E-Book Bandwagon
There is a certain appeal to browsing the shelves of a bookstore, but these days, most people don’t have time. Fortunately, these are also the days of electronic everything. The ability to hold 3,500 books in the palm of your hand is now a reality. The wonderful people at Amazon have brought the Kindle to the world of book lovers.
Using a Kindle is a convenient, affordable and fun way to manage books. Sharon Verble, a middle school teacher from Jonesborough, Tenn has a Kindle.
“I love the convenience of not having to go to the library and get a book, I can get it immediately,” Verble said. “Another thing about the convenience of the Kindle, it’s not filling up my bookcases. Now, the only drawback is if I buy a book and don’t like it, there’s no way to take it back, like to Mr. Kay’s or something like that. But the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.”
She likes the economic advantages of being able to get books online. There are websites where users can sign up to receive an email of free books daily. Verble uses the site and said that even if she decides to buy a book, it’s sometimes cheaper on the Kindle. Another economic advantage is not having to drive to a library or book store.
Verble also has a Sony e-reader that offers a different advantage for her.
“I like the kindle, but my Sony e-reader is much better when I go outside to read in the summer,” Verble said. “So the Sony would probably be my favorite in the summer, and the Kindle is probably my favorite.”
Kindles have become much easier to use, and in more ways, over the years. Amazon now has five different versions which offer different selling points, the Kindle Touch for example would be more appealing to someone who prefers a touch screen. The Kindle Fire is more like a tablet with an e-reader, which might appeal to a teen for the games and internet access.
Annette Boreing is a librarian at David Crockett High School and uses e-readers in the school and personal setting. Personally, she uses a Kindle.
“I use a Kindle because it’s extremely convenient to add content,” Boreing said. “Amazon makes it really easy to use it now, they finally began to play well with others and have allowed libraries to use Kindle content. So now I can download my books wirelessly.
“The first e-readers I had, I had to hook them up to my computer,” Boreing said. “I had to side-load all my content and I chose that e-reader because I could check out books from the library. That’s why I didn't get a Kindle to start with, but now that Kindle has opened up to the libraries, it’s easier because I can literally download content from my phone to my phone if I need to. Also if I’m at a computer and I see a book I want on the library then it can download wirelessly to my Kindle, which I really like.”
Having an e-reader such as a Kindle is great. For avid readers who may not like to haul books around, it’s the perfect way to be able to read wherever, whenever and whatever they like. Since the Kindle can hold thousands of books, a user can switch from book to book with a few clicks.
“It’s very convenient to have one small device and carry that around instead of dozens of heavy books,” Boreing said. “I like just the dedicated Kindle e-reader better because your able to read outside in any conditions so unless you just need a tablet and you want all the games and the videos and things, really, a dedicated e-reader, for readers, is the best device.”
There are arguments against e-readers.
“A lot of people say, they just miss the feel of the book and curling up with a book in bed,” Boreing said. “I’d really rather curl up in bed with my Kindle because its a lot less cumbersome than books because with a book its really a two-handed affair, whereas with my Kindle, I can just sit there with my thumb and read. In certain circumstances, if you’re studying and you want to go back and forth its a little inconvenient on an e-reader.”
The Kindle is, according to Boreing, tremendously economical.
“Content is now very affordable, I like that,” Boreing said. “I have close to 500 books in my kindle library and I’ve bought maybe three or four of them. If your a best-seller person and gotta have it now, then you might not be quite as satisfied, but I’m cheap and I read what’s available more so than what’s on the best seller list.”
In the school setting Boreing uses Nook Colors. E-readers can be very helpful in the classroom in a number of ways.
“We have a classroom set of Nook Colors at school,” Boreing said. “We use them as readers in english departments, I’ve used them in the math department as calculators with math games, I use them as a language lab for our spanish classes, we’ve used them as video devices with special needs students, so they are certainly multiple use tablets.”
The convenience of having multiple books in your hands, the economic advantage of free book offers and saved gas money and the fun ways of using an e-reader for reading, games and more, should convince anyone to get an e-reader. People say jumping on the bandwagon is a bad thing, but bandwagons can be pretty fun.
