Kindled

            It’s that time of year.  I shopped online for my family and also gave myself the gift that will keep on giving.

            This was no impulse purchase (well, except for the hot pink leather cover with built-in reading light).  For over a year, I’ve read about the Nook and the Kindle, but it wasn’t until recently that I decided I actually wanted my own electronic reader.

            The moment of revelation came with the shipment of books for the online course I am taking (Certificate in Lay Ministry) through Whitworth University.  As I unpacked the books and took in the messy state of my bookcase, which cannot receive one more volume, the light dawned.

            I love books.  Almost always I have a substantial stack of library books ready to read, and I actually get through most of them.  Often I buy a book or two at used bookstores or library book sales.  Sometimes I even order books new—you know, the ones I want to write in and highlight and keep for future reference.

            In the house I have only the smallest sampling of the books I own.  Most of my collection is still boxed up in my brother’s shop from my move here two and a half years ago.  Yet, I can’t seem to quit getting more.

            Thus, the Kindle.  I will still need to read old-fashioned library books because I can’t afford to download that many bestsellers.  But I can build an electronic library of free fiction and purchase the occasional “must-haves” in nonfiction.  And I will no longer face the dilemma of choosing reading material for my frequent trips to Oklahoma by size and weight of book.  I will simply carry my new Kindle, safely ensconced in its hot pink leather cover.

            Already I have downloaded four freebies:  The Holy Bible English Standard Version; Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Danger in the Shadows (a novel by Dee Henderson); and Pictures of the Mind:  What the New Neuroscience Tells Us About Who We Are.   (The discussion —which, I am absolutely sure, is dumbed down for scientifically-challenged persons such as myself—about the brain’s neuroplasticity is tremendously exciting.)

            So already the Kindle has kindled my interest in neuroscience and rekindled my love for Hopkins’ poetry.  Not bad for the first week.