Kindle Reading

When I first got my Kindle last birthday, I was ecstatic and cautious all at once. After all, I have an enormous pile of to read books that occasionally gets whittled down by me changing my taste in books and giving them away. My fear was that the impulse buying issue I have in bookstores that leads me to avoid them in the same way an alcoholic avoids bars would be free to deplete my bank account unchecked.

My fears were thankfully unfounded. I do impulse shop, but mostly from Pixel of Ink's free (or nearly free) daily listings. I prefer to visit the website rather than get the email notifications, mainly because the former has pictures and the latter, only text. I highly recommend it if you're in tough financial straits because you can get some good, well-reviewed (by readers) books in a decent range of genres (ie. not just romance).  I do have a pile of cool books I might end up reading, and a shorter pile of must reads, but they no longer take up so much space.  :)

My other big discovery was Instapaper. The site calls it, "A simple tool to save web pages for reading later." For example, say you're websurfing during your lunch hour and you encounter a neat, but very lengthy article. In the past, you might bookmark it for later, but you'd have to remember it was there and be on a computer to read it. With Instapaper, you click your "Read Later" bookmarklet and through the magic of computing, the article is sent to your Kindle via your Amazon account. That means it comes over wirelessly. Now they have iPhone and iPad and Android apps for those wanting to read it that way too. I've been using it for a couple of months now and it is super cool and very easy to use. I highly recommend it.

Now, if only I had more time to read...