Some time ago Amazon started advertising their Kindle E-Book Reader and, whilst I didn’t want one at the time, I was impressed with its promise.
Books in English are obtainable in Spain but are usually found at book stalls in charity shops etc. as new books are quite expensive. With our venture into The Reading Group of our U3A (see previous post) we decided that it may be advantageous to have a more easily accessible library of books from which to choose.
In the Reading Group, the Leader issues a mutually agreed list of books which are to be read and discussed over the following twelve months. The members can then obtain the books by any means possible. In the current list I was able to get three in audio format, three in Kindle format, and had to buy the other six. I was able to get these all second hand from Amazon and had them delivered to an English address in time for our visit last October.
I expect to be able to get more and more books in Kindle format over the coming months as this format becomes ever more popular. Amazon have announced that e-book sales are now out stripping paper book sales and most books are now published simultaneously in both formats.
Over the weeks since I bought my Kindle I have downloaded from various sites on the Internet several thousand e-books in various formats. All of these are readily convertible into Kindle format and have supplied me with a personal library which I will never be able to get through in my lifetime, but the books are there and available to anybody who wants them but does not have the knowledge to be able to download them for themselves. In the library are books by modern authors such as Peter Robinson, Val McDermid, Dean Koontz, Stephen King etc. and older books which have become classics by long-dead authors like Jane Austen, Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, The Brontes etc.
I find The Kindle easy to use. It can be kept inside its leather case and then weighs as much as a very small paper back, or can be removed if you wish it to be even lighter. The battery lasts for many hours and the device switches itself off if it detects no use for an extended period. So if you fall asleep whilst reading it in bed you can wake up with it switched off and when you switch it back on again it has remembered your place. If you leave the book you are reading and start another, you can come back to the original and the Kindle will open the book at the same page you were reading when you left it.
Unlike a notebook or tablet PC, the screen is not backlit so, as with a normal book, it requires illumination to be able to read it.
If your eyes grow tired, or are not too good in the first place, you can increase the size of the font to a degree which allows you to read with ease.
In the sun, where a computer does not have the contrast to allow you to see the screen, it reads like a normal book.
