E-Reader vs Paper

I have long been a fan of things technological. Gadgets and gizmos are so interesting! They can do so many neat things! I was online when BBs were where you went online, and URLs were a strange and foreign language. I remember when LJ was the newest, neatest thing and AOL communities were exploding with activity. I remember GEnie and the oh-so-convenient and never suitable replicated Aladdin made signing on affordable...if you kept it to once or twice a day!

I remember when 2400 baud rate modems were fast, and a 286 computer was had for the reasonable price of about $1000. It was, after all, the very first loan I ever got. DOS based programs were the only ones around. Anyone else remember Eight-in-One?

 I'm the kid who stopped eating lunch in junior high so she could save her money to buy books. The library just wasn't good enough - they'd have a book at the beginning of a series, or the middle, but not the rest. I'm the one who took pride in winning a gift certificate from the school at the end of the year for reading the most books during the school year.

So you'd think I'd be in the front ranks of people mad over e-readers. How much better could it get? It's a gadget. It's a book. It fits in your pocket. You can download books directly to it! It seems perfect. It seems a dream come true.

Except there's one problem: if you live on a budget, it places a temptation you can't afford right where you can't avoid it, unless you're smart enough, strong enough, resistant enough to NOT BUY AN E-READER. And you explain to everyone who knows you and wonders why you haven't gotten one yet, WHY you have gotten it yet.

And then they go and give it all sorts of new and fascinating features, like Internet and Netflix. Oh, whimper. Resistance is hard!!

But when someone decides to give you a Kindle for Christmas (and not the ultra-neat Kindle Fire with all the bells and whistles, but the bare-basic base model Kindle that you can ONLY read on, in black and white, without even the back-lighting on the screen) avoiding temptation becomes much, much harder.

Until...

Until you go shopping on Amazon and check out those Kindle Book prices. Because I'm a curious woman, I compare them to the paperback prices. Now, is it me, or does it seem just WRONG that an e-book would cost the same as the paper book? I mean...less materials used in production, so why the same price? It makes no sense! It's a rip off! A crime! An outrage!

If I'm paying the same price, I'm gonna get the most of my money. Give me that paperback book. Let me post-it the pages I like. Let me admire the cover art. Let me caress that glossy, slick paper that surrounds that rougher, ink-smelling stack. Give me something corporeal. A paperback book fits in my back pocket, too.

Watch the dust...

Oh, my! I forgot I had this blog! Bit dusty in here, isn't it? Since I've cancelled my LiveJournal account, I suppose I should start blogging here. So, um, stay turned! :)