Pros and Cons, Kindle Edition

Things I like about my Kindle:

1. Always have a book with me
2. Can always get a book if I read them all
3. One word: Minesweeper
4. Don't need a pen and post-it to annotate a book
5. If I want to look up a word, I don't even have to leave the page
6. Public domain books are free
7. Google is only a click away
8. No backlighting
9. The geek factor

Things I don't care for about my Kindle:

1. Can't read it in the bath. Or at any rate, I don't want to try.
2. All the books are in the same font. I feel like the typeset occasionally adds to the reading experience.
3. New books are still kinda expensive
4. Can't borrower nor lender be
5. No backlighting (I know, it's also a pro. Therefore, it should negate itself. But sometimes it's one, sometimes the other.)

Anecdotal evidence for liking Kindle: 

Every day in 8th grade, for the last 20 minutes before lunch, we all "drop everything and read." One boy hardly ever has anything to read. Sometimes he sits there with his head in his hands, sometimes he's a library creeper, sometimes I catch him listlessly flicking through the pages of something I know he already read. On Thursday, I went up to him with my Kindle and asked if he'd like to check it out. I showed him the basic navigation buttons, then went back to my desk to read. When the kids were dismissed for lunch, he brought my Kindle back over. I noticed he was reading The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and I excitedly told him about its real-life mystery factor (that Charles Dickens died before it was finished). 

The next day, I brought him a paperback copy of Drood so he could take it home with him if he wanted, but I also gave him the Kindle again. He took it to his seat and quietly told his neighbors, "Don't be jealous." I think the cool tech factor sucked him in, and before he knew it, he was reading Dickens and actually making progress (as of yesterday, he has read 2% of the novel.)

Pip's progress

"We changed again, and yet again, and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me." -Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Dickens captures the fundamental themes with passages that are simultaneously sad and funny. It's a bizarre experience to be reading and suddenly find yourself laughing with a sob catching in your throat. He takes what makes us human and captures it with language. It's what made me choose the title for this blog (which is borrowed from a Melissa Bank novel, but aptly describes so many passages in Dickens). I'm not sure if pulling one of the B, F, S & T passages and posting it would do it justice. Dickens builds to his moments. Losing the context would present you with a pretty, eloquent pair of lines, like above, but you wouldn't have the emotional commitment to the moment like you would if you were reading the novel.

I'll try to find more examples of what I'm talking about. But again, this might not be the medium for it.