has the same effect on me that a Xanex has on others. Books have an impact on me. I love them.This is why, when I started reading on a Kindle over a year ago, it felt like I was committing adultery. This nasty little plastic screen inspired none of the feelings that books gave me. It took the magic of books and sacrificed it on the altar of consumer electronics. Despite these feelings, I continued to use it.Now I have read a little over fifty books using my Kindle. I still believe that the Kindle kills the magic that physical books have, and it does. But for the first time in a year, I decided to pick up a book in paperback and read it. This experience of going back to real books has made me realize a few things about the Kindle and myself.First off, I realized with horror that I am addicted to my Kindle and its features. The people who designed the Kindle did so with intent. The Kindle's sole purpose is to read books — there are no other apps on it, there are no intrusive ads, and there is nothing to distract you from reading. Honestly, the device is relatively primitive compared to other consumer electronics, but that is a design choice and not a flaw. I would argue it is even easier to get lost in a book using the Kindle than it is with a physical book.And then there are the features — the glorious features. My favorite feature by far is the built-in dictionary. When reading a physical book and coming across a word I didn't know the meaning of, assuming I couldn't intuit the meaning from context, I would have to mark my place in the book, put it to the side, pull out my phone, and Google the word. This is tedious. It also breaks my train of thought and forces me to use my dreadful phone with all of its notifications and apps and stuff that sends me into a panic and introduces into my reading time the potential to sidetrack myself. I hate that. With my Kindle, all I have to do is touch the word and a popup with the definition appears and is dismissed just as easily, and then I'm off reading again — an interruption that is barely even noticed and my attention remains intact. Even better is the fact that my Kindle keeps a list of all these words that I've looked up over time, and I can review them anytime. I look at it occasionally and quiz myself — this is my idea of 'fun'.Now I'm a big fan of writing in my books — I underline, highlight, and write in the margins constantly. If I ever need inspiration or if I'm trying to remember something I've read, I will thumb through the book I found it in until I eventually find it. Sometimes when I get bored I will sit in front of my bookshelf and go through the books I've read looking at all the passages I highlighted to refresh my memory on all those inspiring things that I read in years past. It's a little tedious but not too bad. This habit of highlighting is not lost to me while reading on my Kindle. You simply press and drag your finger across the passage which will highlight it. But that's not the best part: Kindle will keep up with everything I have highlighted and organize it all for me by the book it was found in. So at any given time, I can see all of my highlights in any of the books I have read, and I can even share them to my Goodreads profile! This gets me visibly excited.The last feature I want to talk about is the backlit screen. If you do any of your reading in bed then you probably have a bedside lamp or a flashlight or some other novel light source designed for books. Maybe it's just me but I find it difficult to get comfortable in bed and read a paperback at the same time. Either my spouse is annoyed by the light while she is trying to sleep or I can't find the perfect position that makes it both comfortable and easy to read. The Kindle has a backlit screen with adjustable lighting and a "warm" light setting. This means all other light sources in the room can be extinguished and I can still get my reading done. No book-light required. The Kindle is so lightweight that I can lay or recline in any position comfortably. No more fighting with those books whose binding is stiff and unyielding.So now we come to the point of this post. A confession. It's a confession to myself and the world. As much as this pains me to say: The Kindle offers a far superior reading experience over books. I said it. I don't like it any more than you do, but it is simply true. The onboard dictionary, the highlights, the backlit screen, the insane battery life (I charge this thing once a month), all of it together creates the most consuming and productive reading experience available. I still feel subtle pangs of guilt when I look at my bookshelf. I don't think that will ever go away for anyone who truly loves books. But now my bookshelf has become a kind of "greatest hits" display. I still buy all the best books I read, and I now consider my bookshelf as a place of honor for all the greatest books. But I think of my Kindle as another appendage on my body — I never go anywhere without it.I love books. I love my Kindle. To my fellow book lovers out there who are still opposed to the idea of a Kindle, I say that you can love both. It will be okay. The Kindle isn't evil after all.

So I came into possession of this little guy due to a late night Amazon impulse buy a few days before leaving for vacation. I was going on a weeklong trip with my family and didn't want to have to bring my ipad (what I usually use to read) or any actual books with me on the plane. Let me preface this by saying I am an avid reader, spending the majority of my free time reading...and have been for most of my life. My siblings lament to anyone listening about the horror of summer road trips, riding in the back of our family sedan, fighting for leg room because I always had at least 5-6 books at my feet to read during our travels. You should hear the way my sister grumbles at even the mere mention of a car ride with me (She horribly dramatic) but I digress. I also used to have a nook e-reader, an original model Kindle from way back in the day that no longer works, and have the kindle app on my ipad which I use to read most days. So I am familiar with e-reading. This kindle is quite possibly the best purchase I've ever made. It's basically pocket sized so it was extremely portable. I brought it with me everywhere; On the plane, in the car, in my bag to restaurants...I even managed to fit it in a particularly spacious pocket of an oversized jean jacket I wore on cooler nights. It's amazing. It was comfortable enough to hold in one hand, or two, depending on what I preferred at the time. The various light options on the kindle, including the warm light feature makes it easy to read regardless of where I was and what kind of lighting is available, without eye strain. I shared a room with family for a couple of nights and the dark mode feature barely emits light past my immediate person, so I was able to read into the wee hours of the morning if I wanted to without disturbing my family sleeping in the same room, or sacrificing my precious reading time. ( I get particularly sassy if I'm interrupted in the middle of a discovering a plot twist in a juicy novel, i'm just saying). You are able to customize lots of the settings, such as the fonts, size, spacing and layout, so that the books look however you want them to while reading. (I definitely used that feature to make the font smaller and more compact while I read an embarrassingly cringleworthy, but suprisingly emotional and fantastic, harlequin romance novel while on the plane. It's nobody's business why I was practically sobbing into my complimentary pretzels after the protagonists romantic interest declared his love to her for the first time, thank you very much) I also may, or may not have had a TINY accident in which I spilled my entire 32oz water bottle full of water all over my pants and my kindle. After squealing in alarm at how cold the water was, I was able to get my bearings, wiped the water off the kindle, changed my pants and continued reading. I have noted no damage whatsoever to my kindle and that was at the beginning of my trip well over a week ago now. After reading every day for at least 4-6 hours per day/night for 7 days straight I had 57% battery left over. I think the battery is supposed to last for 2 weeks maybe? IDK. Basically it lasted a long time, long enough for me to be impressed. Also, I downloaded at least 15 new books on there, not to mention the impressive collection of books I already owned and was able to sync to the device, and I still have over 4GB of space available to use. I have since named the kindle Kurt, as I feel emotionally connected to the device after our adventures together these past weeks. If you are a super bookworm like me, or are just trying to finish a whole book for the first time, I highly recommend this device for purchase. I think it was worth the money a thousand times over. And if after reading this you do decide to purchase it, I hope you love it just as much as I do.