
I love to read.
And I love to own the books that really resonate with me. The big pine bookshelf in our bedroom is completely stuffed and underneath our bed is a sea of storage containers full of even more books. (The books under our bed are mostly Craig’s- he tends to like murder mysteries and I refuse to have that be the last thing I see before I fall asleep.)
We were running out of room in our house to store any more books and I’d been hearing about Kindle this, Nook that, Kobo yada yada yada… I liked the idea of storing thousands of books in the amount of space only one book would use. Ultimately I went with a Kindle because I like Amazon.com, I always use it to find used books & they have great customer service.
I was SO excited to get one. I was going to request it for my birthday in December, but didn’t want to wait the two months (I’m impatient like that). So I went ahead & bought the Kindle 3G (free 3G & Wi-Fi) from a local store where I had some store credit. I’m not a techie AT ALL (please, I still need help with my ipod) so I was relieved to discover how user-friendly the Kindle was. The very first thing I did after it was charged was purchase Pillars of the Earth, by “Ken Follett.” (I’d wanted to read it ever since I saw Oprah talk about it on her show years ago).
It was so easy to do, literally just a few clicks and *poof* it magically appeared on my Kindle. I immediately loved the story & finished it in a few days. I was hungry for more historical fiction, and as I was browsing Amazon/Kindle’s list of free titles (they routinely list the top 100 purchasable & free titles) Outlander caught my eye. What the heck, it was free so I had nothing to lose. I was up until 2:00 am almost every night until I finished the book, I just couldn’t put it down! And somewhere along the way I realized that it was a series, and there were 6 more books to read!! (And Diana Gabaldon is currently writing the as-yet-untitled eighth book due for release in 2013).
Needless to say all I asked for on my birthday was Amazon.com gift cards. I finished the seventh book in January, and have been in Outlander (ok Jamie Fraser) withdrawal ever since. I try to stay connected to the story & characters by sharing the books with my friends. I got my sister hooked, and currently two of our friends are reading the series. Even my husband has read Outlander, he gets how much I love it. Now if they would only make an HBO miniseries about it…But that’s for another post. = )