I’m sure you’ve been introduced to Amazon Kindle at some point. Kindle is one of Amazon’s most successful products. It’s an e-reader for books that’s linked with Amazon’s vast collection of books online. The main product is the online digital books store. It’s crazy to think that this is why Amazon was founded in the first place.
I purchased a Kindle 2 years ago and it’s been one of the best purchases I’ve made in my adult life, no thanks JBL E55BT. Kindle has revolutionized what it means to read, for me. I’m a guy who’s living off of suitcases most of my life. For me an old-school library with hardcover books is of no use. The use case of a Kindle for me is obvious. But let’s look at some benefits of getting in the Kindle ecosystem, that anyone can find beneficial.
A small thing to note: Kindles are a bit expensive for what they are. So if you don’t want to drop cash on a Kindle just yet I still suggest you check out the free Kindle app on your mobile or the tablet. That’s actually how I used the platform for 2 years before buying an e-reader. Thinking about it, this is actually a good way to get the feel of it without investing too much upfront. But, dedicated kindles have benefits over using the app. I can discuss some in a later post.
Without further delay let’s look at the reasons why I think you should get a kindle
Kindle lets you download samples of books
“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is probably the best advice out there around reading books lol. Most books in the marketplace are useless and they are not what they say they are. Hence being able to download book samples from Kindle without actually purchasing them is super clutch. Normally, the sample is considerably big and you can have a good idea about the content and the writing style of the book. You can weed out unuseful books and only purchase titles worth your time. And even after purchasing, Kindle has a return policy which allows you to return a book if you don’t find it worth the money.
Lets you read in the dark
I think not all kindles have this feature but this feature is super clutch. Before sleep is when most people cram in reading time to their routines. Having a kindle with it’s glare-free screen is useful when reading at night. You can turn off all lights and read for a good hour or two. This is something the mobile or tablet Kindle App lacks. It’s impossible to stare at your phone screen for 1 hour at night even with blue light filter on and brightness reduced to the minimum. So in that sense kindle delivers it’s functionality at a very useful time.
The kindle library is infinite
Imagine going to a book store or a library. How difficult is it to find a book you want? It takes hours to find books in book stores. And in book stores the number of available titles are absolutely limited. You won’t even find a single book in some topics at book stores. This isn’t the case for Kindle. The library is infinite and searching for titles with keywords is very convenient than walking over book shelves. Don’t get me wrong. Going to the book store can be a great experience. You get to see many different books and it’s very visually appealing. You might even bump into someone special and spark a romance. However if you just want to find good titles efficiently the kindle library is the way to go.
Hundreds of titles on one small device
Imagine a thousand books. Now imagine one kindle e-reader. That’s about it.
Kindle has user reviews
As I said many time before in my previous post it’s important to get recommendations and reviews from others before buying books. The kindle store does just that. You can see how the book was received by other people. A small tip here is to look at balanced reviews when doing this. Sometimes the positive and negative reviews are too biased on their reviews.
Lightweight and Extremely Portable
The kindle I have is lighter than most of the books I own. And it has a very minimal foam-factor which makes it extremely portable. I usually throw in my kindle to my everyday carry wherever I go. Normally my reading time is at night. But carrying the kindle around has zero hassle to it, so I just throw it in my backpack everyday. It has come handy many times when I have time to spare within the day. You can scroll through Instagram anytime. Why not read a book when you have some spare time in the day?
Cons of Using a kindle
Kindles don’t really have cons when it comes to general reading. But if you are nitpicking you could say the kindle doesn’t give the sentimental value that books have. Also the kindle is not the best if you want to add comments and highlight content while reading. Kindle has this function but it’s not that practical in my opinion.
Another thing is the Kindle won’t work with Graphic Novels or books that have a lot of images. But the Kindle app does. You can view colored images on the Kindle app.The Kindle e-readers only have a black and white screen.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion I strongly recommend you to buy a Kindle if you want to integrate reading to your life in a easy way. If not the e-reader itself at least download the app and explore the Kindle library. The Pros of using a Kindle easily outweighs the nitpicked Cons I have pointed out here.
Reading is a powerful tool but only when used intentionally. I think a Kindle will definitely aid you in being intentional because its’ characteristics are highly in favor of this and not in favor of mindless book hoarding.
