Sometimes

After two years without, thanks to my little dude, I have a new Kindle Fire. I have to admit that this device has already basically saved my life in the most basic sense. 

I got a call a couple days before Christmas telling me that my mother was very ill. More than that, that she was in the hospital, in a coma, and likely would not make it through the holidays. After that, I could think of nothing else. I did nothing but lie in bed, feeling miserable. Pathetic. Heartbroken. 

I got my new kindle for Christmas. It gave me something else to focus on, even if the focus was weak. I read eight books between Christmas and the day of her death. She died o the 29th.

This new Kindle is pretty fantastic. They have finally incorporated removable storage, which is fantastic. It's about time. There is, however, a slight drawback which I will get to in a minute.

Like the fire tablets that came before it, there is the option to purchase this device with special offers, which lowers the price. That is always nice, because I love to spend less money on things I want. It includes a front and rear camera, of course, but I have yet to use them. It will connect and cast to fire tv, but not Chromecast. I am not sure if they eliminated the mayday button, but I've never seen it.

With this generation of Fire tablets, they have added the ability to create family accounts. This means you can add a second adult profile and account, as well as multiple children. As long as one adult profile has prime, you have the ability to share it with the other. This shares prime instant video and two day shipping, plus all digital purchases. 

There is now a microsd card slot, It is compatable with cards up to 128 gig. it will hold most of your apps, your music, your photos. It can hold your books, but the kindle app cannot read the sd card. Oops. There is the drawback. There are ways to make it work. Somewhat. But there are drawbacks there too. But that isn't half as important as you might think, since all of your purchases are on the cloud anyway.

So Much More To Come

It has been less than easy keeping up with my blog lately. The keyboard on my laptop was (is) broken so I was only able to post from my phone. That is not so bad for small editing jobs or short posts, but for something as in depth as what I usually try for, it just stinks. I finally got a usb keyboard, and now am able to type. Now that I can see too, reading and blogging is not such a daunting task.

Now here's the thing, I have been simply been reading whatever I come across, usually choosing at random. I have not really had much aim. I do not even know how many people subject themselves to my opinions, but I would like to toss something out there. If you are reading this, and enjoy my insane opinions, thank you. f you would like to help give my blog a little direction, if there is a specific book you would like me to review, let me know. 

There is only one rule. The book has to be available in e-book format.

Any book. I will read any book at least once. Some have made me want to rip my eyes out, but I finished them, except for one with way too many terribly juvenile metaphors an one that was NOT written in a way I could understand.

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

When I first got this series, I didn't know what to expect. I figured that with a target audience of pre-teen to young adult, I might have trouble appreciating it for what it was intended to be. I had avoided to film for over a year, simply because of all the hype, I was afraid it would be a let down. 

*Movie/Book Spoiler Alert*

My girls' dad convinced me to watch the movie last summer. I was pleasantly surprised. Although Katniss seems very sedated throughout the movie, you can see her passion for her family. Peeta has a history with Katniss that is glossed over more in the movie than I would have liked, but at least it wasn't left out. I loved the movie, but would have enjoyed it much more had they not left out so much from the book. I know this makes me sound like a hipster or something, but...

It would have been good to know that Peeta burned that bread on purpose all those years ago, and took a beating for it, just so he could give it to her. 

In the movie, during the goodbye scene, it would have been helpful to see just how much faith his parents had in her to win. It is made very clear in the book.

In the movie, Peeta gets a nasty cut. In the book, it is bad enough to eventually cost him his leg. That is pretty important in the building of his character in the future.

There are other things, but since I would really rather you read it for yourself (and learn the truth about the mutant mutts in the arena) I shall give you no more.

Basically, just as in the film, this is a novel set in a dystopian future. Here, North America is now called Panem, and is divided into 13 districts. Following a particularly brutal civil war, each district has to give one boy and one girl to fight to the death, and the winner's district is rewarded. 

There is some dissent among fans as to how the districts are layed out, but she clearly states that The Capitol is Colorado Springs, and district 12 consists of the Northeast coal mining states.

When Katniss hears her sister's name called in the reaping, she passionately volunteers to take her lace, setting in motion a series of events that create a nightmare for the capitol, and giving hope to the people of Panem.

My initial opinion assumption of this series was way off base. The target audience of this book does not invalidate its enjoy-ability, even for a much older reader. I would not recommend it for persons under the age of twelve, as it has some very graphic and emotional scenes, but it is a very good read.

My Guardian Idiot ~ Fantasy Tales For Your Funny Bone - Barbra Annino

There are few female authors that I can appreciate. Many that I simply tolerate their work. Barbra Annino has a talent of her own. The stories included in this book are cute, but not too cute. There were points thst I actually did giggle.

The book's namesake, "My Guardian Idiot" is silly, and at first you realy sympathize with the narrator. It isn't until later in the story that you start to feel as though she is a bit of an entitled snob.

"Sexual Healing" is the story of a sex therapist that apparently hates sex and relationships, but seems good at her job. Her narrative views on her situation are humerous. This one had me laughing a bit. Maybe because I am a bit of a cynical hag myself.

"Genie School Dropout" seems to play on the idea that you should be careful what you wish for. Maybe the idea of a sarcastic or literal minded genie is a bit humerous on its own, but one that is hard of hearing (or suffering something else) is a nice twist.

"Stephen King Kills His Darlings" is where this one kinda died for me. Maybe it was supposed to be a dramatic comedy piece, but it just didn't hold me. It is pretty much exactly what the title says in the most basic sense. Kinda cheesy, life affirming, pointless feeling for me.

"Cupid's Arrow" is just downright silly and cute. It had more potential that it had follow through.

All in all, it was not a horrible book. It was worth reading at least once.

The incredible power of a well written book

I know I don't post as much on here as I likely should, what with how much I read. I have read dozens of books since my last post, but I get caught up in being mommy or fall deeper into my depression and cannot make myself write no matter how much I want to. This is why books themselves are so much magic. No matter how depressed I am, I can pick up my kindle and find a book that will transport me to a magical place where it does not matter. A world where I don't hurt. A world where I do not exist as I am, which is exactky what I need. I can cease to exist, without erasing myself from existance.

I often try to put myself in the shoes, if you will, of the characters in the books I am reading. Maybe that is why it is so hard for me to consider my own existance at that time. This has gotten me go wonder, what were these authors going through when they wrote this book, or that character, or even that simple yet powerful scene. I have started to wonder what they might think if they were to learn that the beautiful words that have poured forth from their very soul just might be the only thing keeping my heart beating on my worst days.

These are very hard things for me to admit. Not everyone knows how hard it can be. How most days the smile on your face is a lie. Every laugh is forced. Getting out of bed is painful. Looking ino the eyes of my children is torture because they can't know. I cannot ever let them see how much it hurts. It is not their fault. They are peffect. I am the one with the broken brain. I get up every morning for them. The books help me get through the worst days, and show my children how special the written word really is. They help to lessen my own pain and help me rage, laugh, cry, feel. My children can see me with real emotion, and it carries out into the real world so I csn have an honest smile or laugh with them, those that deserve and truly need it most.

If I could keep that going for more than just a day...maybe I could get these stories of my own out of my head. It saddens me that they seem just to be locked inside. It is not the author that writes the book though, but the book using the author as a catalyst to bring it into existance. Maybe mine just are not ready yet. They in there though. I dream them. They play like movies in my head. If I could just beat down the depression for a little while. I know that every post in my blogs is a step forward, but every post I don't make is a step back. It is so hard. It is so hard to know that is my own broken brain holding me back.

But that is the beauty of books. They mend the broken pieces, even if just for a little while. They bring a special beauty into an otherwise dark and empty feeling life. I know what you are thinking. How dare I feel my life is empty when I have kids, right? What kind of mother feels that way? One that knows she could give them so much more, if only she were not always in so much invisible pain. My kids are the reason I get up every morning and look for as many was as I can find to fight through every painful day. They are the reason I fight back every tear thzt comes from nowhere, and why I try so hard to look for any beauty I can find. They are also the reason I started blogging. To share the beauty, the pain, the anxiety. To maybe find someone like me, someone that needs to hear what I am saying. Someone I can helpmthe way my books help me.

The Guardians of Ga' Hoole by Kathrine Lasky *Contains Spoilers*

At this point, I have read books one through twelve of "The Guardians of Ga ' Hoole" collection. As with many of the books I write about here, I began reading them to my daughters to help them fall asleep at night. Like some before it, and hopefully many to come, I was pleasantly surprised with how wonderfully written and attention holding these stories are. I would read them to my kids to help them sleep, and find myself unable to stop reading until I had finished the book, or even the next book after that.

For those that have seen the movie and have preconceived expectations as to how things will progress, as usual, leave those thoughts behind. Very few things happen the same way, and I quickly came to appreciate the stories more for this reason. You have little surprises all throughout the books, and it gets incredibly easy to become fully absorbed in the stories as you go. This may or may not be a good thing, so consider yourself warned.

The stories seem greatly inspired by the Arthurian legends, as the Owls that are " The Guardians of Ga' Hoole" take an honor bound oath that strongly resembles a Knights code. In the movie, this is first mentioned by Soren and hid brother Kludd while they are branching and playing a game. In the book however, it is the father telling the stories to the children.

The movie, while it has its dark places, is in no way as dark as the books it is based upon. Where in the movie, Soren and Kludd both end up falling from the nest and find themselves at St. Aggies, the book has a far different series of events leading up to this location. While these events do involve Kludd, they are nothing like the movie. In the film adaptation, characters are moved from where and when they arrive in the book, and there is treachery added where there isn't in the book.

The film, after reading the book, is a sad attempt at adaption. Just once, I would like for my children to be able to watch a movie that is based on a book that we have read that actually follows the writing. There is supposed to be a sequel coming. I hope to never see it as they messed up the first one so terribly that the second will not follow well at all. 

Back to the book. I would not really recommend reading this to a very young child that is sensitive to violence or turmoil. The book begins with some family violence, and has some really emotional places. Let me run through a few of them here...

Book 1:
We are introduced to Soren and his family, including his unpleasant brother, Kludd. We hear our first pieces of the Legends of Ga' Hoole. Then Soren, who is not even fully fledged (he has yet to grow any flight feathers) finds himself on the forest floor while his parents are away. He is snatched and taken to a horrible place that uses young owlets as slaves to hatch stolen eggs, and search for metal flecks in yarped pellets.

The owlets are kept under control by a brainwashing technique called moon blinking. Their names are taken and they are given numbers in their place. He makes a friend, Gylfie, and together they find another owl that has managed to avoid the brainwashing. She is a spy from another area of the world that has infiltrated this horrible place to save pre-hatched chicks.

They escape with the help of one of the owls that initially snatched them, and meet an owlet that was orphaned just after hatching. Together they search for Soren and Gylfie's families and learn something even more bone chilling about St. Aggie's. They then go searching for the fabled Ga' Hoole tree. 

Book Two:
There are reunions and the beginnings of a terrible battle. We learn what has come of Soren's brother, Kludd. We learn what is really worse than St. Aggies. Amazing alliances are made. Book three is the start of what is really a war, but this is where the new hope for all of the owl kingdoms is introduced.

I will not go through all of the books with such extreme spoilers, but I do hope that you will read them, and certainly read them to your children. They are very much a new Arthurian Legend for our newest generations. 

Coraline by Neil Gaiman *Contains Spoilers, especially about the movie*

Toss aside your assumptions about this book, especially if you have seen the movie. There is no Whybie, no doll, hell, it is not even set in America. The cat though, is still there, as are the other mother and ghost children. The neighbors are the same as well.

In the movie, Coraline's parents are inattentive, mean, lousy parents. In the book, Coraline is a spoiled, self important, bratty child. The parents are good, attentive, caring, and loving. Interesting how Hollywood can screw a book up. It was very difficult for my daughter to sit quietly through this one as she expected it to be just like the film.

The author wrote this or his daughter, but did not finish it right away. In fact, it took him an amazing amount of time. You can tell it was a feat of love. It is a good book. It is not my typical style, but I appreciated it for what it was and my girls did enjoy it. 

New Adventures Await

The beauty of books is their ability to not only take you to different places, but also to different worlds. The ability to become another person, even a different species, if only in your mind is greatly underrated. There is more than that though...

Reading to your children helps them to develop greater language and problem solving skills. It helps them to develop their greater abilities of imagination and story telling. It helps them to build their own love and desire for the written word. I read to my daughters every night. I had to wait until I got them adjusted to their bedroom first, but it was worth the wait.

The first book I read to them after their big move was Coraline. My older daughter was greatly annoyed at me for this, as she was wanting a bigger girl book. Now I am reading the Guardians Of Ga'Hoole series. I find that even after they have fallen asleep, I cannot put the books down and have to cycle back for the place they fell asleep.

There are few things more amazing to me than a well written book. Because I suffer from mental illness that make life difficult, books are the thing I look forward to most. I find few things on television worth watching, and I do not deal with people very well, so books are the only escape I really have. We owe so much to the great authors. These men and women weave worlds for us...  

Third Time a Charm?

It is possible that my third will be the last Kindle that I have to purchase for awhile. I find it sad that so many of my electronic devices seldom survive the first few weeks in my home, but it is far from unbelievable. I have a two year old that likes to make things vanish, and a five year old that once took about 30 ounces of Pepsi and poured it into the keyboard of brand new Toshiba Satellite.

The funniest thing about my last two Kindles though, is that my children are not to blame for their demise. My first was eaten by a chair, the second became a chair. I am a bit glad the last one got broken though. The regular Kindle has very limited storage capacity. The Kindle Touch has four Gigabytes. That is a whole lot of books. Seriously, so many books. 

The Kindle touch also has voice capability (text to speech and speech recognition), which you will find in the Kindle with a keyboard, but not the regular Kindle. Even if I never use half of these features, I like that they are there. No, I have never tried the speech recognition. To me, it just seems lazy. I do let my daughter turn on the text to speech so that it can read stories to her. She prefers it reading them, to me reading them. I was offended at first, of course, until I realized that she just thinks the computer voice is funny.

The touch screen is very sensitive, but not so sensitive that it is an issue. You can set your screen to refresh with every page turn (black flash) but the default is for it not to. I have no problem with the black flash, but have been too lazy to change the setting. I guess the ghost words from pages past have not started to bother me enough yet. There are specialized zones on the screen that have a specific purpose when tapped, another when pressed for a moment, and yet another when you slide your finger across depending on what screen you are on. It is kind of nice when you have it all figured out.

Like the Kindle Keyboard, this Kindle has the ability to play MP3s, but I think that section will remain unused for me. I would prefer to use that storage space for more books, and since I have a four Gigabyte MP3 player, and an Android device with Pandora, I have no reason to use my Kindle for that purpose. Oddly enough, even though I already have the Kindle Touch and an Android phone, I still want a Kindle Fire...

The Sign of the Cross - Chris Kuzneski

There are few things worse than waking up to being kidnapped, taken by boat to another country, and then crucified. Well, for this guy there isn't. The others are not even as lucky as he was. Throw in Jon Payne and David Jones in a Spanish (yes, Spanish) prison, two CIA agents that aren't, an English professor and student with secrets and it all gets a bit odd.

It seems that the Vatican has a secret, one that they want to keep. As usual, things are not always as they seem. The Vatican security chief seems extremely committed to his job, but he has his own agenda. Like any good antagonist, he will do whatever it takes to achieve it. This man is on a worldwide killing spree, and even his own children are on that list.

The Cardinal from Texas was an interesting character. Nick Dial has a few fun conversations with him. Nick Dial of course, is the head of the homicide division at Interpol. Well, I guess you can figure out on your own how he gets involved. What with exploding cars, hijacked helicopters, and plot twists around every corner, this book is a fantastic read.

This book was intensely fun, and full of action. It would feel wrong to give this book anything less than five stars.

4 Killer Crime Stories in 4 Minutes - Benjamin Sobieck

Goodness, this book was terrible. I do not even think terrible is accurate, but I am not sure that there is a word to describe how truly awful this book really is. I think it is supposed to be a collection of micro-fiction. What it really is, is a conduit for micro bleeds in the brain.

The first of the four, titled "Purgatory at the Pump 'n' Loaf" had to be the most ridiculous idea I had ever heard of, and it really was not put together in a way that made any sense to me.

The second story, titled "Use the Pillow" was another insanely stupid idea. I find it to be incredibly and amazingly stupid that he tries to write in the stop text manner to "simulate" hypnosis speech. I know of no hypnotic therapists that make every three words a sentence.

The third, titled "You're the Boss" made me want to find his house, and burn it to the ground with him in it...

I was grateful for "Timmy Says Out This in an eBook," not because it was any better than the others (because it wasn't), but because it was the last in a set of literary garbage that would make me want to shove an ice pick through my eye.

I love the disclaimer at the beginning of the book:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

It was not worth the 99 cents I paid for it! There is now way on this Earth that I would purchase it for anyone I care about. Hard work? I doubt it. Trust me on this one, save your money and your brain.

Half a star (for effort).

And Once Again...

Much has been going on in my life since my last post. I have had to relocate, and my Kindle died a horrible death. I have had it replaced with a Kindle Touch, because replacing it with an identical Kindle made no sense to me when I could have one with more memory for only 20 more dollars. There is only one problem, the battery refuses to die, so I cannot upload all of the books I did not buy from Amazon.com. If I try to upload them before the battery dies, my computer will automatically start charging it, which will have a negative effect on future battery life. I do not want to review another good book until I have complete access to it again for reference while writing, so I will review ones that I am reading in an attempt to kill the amazing super battery.

First victim:
4 Killer Crime Stories in 4 Minutes

It's cold outside...

When it is cold outside, there is little I enjoy more than curling up with a good book and ignoring the world. Few thing I find more rewarding than sharing another's talents, viewing a little piece of their imagination or reality. When I was younger, my father read to us before we went to sleep. He started with C.S. Lewis, and my love for reading went into full bloom by the end of the Narnia series.

When I was 10 years old, he bought for me a book that I read until the pages fell apart. It was the first book my father bought for me, and only me. The Last Unicorn still holds a very special place in my heart. I even own the movie, for I feel that they did a splendid job. When I was 12, my tastes in books altered. As my dad is a fan of fantasy, I have a soft spot for it. It is what I started with, and I will never not love it. My tastes turned more toward science fiction, and spread out wide.

I found Stephen King through my dad's copy of The Bachman Books.After that, I was given a copy of The Shining. My choice in reading material would never be the same after that. I read every Stephen King book I could find. I thought it was amazing that one man could be such a creative genius that he could write so many extremely different books in the same genre. I found, as well, an author named Phil Rickman, whose book Curfew I purchased simply because I loved the cover art. I have not found any regret in that purchase. The book is incredible, and I plan to purchase it again, as soon as I can find it. I hope to come across more of his literary masterpieces as well.

Then there is Dean Koontz. I cannot say enough about this man. He is such a talented writer, that I know any words I put to paper would pale in comparison to his scrap heap! The first book I found by him was by accident. I had never heard his name before. I was 19. I lived alone in a terrible apartment. I am not a fan of television, and I had read all of my books time and time again. I needed something new. I went to the little second chance store a block from my home and saw a book that I could not take my eyes off of. It was like a nightmare. The cover art was horrendous!  The name of the book was Intensity. I could not help it. It looked like a headache waiting to happen, but I had to have this book, so I bought it. I read it in one night. I could not put it down, reading it even while I cooked my pathetic dinner.

There are about 74 books written by Dean Koontz in my Kindle as we speak, and I cannot wait to read them all. I am trying to keep my blog diverse though, and be a fair reader to all authors. My next review will be of the second book in the Jonathon Payne and David Jones series by Chris Kuzneski. *spoiler alert* It was awesome.

Just have to say...

Although I read more than I like to admit, and often read more than five books a week, I (obviously) do not blog about them every day. There was a long break between posts, this is because my original Kindle vanished and I had to get a new one. Now that I have replaced it with a new, smaller and cheaper version, I will be able to put more time into reading.

My new Kindle is the basic 3G with special offers. It does not have a keyboard or sound capabilities, which are the only drawbacks of the device. It is small enough to fit in my purse. The special offers are not a nuisance. The screen does not fa=lash black when turning pages like the old one did. It does have a smaller memory, but will still store tons of books, so that is not a terrible thing.

Anyway, I plan to write another soon. Maybe tonight or tomorrow :)

The Plantation - Chris Kuzneski

Let me start off by saying that I did not start off with this book, which is the first in the series. I did not know this at the time, and because I started with another book, it took some time to get used to his writing style.

This novel is book one in a series that follows the adventures and exploits of two former special forces operatives, Jonathon Payne and David Jones. Jon is a rich boy that wanted to make it on his own accord, so he joined the military, proving himself the best of the best. He and his friend David are hand picked to become leaders of an elite special forces team, where they stay until they retire upon the death of Jon's grandfather. Jon takes up the family business, a multi million dollar a year manufacturing corporation, and helping his friend start a detective agency. Now that we are done with the background, we get to the excitement:

John's girlfriend (who coincidentally is never mentioned again after this book) is kidnapped by some real crazy dudes that want innocent people to pay for the crimes of their ancestors. She is not the only one. They kidnap entire families. They torture and abuse each and every one of them, forcing them to work as slaves on the plantation. That is not enough for these guys though, they want to make money from it as well, so they plan to sell them as slaves in Africa. They do not care how young or old they are, one of their captives is Jon's girlfriend's pregnant sister.

**MAJOR SPOILER ALERT** If you have not read the book, this might give a LOT away:

1. Jon arrives at his girlfriend's house to pick her up for a weekend getaway, and finds she has been kidnapped. With nothing but a tattoo and license plate to go on, they track the kidnappers to New Orleans.

2. With the help of a former NFL star and supposed friend, they find out where she is being held, make a rescue plan, and are led into a trap.

3. They escape, saving most of the people that were being held captive, but fail to rescue the girlfriend before the kidnappers flee with her, and her family, out of the country.

I am not one to give away an ending, but it is worth a look. This is a great book by a really incredible author. As you will see in my future reviews of his books, he really does his research. This is not typically my favorite genre, but wow... 

I give this one five stars.

On buying and borrowing e-books on your Kindle

I really cannot say enough how much I love to read. Nothing is more rewarding that completing another well written book, except finishing another badly written one. Books are thrilling, fun, fantastic, entertaining, teaching, amazing things. Accessing books should be simple for everyone, no matter where they live, and how much money they have. 

I am so happy that Amazon.com makes so many books instantly available. I am even happier at the selection of books that are free, or nearly free. I try to check the free selection weekly, because they are always adding new ones. Some of them are classics, but some are also very new. Some are written by new authors wanting to get their work out there and gain a following. Some are short stories and novellas, some are just a few chapters of a novel set by the publisher to give you a chance to decide whether you really want to buy the book or not. It is a nice opportunity to expand your Kindle library.

Here is something that excites me even more, library books, lent to you on your kindle. If you are unsure if this is a good idea, let us look at the pros and cons of such an idea:

Pros:

1. You do not have to physically go to the library to get your book. This can be especially convenient for those that work or sleep during library business hours, or live a good distance from their local library while lacking transportation. This is also a good thing for busy people that are always on the go, and single moms that have hyper small children.
2. Your book will return itself whenyour borrowing time is up. This means that you never return a book late, so you will never get a fee. You can extend your time, also, without having to step foot into the library, which is convenient. When your time is up, the book just disappears off of your device, and goes to the next person in line. 
3. You always know where the book is. I cannot tell you how many times I, or one of my children, have managed to misplace a library book. Sometimes, the book is not found for months. The fees for such a situation are pretty high.
4. No more damaged books. You will not borrow a book that is missing pages, is written in or on, or is falling apart in your hand. Your dog, child, or other family member might have a difficult time damaging the book requiring you to pay repair or replacement fees.

Cons:

You have to have a Kindle or Kindle reading app...and a library card.

101 Tips for Traveling with a Vampire, Joleene Naylor

I chose to download this book because it was free, and at the time I am writing this, it still is. The author, Joleene Naylor, has apparently written an entire series around the idea of a 13 year old girl that is traveling the world with vampires. I have never read any of her other books, but upon reading this, I decided that it must have been intended for persons the same age as the antagonist. The personal narration is slightly childish, as though intended for young readers, and I personally found it to be silly and whimsical.

The book is actually full of valuable travel tips, foreign and domestic. The author adds in little random "vampire lore" ideas involving coffins and cargo holds, needing to feed of random people and whatnot. The author also includes felonies i her tips, like identity theft, leaving state and federal boundaries using false identification, robbing the dead, leaving the scene of homicides...

All in all the book is "cute" but silly and childish.

Techno Love

I have a disturbingly big love for certain technologies. I also have an insatiable love for reading. Add to that my waning vision, and we have a problem. Being able to read on my computer is nice and all, and with the free Kindle PC application, it has its conveniences. I have access to nearly a million books of nearly every age and genre, and so many the are free that it is worth the hours of browsing. I can control the text size, and because I have a touch screen PC, I can turn pages with a finger flick.

With all of these positive reasons in favor of reading on my computer, the drawbacks make it almost unworthy of my time. When reading from my computer, I am stuck in my chair in front of the screen. This is painful for me, as my back is not in the best condition. Although I love my computer, because it is an incredible machine with so many amazing features, I cannot bring myself to stay on it for great lengths of time. It is far too painful.

Computer screens, as we all know, are  back-lit. You might figure this a good thing for someone with weakening vision, but it really isn't. Honestly, back-lit screens are not good for anyone. They increase the risk of migraine, and can cause sleep disturbance if one is using one too late into the night. It may seem convenient at night for your screen to light the way for you, but when you toss and turn, cannot keep your eyes closed because you feel like you are blinking when you aren't, and wake up with a migraine, remember I told you so. So because I already have a migraine disorder, chronic insomnia, and bad eyes, too long here at the old PC is a bad idea.

I think that, worse than all of these things, the inability to take my books with me everywhere because they are stored in the hard drive of the PC is more than inconvenient. I cannot even sit across the room and read because...well..it would be a pain to move this thing just for a more comfortable seat, ad it would risk the health of my not-so-affordable all-in-one computer. Yes, I have a little netbook, but the battery life is short lived, and I would really only get through a few chapters of a book before it would inevitably need to be plugged in, trapping me in one place yet again.

I have been wanting an actual Kindle for a couple years now. With Amazon already being one of my favorite sites, and the place I go to buy most of my books to begin with, it just makes sens to have one. With the growing number of books available for kindle, and the unbeatable pricing, I could house a small library in my bag. The price just was always a bit out of range. I would swear to buy one for myself every month, and just never do it. When my mother asked me this year what I wanted for my birthday, a Kindle was the only thing I could think of.

My kindle arrived Tuesday, one day before my birthday. I have never been happier with a piece of technology in my entire life. I can find not one single thing to complain about with the possible exceptions that (1) there are not enough reading hours in the day, and (2) there are still a great number of books that I would like to have on my kindle that are not yet available in the electronic format. I even bought a "skin" for it, and it to me is now a beautiful work of art, that's sole purpose is to house and make available to me, various works of beautiful art.

Having this amazing device will in no way stop my purchasing of tangible, ink and paper books. It is like my father says, there is something extremely rewarding in that slightly musty, old paper smell, that they will never be able to recreate.On the other hand, should there be a disaster and I could not save shelves full of books, I will not have lost them completely.

Another BIG plus to the Kindle? You can easily take it anywhere. It is about the size of a paperback in diameter, but very thin. It weighs about half what a normal paperback does. You can customize it. You can adjust the text size. You can use it to browse the web. It can play mp3s. It can read to you. Okay...that was more than one plus. Oh, there are hundreds of books that you can get for free, or nearly free if you just look. Many independent authors will often publish a novel free at first to help you gain interest in their writings, and anything that has an expired copyright is free. It is also soon to be possible to be lent books through your local library on your kindle. No need to worry about the due date or late fees. It will return itself.