
I wonder if I am the first person to ever cry tears of joy over their Kindle...
I've been reading since I was 4 years old. I think I was the first child in my elementary school class to be able to borrow books from outside the kids section at the public library and for as long as I can remember, I've had an absolutely voracious appetite for books. For a large portion of my life, I've enjoyed reading fiction - especially Stephen King. I admittedly sometimes feel a little shy in revealing that he is my favorite author- especially to my more literary minded friends but I don't care. To me, reading King is like slipping into your most comfortable pair of shoes and going home for a while....
There was a time when I had to have each of his new books as soon as they came out. I'd buy them in hardcover and devour them in days- but something has happened over the last 10 years or so. I've slowed down buying them, sometimes waiting until they come out in paperback. Don't I still love reading him as much as I once did? Of course I do. But these days, it's a weight thing. See the book above- Under the Dome? I bought it this past February right before an impending snowstorm. Paid full price for it at Target and only ever got about a fifth of the way through. Not that it wasn't a good book, I just couldn't stand holding such a heavy book any more and so it sat...
But I really wanted to read it, thought about buying the new paperback version to try and get back into it but when I saw it at the store, well, it was just as big, bulky & heavy. Sigh. So I started thinking Kindle even though I simply adore the way a book feels and smells in my hands. Digital content frustrates me in that you have nothing but to hit delete if you don't want it any more. Nothing to swap at the local used bookstore or to set out at the next neighborhood yard sale. eBook readers just seem so cold & lifeless- but I really wanted to read that book and I thought maybe a Kindle would be good for catching up on a lot of the good fiction I'd been missing over the years.
So I took the rewards from my Amazon credit card & I bought myself a shiny new 3rd generation Kindle. In white. And before it even arrived, I had bought Under the Dome, and also a short story that Stephen had written called "UR."
The day the Kindle arrived I powered it up, grabbed a yoga mat and sat out in the sun and decided to read the short story first. It was about a man who buys a Kindle and finds out that it has the special ability to download books from ten million different alternative realities- which means additional books by your favorite authors, The story was really good until I got towards the end where Stephen used the term, "low men in yellow coats." And that's when I started to cry over my Kindle. To me, one of Stephen's most endearing writing habits is to weave small repeated elements throughout seemingly unrelated books. So here I was, sitting and reading on this Jetson's-like device in my back yard and that one little phrase knocked me for a tail spin.

With new technology, I think it is common to think about what "new" things you can do and access with it, but I'm not sure we ever really think about the way you can sometimes go backwards. Take YouTube for example. It's fun to watch the latest viral video, but I can get lost for hours watching old commercials from the 1970's. It becomes this portal into the past that seems to validate that I was alive during that time - that it wasn't just part of my own memories, it was REAL.
So I'm sitting there finishing the UR story and still feeling a bit emotional from that "low men" reference when I realize that I cannot start reading Under the Dome yet. Though this whole purchase was inspired by my wanting to finish that book, I realize that I simply must go back. Sitting in my yard, September 21st 2010, I bring up the Kindle library and I type in...
"The Talisman"
One my all-time favorite King books. I click "buy" and it shows up on the home screen in less than a minute.
"On September 15th, 1981, a boy named Jack Sawyer stood where the water and land come together, hand in his pockets of his jeans, looking out at the steady Atlantic."Though this book was first published in 1984, I'm pretty sure I 1st read it in 85 or 86 in paperback. Plain as day, I can remember sitting at work in the photo booth reading that book. I loved it so much I know I've read it several times. I wanted to include it in a picture here but when I went upstairs to get it, it wasn't there. My beloved 25 year old copy of The Talisman... it's gone. Where? No clue. I'm thinking I once loaned it out but never got it back. Though that doesn't matter now, does it?
I've got it right here in my hand...I absolutely love my new Kindle. I love that I can highlight and save favorite passages on the fly - ahhh.... it's just so good. And I have always said, it doesn't matter what your reading, as long as your reading.