Kindle

So—I have been a huge proponent of the Kindle Fire. Each time someone comes in to ask for a recommendation about an ereader, the Fire has been at the top of my list. You can do eBooks, plus get most of what an iPad has but at a significantly cheaper price.

And then, I looked at my reading list to see what I had been reading. Not much! And yet I have downloaded quite a few books to read. What was going on? I had also noticed several of my Library Shelf articles talk about the fact that I hadn’t read for ages, then I go on a reading spurt and recommend a lot of the books. So why do I keep having these reading droughts, especially since I am an avid reader and, well, it is sort of part of my job?

As I wondered about this question, I picked up my Fire, opened “Cryptonomicon” by Neal Stephenson, a book I was reading because I LOVED his novel “Seven Eves.” As I was reading, I stopped to look up info about the history of the “output-feedback mode stream ciphers” that appear in the book.

While reading about the history of that cipher system on Wikipedia, I laughed at myself because I was getting info off Wikipedia, even though I detest Wikipedia because of the misinformation that shows up on its pages, and I recalled that we had specifically added “information literacy” as a  goal on the library’s Long Range Plan to help our users better understand good vs. not good webpages, but remembered that I had not started a plan yet for beefing up our information literacy outreach, so I went to our webpage to look up the specific wording in the plan, but when I was looking for the long range plan link, I saw the slide on our homepage for the Mobile FabLab (maker space) coming on Friday, which made me remember that I had seen an ad for the comeback of the TV show “Battlebots,” which my husband loves, but that I HATE so since we stream TV, I looked up articles on how I could block out an entire site like ABC, so that I wouldn’t have to watch it, and then I felt guilty for wanting to deprive hub of something that makes him so happy, which me feel sad, and then I was sad, and then I became concerned that I had become sad so quickly, so I looked up whether or not you can get Seasonal Affective Disorder in the summer, and as I read the list of symptoms, I saw that not enjoying things you used to enjoy was on the list, and I thought about how I was certainly not enjoying the escape game I had been playing on my Fire, so I opened the game to see if I still didn’t like it, and I didn’t, so I went to the Kindle app store and browsed through a bunch of apps to find and download a new escape game to see if I liked that one, but in the meantime, I found a cross-stitching game app that looked fun so I downloaded it to play, but I didn’t like it so I deleted it, and when I deleted it, the icon for my episodes of “The Bletchley Circle,” about the women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during WWII, appeared, so I stopped and watched the last two episodes I hadn’t seen yet, but then I was finished with the series and wished I had more, which reminded me that HEY—I’m reading a book about codebreaking!, so I reopened “Cryptonomicon,” read a page and half, then fell asleep.

So, I knew what my reading problem was. I checked out several hardcopy books the following day, and read and enjoyed “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff (very literary, 3.5 stars); “Girl with All the Gifts” by M.R. Carey (dystopian, 4 stars) “Britt-Marie Was Here” by Fredrik Backman (5 stars!); and “I Let You Go” by Clare Mackintosh (4.25 stars).

I still love the ease and convenience of eBooks, but before I go back to Oklahoma Virtual Library, I’ll be getting a plain old, no frills Kindle.