The Literate Housewife Review

I Need a Kindle

I love books.  I love their weight in my hands.  I love the way they smell.  I love to open them and run my fingertips over the pages.  I love bookmarks.  I love brand new books and books that visibly have been enjoyed more than once.  I love the way a book gently lets you know much you have already read or how much there is yet to come.  I love being able to cradle a beloved book to my chest when I’ve finished it.  I love being able to pitch a book across the room when it sucks.  I love walking into my bedroom and seeing my favorites lined up in nice, neat rows on my bookshelf.  I love books.

I have been reading now for 30 years and have wondered what the word “chignon” means each and every time I’ve encountered it.  I have not once got up from my book and looked the word up.  From context, I have been able to determine that was a formal to semi-formal hair style.  But I still wanted to know what it looked like – but not enough to get up from my reading and open a dictionary.  Not enough to remember to look it up when I had the dictionary, Google, or Wikipedia open looking for something else.

The other day, one of my co-workers brought his Kindle into the office for us to see.  I am not a fan of reading on screen.  As a technical writer, I stare at a computer screen all day long.  I prefer to read on paper to give my eyes a rest, if not for all of the reasons I love books.  So, as I was getting my demo I thought it was a neat gadget for those who dabble in reading.  I kept that smug assessment to myself and was ready to forget all about it until he showed me the dictionary feature.  When he showed me how easy it is to get the definitions of a single word or for all of the words in a sentence, I knew I would sell my pure reader’s soul to the electronics devil to have one of those.

Since no one is in the market for this Dutch woman’s soul (shocking, isn’t it?), I’m going to have to save up some money.  At  least writing this post prodded me into looking up chignon…