E-Reader Obsession

Let’s start with the confession. I am a person who owns six E-Readers.

I can see you gaping at me. Why, for the love of kittens everywhere, would a person need that many?

Well, friends…it started very innocently. I had two kindles. One was a new ColorSoft, and one was my beloved but so-out-of-date Oasis 1. How I love that device…but it was getting long in the tooth— a little slow, didn’t hold a charge that well, and there were newer, shinier devices, so I replaced her, first with a Kindle SE, and then, later, I replaced the SE with he ColorSoft.

This is all very reasonable, so far. I think.

And then, I saw the new Kindle Basic, and it’s so tiny and fun and I had to have it. I told myself that it would be a basement Kindle, when, in fact, it’s just so darn cute that it rarely leaves my sight.

So, that’s the three Kindles.

Earlier this year, I thought that I might want to dive into current fantasy series, and Kevin has a TON of Brandon Sanderson and Terry Pratchett books in his Amazon library. And I thought, rather than scrabble for copies at my local library, it might be nice to have a reader that was signed into his Amazon account, so that I could take full advantage of his library. So, we bought a Meebook, which was cheap and kind of worked like it. It was dog slow and buggy and we never got much use out of it. But a year later, I started reading reviews of other android e-ink devices, and finally settled on a Boox. I bought a Go Color & signed it into all of Kevin’s accounts, and then proceeded to get bored with fantasy and not use it much.

But then, then…then, gentle readers, my friend Sean bought a Remarkable tablet. That is an e-ink device that you can write on!

Now, as an ADHD girlie, I have always thought that the perfect version of myself was always just one perfect notebook away. And this seemed like the perfect notebook! I was obsessed.

But a Remarkable Paper Pro starts at $629. Before you buy a case or a stylus.

Pretty expensive notebook.

As I lamented not spending that much money on a tablet, I discovered that Kobo tablets have notebook capabilities very similar to Remarkable. Not quite a fully-featured, but also not quite as $629. At $269, Kevin was much more encouraging of that purchase, especially because I could read books on it.

And boy, do I read books on it. It’s become…well, not my favorite reader, because I do still have strong emotional attachments to my Kindles.

But it’s objectively a better reader in almost every way, and I do use it for probably 40% of my reading. It’s so good. If it had a better store, it might be perfect.

Spoiler Alert—looks like a better store may be coming as Kobo has announced a future partnership with bookshop.org. Huzzah!

And I do use it as a notebook, but largely for various lists of books.

So, we are now at three Kindles, a Boox and a Kobo.

And then, earlier this year, I saw an ad for the Boox Palma Pro 2, and was mesmerized. It was the size of a cell phone! I sent an ad to Kevin and told him that I wanted one for my Birthday. He agreed that it was pretty cool, and promptly bought himself one.

Bastard!

Once his arrived, I told him that he was now legally required in the State of MD, to buy me one, too. And, God love him, he did.

Those are now our “going out to run errands” readers. They fit in any pocket, and they read Kindle books, and library books, and Kobo books. Really, it reads ALL THE BOOKS.

So that, friends, is how I ended up with six E-Readers. Perfectly logical progression, don’t you think?

And now, I shall grab one—likely that pink one—and read a soccer romance. See? It’s NOT all about hockey! #heatedrivalryforever

Before that, though, here’s the good stuff:

Yesterday, I read 66 pages, meditated for 25 minutes, took a loooong nap. Kevin made pizza for dinner, and prepped rice for a Sunday experiment in Fried Rice on the Blackstone. I’m grateful, so grateful, for the shared hallucination that is books. We look at these squiggly lines and hallucinate a story, and it’s one of the best parts of my whole life.

Love y’all.