Kindle

At the risk of ardent book lovers chasing me with pitch-forks, I'm going to confess I've bought a Kindle Touch. (This is actually quite old news, I got it back in April.) I love books. I love the feel of them. I love when they're stacked in a messy pile on my bedside table. However, due to various factors I felt the Kindle was the best choice.

• I live in a shared house with a bedroom with limited space and no bookshelf. I've tried to think how I could rearrange the furniture to fit one in but due to dodgy radiator placing I don't think it's possible. I've currently got my books on my chest of drawers but, unless I stack vertically, the space is very limited.
• Moving books around is a pain. I don't anticipate living in this house for the next twenty years. I learnt from moving back from university (where I accumulated nearly 200 books) that books are heavy and take up a lot of space in boxes.
• The books are cheaper. I'm poor. I know the initial cost of the Kindle is quite substantial, but seeing as most Dickens, Austin, Conan Doyle, Eliot, Hardy, Shakespeare etc. can be bought free it more than pays for itself. Also, Amazon has a daily deal of a book for 99p and often has good deals.
• You carry your whole library with you. If you go on holiday you don't have to worry about bringing an unnecessarily large supply of books incase you don't like some of them. If you don't like the book, you just open up another one.
• All your purchases as saved on the Amazon website so you can never lose a book.
• It remembers and syncs how far you've got. I regularly lose where I am in a book, because the bookmark falls out, or I drop the book, or the phone rings and I put it down. This can kill a book for me. I hate the idea of having to read passages again to find where I am, so it can kill a book for me. There are various books, such as Middlemarch, that I never finished because I lost the page. Also, if you have the Kindle app on you computer/phone/iPod/iPad etc. it will sync your progress will all your devices if they're connected to the internet.
• They're light. Some books can be quite heavy to hold for a long period of time (lazy, I know).
• You can hold it with one hand. Some books, especially if they're large or with a stiff spine, cannot be held with just the one had, not matter how hard you try. Kindles won't keep shutting on you or their pages won't be blown in the wind.
• They look like paper. They're not backlit so they don't hurt your eyes and are easy to read in sunlight.

I know Kindles are damaging to book industry, but probably not as much as the supermarkets who treat books like loss leaders and internet suppliers that sell books for 79p a go. I once went to take it out in an independent bookshop that sells teas and coffees, and quickly realised it wouldn't go down well.

Just so you know, I'm not an Amazon Salesperson; I just love my Kindle.

• What do you think about Kindles?