(With so many apologies to Joyce Kilmer)

I think that I should not overlook

My lightweight, backlit, electronic book.

Is it not so sweet to see

Something built to save a tree?

To bring the words of literature’s best

To fall upon one’s sleeping chest?

To only have a single use

And keep away the Twitter abuse.

One device holds every book I own

And lets me borrow a library loan.

Books are read by fools like me.

But apparently Jeff can save the tree.

Amazon can be cursed or celebrated, but I stinking love my kindle. We camp frequently and who can know what they want to read when sitting on the side of a lake? I can carry 500 books with me and not have one side eye from a family member about how many books I have. Also don’t have to answer pesky questions about what I am reading. What wants to explain why their are reading The History of Time Travel? (James Gliek is the Man!) Or ever diet book ever written?)  It also lets me read without the annoying notifications of Twitter or email that may pop up when I read on the iPad or iPhone. Yes, I DO have all notifications turned off, but knowing the apps are there and I can just pop over and look to see if the world blew up on Twitter between paragraphs is a big distraction. I am not grown up to do that. So by reading on the Kindle, I don’t have the task switching, so I can read and remember. My Kindle is back lit, so I can read in the dark, yet it’s not blue light, so I can read before bed and still fall asleep. Ok, I am not a good sleeper, but I can’t blame the Kindle for that. The other thing I love about my Kindle is I can use Scrivener to format my own books for Kindle and then read them…Like real books, only free and about what I want to read about. Win Win!

This is not a paid advertisement for Kindles. I tried looking at Nooks, but they veered too much toward tablets. (As did the Kindle Fire. I had the original, but it was just as bad as the iPad for training me to be unfocused.) I like the Kindle because it has one use, and there are tons of books available, including loans from my local libraries and my university library. I did try the Kindle Unlimited program, and may go back when it’s financially feasible, but it’s not free, like libraries. (If you haven’t tried Libby, you should!) And free is the best.