I Finally Understand the Kindle

But it took a minute...

For years I'd ignored e-readers with e-ink displays. Hell, for a good portion of my twenties I didn't even own a computer. I bought books in hardcover, decorating my shelves with them post-read. I read the paper as... paper. I bought a copy of the Times with my morning coffee through most of my twenties.

By my late twenties -- ready to acknowledge the modern world -- I sometimes read ebooks and the daily news on my phone or iPad. At this point I was embarking on a new career, however, so my "fun" reading was scaled back, even turned into a form of career development. (It was largely reading O'Reilly books on my computer during my budgeted reading time.)

Once I'd gone far enough in the new career to feel comfortable just "reading for fun" I'd already gotten into the habit of reading on a screen, so I kept at it through that medium. I read news articles almost exclusively in digital form. And I attempted to read novels on my iPad.

That novel reading didn't work. I found myself continuously remembering something I needed to look up. Or I was receiving some text message, or email, or news alert. There was always something beyond the text. But it was a start.

And one I improved upon -- by filling in the gaps between working, researching new tech, and (ultimately) parenting -- with audiobooks. Whether driving, doing the dishes, or mowing the lawn, an audiobook could read to me. With that I was finally, regularly, "reading" novels again.

Leave it to an Amazon Prime Day sale to prompt a purchase.

I bought a baseline, ad-free Kindle on a whim. Quickly, the Kindle made sense to me.

Here's what "clicked":

• The e-ink display is completely legible on a sunny day. A Kindle encourages outdoor reading. Using a computer or an iPad in these conditions can be a futile experience, the text being barely legible on the screen.
• The e-ink display seems to reduce any screen-induced wakefulness at night in comparison to my phone or an iPad. This is especially true when you leverage dark-mode.
• You can buy an Audible audiobook bundled with your Kindle e-book and they will remain in sync. This lets you listen to your book while, say, driving, and then pick up where you left off on Kindle at night without needing to do any hunting.
• Made of plastic and being very thin, a Kindle feels weightless in comparison to even an iPhone, with the latter's stainless steel and glass. Compared to a whole iPad a Kindle is like a compact car next to a heavy duty pickup. There is no arm or wrist fatigue when holding this thing up.
• Most importantly, the Kindle is single purpose. When you're reading a book on it you're totally engrossed in the book by necessity. There is nothing else to distract you on the device.

The impact this has had on the quantity of my reading is pretty incredible. Audiobooks alone had gotten me to the point of reading nearly every day. With the Kindle, I'm now reading almost double my audiobook-only totals, putting in roughly an hour of e-book reading in a night.

And so I get it. A Kindle is not some cheap alternative to an iPad. My iPad is sitting dead on my bedside table, untouched for months. My Kindle is sitting right next to me.