The Good Book

I recently got gifted an Amazon Kindle Fire HD. Needless to say I was thrilled to bits. The Kindle Fire was exactly what I wanted - a one stop shop to access and to read all books. I love reading, and over the years I have had a tendency to read multiple books at a time.

This presented a unique problem when I started working. Whenever I would travel on work I found that not only could I not take all the books I was reading along with me (as this would mean that the size of my suitcase will almost double), I could only carry one book, and that too the one which would fit into my laptop bag. Not for me was the bulky backpack! I carried a sleek laptop bag in orange with brown borders. While this ensured I was up to my teeth in "style" quotient, I was nowhere near there in the "ample reading material for the travel" quotient. If I felt like reading that business book on the flight when all I had carried along was the fiction book, well, too bad.

So you see, the Amazon Kindle Fire is Perfect for me. Absolutely Perfect. It is sleek and light. I can carry in it hundreds of books at a time, if I want. When I close a book after I am done reading for the day it automatically bookmarks the page so that the next time I open it, the book opens in the same page. I can also copy extracts of the book and make notes while reading. Yesterday while reading my first ebook in it I realised that I can also highlight words from the text and consult the dictionary. And all this is just the tip of a super long list of features that it claims to sport. What a beautiful gadget!

Just as swiftly as I reveled in the advantages of the Kindle, I realised what I would now be missing, possibly forever: the weight of the tome in my hand, the crackle of the page when I turned it, the feel of the paper under my hands - slightly coarse but abundantly promising of the fascinating journey it was to take me through the course of the book. More than anything else, I would miss the intoxicating smell of paper whenever a new book was opened. I would inhale it deeply and the smell would stir in me restlessness, a longing to plunge into its depths right away and discover its secrets.

The Amazon Kindle Fire HD does not smell of anything, and it is extremely smooth to touch. It needs to be charged every now and then when the battery goes low, and sometimes when the ebook is loading it makes a faint whirring sound, like a fan.

The Good Book had character; it had a personality which was part of its charm. Goodbye for now. Till we meet again.