I bought a Kindle Fire in November.  Not because I had any desire to join the e-reader craze and not because I’m the kind of person who has to have the latest technological inventions.  I actually bought it to enable Banjo Man to give up the Blackberry phone he didn’t know how to use in the first place and to replace his method of checking email and stock reports while traveling with a simpler device.  (wow, that was a long sentence!)

Of course I should have known that my husband would not be the least bit interested in learning how to use a Kindle.  Even when it proved its worth by showing us a map when we were lost trying to find a restaurant that neither one of us remembered the address to.

I love books.  Love, love, love books.  Owning an e-reader of any kind seemed silly to me.  I get my books from the library.  I rarely buy them.  And I refuse to pay $12.99 to download a NYT-bestseller from Amazon when I can wait a week or two and get it free from the local library.

Then I learned that Amazon has free books, the books published before 1923 (or somewhere around then, meaning I downloaded all of Jane Austen’s book in five minutes).  And daily book deals (you have to search for the free ones).  And I discovered that many of my own novels had been reissued as e-books, which will mean extra bucks in the “future sound system” account.

But the best part of this Kindle Fire (aside from being able to check email and read websites along with reading books) is downloading library books.  There are a limited number available, so I have to wait my turn.  But…it doesn’t cost anything.

And I’ve discovered that reading on the Kindle is practically a luxury because (a) it props up nicely on the handles of the exercise bike and treadmill, leaving my hands free for holding my coffee mug and checking my pulse <g>, (b) I can read in bed at night without the light on (the screen is backlit), (c) I can make the font size as big as I want, (d) I don’t have to turn the pages, which can be a pain when my hands hurt and (e) I don’t have to haul books to Texas and will never run out of things to read on the plane even if the flights are delayed or cancelled.

Thanks for the Memories is a wonderful story.  I’m a big Cecilia Ahern fan and while this doesn’t have the heartbreaking drama of P.S. I Love You (didn’t you just love that movie?), it’s classic Ahern with quirky characters and Irish wit.

I’m now off to see what else I can find on the library’s e-zone website…

(yep, this is about as exciting as it gets here in Rhode Island in February)