Kindle RIP

I broke my Kindle. Well actually it belongs/belonged to my brother but I’ve been using it for over a year. It is/was a third generation kindle with a keyboard and wifi and it was very good. I was 61% through Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” but now the top half of the screen became un-illuminated so I can only read the bottom half of each page. Incidentally the first 61% of EIL is pretty good. I’ve not seen the film.

It puts me in a difficult position because I hate kindles. I hate them because they threaten to extinguish the printed press. Ebooks are cheaper than books, but unless people keep buying books then there will be no bookshops, and without bookshops there is no browsing. I hate that Kindles are made by the sinisterly convenient Amazon.co.uk, and so contribute to the mega tax-avoiding corporation undercutting the traditional retailers and dehumanising shopping in general. Physical items have pleasing weight, texture, colour; ebooks are merely ghosts of books. The distinctive smell of books, of old dusty relics or new shiny stories, is far far better than the smell of plastic and silicon, of ones and zeroes. I hate kindles because they look rubbish on bookshelves, and because you can’t judge them by their covers. How will people know all of the impressive-sounding books I’ve bought but not read if they’re not pretentiously displayed in my house?

Kindle's are not welcome in Hay-On-Wye

At the same time, I love kindles. I love that I can carry around 100 virtual books more easily than 100 real ones, and so have on one’s person a book for all moods and occasions, the ability to abandon a title and replace it at a moment’s whim. I love that I can obtain almost any book almost instantly, or can download UK newspapers to read in non-UK countries.  I love that I can read the very hungry caterpillar on the train without the judgement of others. I love that there are zillions of free ebooks including legally downloaded copies of books from 70 years after the author’s death. I love that I can read all of the books that my brother downloaded to the kindle before I seized control.

Since I will be graduating and leaving Birmingham in a couple of weeks I attended my final book club meeting recently. It was sad to say farewell to a great group of people who’ve shared a good number of varied books. I hope to continue the discussions with virtual meetings using goodreads (also owned by blasted amazon), so I’ve another reason to continue with the kindle.

So in order to read the rest of the books I’ve started, and to not lose the books already downloaded onto the device, and in the interests of fairness and good manners I’ve ordered a replacement kindle for my brother, and I will continue to borrow it from him indefinitely.