eBooks and a joy of traveling lite
You can take it from me, that the struggle of urban gypsy is real. If you are not sure what I am talking about, you must have missed ‘Urban Gypsy vs Paperback Loyalist’. Let me tell you one thing, shifting to new rental houses almost every year is hectic especially if you are a bibliophile having a large book collection. And when you love your books and reading so much, traveling to outstation with at least three novels in your luggage makes it very tiresome. This is the reason why I had shifted my focus from physical books to digital ones. Very unique experiences opened up in the form of ebooks.
When you flip pages of eBooks on screen
eBooks have evolved from stiff rigid PDFs to swanky, lively eBooks. There are a number of platforms where you can enjoy your books like Google books, Wattpad. I have tried all of them, however my favourite remains the Kindle by Amazon. Thing which sealed a deal for me is not just the huge book library / catalogue they have, but the experience of reading books on Kindle is amazing.
The only thing about which I have a complaint is, the Kindle device, that sophisticated eBook reader is damn costly. That’s why owning a Kindle Paperwhite still remains my dream today. But, their free Kindle mobile application comes to my rescue. The app is fluid and reader-friendly with choices of choosing background colour and text size for a comfortable reading on screen. Animations in the app give you the feel of turning an actual page. A bibliophile in me feels good because of such small things. As a result, I started buying more of the eBooks than paperbacks.
kindle Unlimited – New avatar of good old library
Hunger and ambition to have my own collection of books and to display them proudly on a beautiful bookshelf turned me away from actively looking out for a library when I moved to Pune back in 2010. It all changed when I stumbled upon something called Kindle Unlimited. It’s a subscription model where you can borrow upto 10 books at a time from their wide ever changing collection. They even have some collections of literature from indian languages added up in kindle unlimited package.
Initially, It was a struggle for me to adjust to the new not owning the book I am reading. I took my time to adapt to these new changes and enjoy the library system again. Now I have eased into this system and my membership gets renewed all the time. Probably, I am turning myself into a Digital Dragon. Digital Dragon who’s Paperback Loyalist deep down in his heart.
This post is a part of the Blogchatter Half Marathon. Read my earlier story here.
Completely agree with each and every point. Ive loved Kindle Unlimited and since I too am always on the move maintaining a paperback library is tough. Lost a few books in the process.
I belong to the old guard, still love the primitive paperback.
Even I love them, if I have access to unlimited bookshelves and my own place to stay, I will stick to Paperbacks for sure
I’ll always love paper backs, even hoard them, but I am learning to adjust to e-books too.
You will definitely understand how real is that struggle
I got into ebooks during the pandemic last year. Took some getting used to but they’re indeed convenient and lite to travel with.
The Kindle Paperwhite may be expensive but it is worth every rupee. It is my constant companion and not my phone. Lasts many, many years and can store thousands of books.
It’s expensive like anything… I don’t know if I can put that kind of sum in a gadget which has only one use. And that too, you need to keep buying books to read in it