to kindle or not to kindle

i like the tangibility of books. something about the smoothness of paper, the crackle of a turning page, the faint smell of tree and glue makes me feel safe and at home. feeling that way, i am faintly surprised at a growing desire for a kindle.

i borrowed one for my cruise last february and it was so perfectly wonderful. my dad, stepstep-mom and step-sister had pretty much packed an entire suitcase filled with heavy heavy books for the 3 of them and i had 15 books in my small purse, including the kind of resource books i would never in a million years take on vacation. convenience completely overruled any issue i might have had with needing the feel of a book in my hands. i became enthralled with the idea of not adding clutter to my bookshelves and decided that i would probably want to get my very own kindle when i got home.

after my trip, i wanted to share excerpts from the parents guide to autism and the special needs handbook with josh. hm. finding passages wasn’t quite as simple as i wanted it to be. i told friends about some of the books i’d read, war by sebastian junger, just kids by patti smith, the hunger games trilogy by suzanne collins. my excitement was contagious and they wanted to borrow them. oh. i hadn’t thought about that pretty major bummer. not being able to share a book that i had enjoyed was a letdown. i also grew to not like the idea of buying a book that only existed in digital space. so i returned the borrowed kindle without a shred of sadness and moved on with my life.

so what’s happened? i just learned that the library loans ebooks on kindle. that’s… interesting. also interesting is how much prices have come down on kindles. so i find myself wondering if it makes sense to acquire a device just for library books.