January's Gadget

I am a spoiled little boy.  For Christmas Nikki bought me a Kindle. For the past few months I have realized that some day I would want one of these guys for several reasons:

1. When we moved my books weighed what would be equivalent to an elephant.  (I don't even mean the hairy, small Asian elephants.  I'm talking about the big mama African elephants!)

2.  I feel guilty not having room for donations when I go to Ethiopia because I have to bring my 27 books per trip.

3.  When you look at the pages turn you think they must be magic.

Even with this awesome reasoning, I thought it wouldn't make sense to spend money for the right to buy books.  It all seemed a little backwards, but I still wanted to have one of those buggers.  On Christmas at the Ness house (which was December 18th) I got to open up the Kindle and if I was sitting on a chair I would have fallen out of it.  Then, my mom gave me a gift card for Amazon where you can buy millions of ebooks for super cheap.  It is an awesome little toy. I don't need it, but I have to admit that I absolutely love it.

Now, I have heard a few complaints about the idea of a Kindle instead of a book.  They have this special section on it where they test experimental programs.  I recommend that Amazon experiment with these ideas to take away the complaints.

-You are not actually holding a book.  Well, they should make a case that feels like a book.  That way anyone who looks will see you are reading a book, you get to feel like it, and yet you still have an entire library at your fingertips.  They should make the book something impressive, like "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" or "East of Eden."  That way no one will know that you are actually just checking blogs on your magic piece of paper.

-It doesn't smell like a book.  This is disturbing to me, but both my wife and closest friend like to sniff the pages of a book.  I don't like reminding them that they sometimes go to Half Priced Books and you don't know where the book has been.  Still, Amazon could put a little stink on the Kindle.  Maybe one of those little Glade smell release machines that shoot out the book smell every few minutes.  If that doesn't work they could always have a scratch and sniff screen protector.  I'm okay with the neutral smelling electronics, but for those book sniffers it may help them out a little.

All of this is to say that I like books, and my new toy.