The Kindle: Friend or Foe?

The Kindle vs. Books. 

It’s an argument that I admittedly had a big opinion on, in the past. I was all about the books. I’m one of those weirdos that love everything about books - especially old ones! The feel, look and even smell of a book, I think it's great! I was given a copy of Northern Lights by Philip Pullman when I was younger, I don’t think I was older than 10. I still have it, and being one of my favourites I can read over and over again, it’s got some wear. And in some ways, I think having the physical form, and seeing the batter it’s had around the edges, the brown corners showing the age of it, gives a book its magic.

But now, introduce the Amazon Kindle. I’m not excluding other e-readers in this post because I think the Kindle is superior or anything, I just don’t have any experience with any other, and think it’d be unfair to group them all together. So yeah, in comes the Kindle. I’m not going to talk about spec, it’s capabilities and it’s screen. That’s not what the argument is, the argument is - is this little small handheld technology, going to be the end of books? 

My opinion: No. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Kindle owner, Kindle lover. But there’s always going to be a market for physical hardback, paperback books. Yeah the Kindle screen looks like paper, and can hold 35,000 books - but sometimes it’s just perfect to peel back the papers with your hands, not a button. Sometimes it’s great to fold that page over or buy a cute bookmark (or in my case, use an old train ticket, cinema snub and on more than one occasion, an odd bit of ribbon). Kindles are great for novels or big books you can’t fit in that new and tiny handbag. They're fantastic to discover old classics for free. They're revolutionary for holidays when you want to fit all 10 new books into your carry-on.

So I guess what I wanted to say, was I am totally on the KINDLE FTW side. What lit-lover would turn down the chance to have thousands of books in one little transportable pocket book? 

But I’m also a huge BOOKS FOREVER side (yes, they are actual argument groups, don’t believe me - google). I guess it's where my heart lies. 

In the famous words of John Green:

“I don’t care how they read, I care that they read”

Happy reading!

H xoxo