I still love my Kindle and never want to be parted from it.
However, it's just the worst thing ever when I download a Kindle book and then end up hating it. When you hate a library book after 50 pages, no big deal -- you just return it. When you hate a book from the bookstore, it's a bummer, but at least you can pass it on to someone who might enjoy it or trade it in at the used bookstore or donate it to Goodwill or even just put it on your bookshelf* to add to the aura of high-brow literacy in your home.
A Kindle book, though -- you can't do anything with it. It just sits there in your account. You can't give it away. You can't trade it for something better. You can't even delete it -- it exists eternally in your Kindle memory, a reminder of the $9.99 that you'll never get back.
Fortunately this has only happened to me twice, in almost six months of Kindle ownership. But it rankles. Oh how it rankles.
*This is how weird I am. In my quest to rearrange my dining room/attic/playroom (which is all of a piece in a way that I don't have time to explain now) I realized that I could, with the purchase of just a few cheap bookshelves, store most of my books up in the attic -- especially since, due to the Kindle, I'm not really buying many actual books lately. But as I realized this, I thought -- But if I don't have any bookshelves downstairs, visitors to my home will assume I don't read. The horror! To be judged a non-reader! I've tried to talk myself out of this ridiculous worry haven't quite gotten there. (Never mind that most of the people who visit my house know me already and therefore know that I like to read, and those who don't know me that well -- why would I care?)
Maybe I should cross-stitch a little sampler and hang it on the wall where the bookshelves used to be: "My books are on my Kindle!" A step too far, perhaps.
However, it's just the worst thing ever when I download a Kindle book and then end up hating it. When you hate a library book after 50 pages, no big deal -- you just return it. When you hate a book from the bookstore, it's a bummer, but at least you can pass it on to someone who might enjoy it or trade it in at the used bookstore or donate it to Goodwill or even just put it on your bookshelf* to add to the aura of high-brow literacy in your home.
A Kindle book, though -- you can't do anything with it. It just sits there in your account. You can't give it away. You can't trade it for something better. You can't even delete it -- it exists eternally in your Kindle memory, a reminder of the $9.99 that you'll never get back.
Fortunately this has only happened to me twice, in almost six months of Kindle ownership. But it rankles. Oh how it rankles.
*This is how weird I am. In my quest to rearrange my dining room/attic/playroom (which is all of a piece in a way that I don't have time to explain now) I realized that I could, with the purchase of just a few cheap bookshelves, store most of my books up in the attic -- especially since, due to the Kindle, I'm not really buying many actual books lately. But as I realized this, I thought -- But if I don't have any bookshelves downstairs, visitors to my home will assume I don't read. The horror! To be judged a non-reader! I've tried to talk myself out of this ridiculous worry haven't quite gotten there. (Never mind that most of the people who visit my house know me already and therefore know that I like to read, and those who don't know me that well -- why would I care?)
Maybe I should cross-stitch a little sampler and hang it on the wall where the bookshelves used to be: "My books are on my Kindle!" A step too far, perhaps.
Comments
Mom
But mom has a good idea.