No Kindle Inflames my Passion!

"I could not live without books."

"So many books, so little time."

"...books are keys to wisdom's treasure. Books are paths that upward lead. Books are friends. Come, let us read."

I have loved books and reading since I was a very little girl. Walking into the library never fails to give me a little frisson of excitement. I cracked the code quickly and became impatient with the repetitiveness of Dick and Jane; I wanted to move on! I never liked Dr. Seuss because of the repetition when I was a child, though I like the cadence of the prose as an adult. Reading is the activity that I enjoy above all. I could read and do virtually nothing else.

For some reason, even with two voracious readers as parents and frequent trips to the library, none of our children are the readers we are. I stood before our crammed shelves one day with a daughter, pointing out to her the merits of various books when it dawned on me: those stories are not a part of her the way they are of me. And they likely never will be. This realization broke my heart.

The various experiences and the infinite wisdom I've gleaned through books are invaluable to me. My child, whom I love so much, is bereft without even knowing it, and this breaks my heart. How much will this diminish her life? She may never know or care, but I do know that my own life would be greatly diminished without the vast storehouse of information I've read and pondered and stored up for many, many years.

Lately I have been reading for escape. I just finished Cold Comfort Farm, a brilliant and hilarious book that sends up the overwrought English countryside novel popular between the wars (much as the Jeeves and Wooster books do). Lately my life has seemed difficult and bleak, and to get myself out of this mood, I have been reading. Real printed paper-between-covers books.

I cannot imagine using yet another electronic device to read when it is so easy and inexpensive to read a book. You don't have to plug it in or recharge it; it doesn't cost hundreds of dollars plus a fee to read, only a short trip to the library. I have been told that a Kindle stores 1500 books (but since length varies so much, who can tell?) but that's a load of money too, since it costs about $16 to download a book. Who needs this gadget? Not I.

In ninth grade, I took a Power Reading course. It was a proud moment when my teacher stood before the class and said that I had completed the highest available materials in the course by semester's end. (One other boy, my crush for a couple of years, had overcome the material at the beginning of the class, but he decided to finish it anyway.) I'm zipping through novels and biographies at the rate of several a week, just to keep ahead of what Winston Churchill called "the black dog."

At least it's working, even if I don't get much else done.

Just give me the words printed and bound. I am happy with these treasures.