More Wonderful Things About E-Readers

[Update from my last post: I did indeed buy a car. It's ten years old, cost me £925 (about $1,400) and I love it.]

Jennie said something so perfect in yesterday's post that I feel minded to elaborate.

I do love books. There is something wonderful about holding your own book in you hands, and they are certainly much easier to flip through and get a feel for before you buy. They are generally more attractive to look at than ebooks, not only because of the glossy cover, but the occasional illustration or fancy chapter heading. A good display on your living room bookshelf tells visitors much about you, and they smell great too!

But there are many, many wonderful things about using an EReader. The obvious ones, of course, are that ebooks are far cheaper, don't need storage space, you can get a free sample before you buy and you never lose your page. But here are several other things which I have recently come to appreciate about my Kindle (other EReaders are available. I'm told. Never seen one.):

• My Kindle has cured me of my habit of flipping to the end first. It's difficult on a Kindle to flip to the last page mostly because if you do you may not easily or accurately be able to get back to the page you were actually on. So dramatic surprise endings really are surprises now.
• As Jennie mentioned, I can buy LDS books without having to pay $25 (Deseret Book's standard international shipping charge) for a book costing $4.95. That is just unbelievably wonderful. And that also applies to many other books published in the US or elsewhere, and now available for me to download here in rainy Essex in just a few clicks.
• My wonderful Dad gave me his old iPhone a couple of months ago (he's the best Dad ever!). It was really easy to download the Kindle app and link it to my Amazon account, so now all the books on my Kindle are also on my iPhone, which means that I can read anywhere and everywhere on a device that fits in the palm of my hand. (And I do - I was at the queue at the checkout at Morrison's when I finished reading The Sealed Letter by Emma Donaghue.)
• The devices sync, which means whichever I choose to pick up and read on, all the books on it open at the last page I read, even if it was on the other device.
• I find it really good fun to see, as I read, what passages others have highlighted, and to highlight lines or sections which I think are particularly noteworthy.

I could go on waxing lyrical about my Kindle (or my car) but since I find new things I love about it every day, there's a risk I might never stop.