Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Reading My Kindle

Last week, I a the chance to check out our class Kindle. It was an interesting experience.

I ride both the bus and metro to get to class (and just about everywhere else), so to stay entertained while waiting forever for the bus to come and during my commute, I've taken to reading books on my phone or iPod touch. My phone came with the Kindle app pre-loaded, but I've always been a B&N girl, so Nook is my e-reading app of choice. But I digress.

When I got off the metro and into the line for the bus last Monday night and pulled out the Kindle to start my antisocial reading ritual (I've found that head phones and a book/electronic device tend to ward off the weirdos) the first thing I noticed was how uncomfortable it made me. Forget uncomfortable, I felt downright ostentatious. The Kindle is not much bigger than the average book, but something about it just screamed (to me at least) "look at me! look at me! I've got a huge e-reader" and I felt embarrassed to be holding it. I'm sure that once I got used to having one, I wouldn't feel that way, but at that moment, all I wanted was my teeny tiny phone screen.

Of course, I also felt a little silly because I had a few problems figuring out how to use the darn thing. I got into the book fine, but then I kept hitting the wrong buttons while trying to turn the page. To go to the next page on a Kindle you push the large bottom arrow (circled in red in the picture) located on either side of the machine. To go back a page, you push the smaller arrow button on the top (circled in blue). If you ask me, having the buttons in the same place on both sides is sort of counter intuitive. I kept pushing the large button on the left expecting to go back a page, and not realizing I had really gone forward, getting very confused when I couldn't find the beginning of the chapter. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be a clever feature that allows the reader to hold it with either hand and turn the page in either direction, but I don't think it works. It's BROKEN.

At this point I was really missing my touch screen phone/iPod.

Visually, page turning is something that the Kindle does have going for it. On my Nook app for iPod touch, when I turn the page the words sort of zoom across the screen and are replaced with a new page worth of words that zoom into their place. It sort of makes me feel seasick to look at. On the Kindle, the words sort of cross-fade, with the current page dissolving and the new one reappearing in it's place. It's very innocuous and good for reading while traveling. My favorite page turning method, however, is in my Android Nook app, which animates a page turning. I like it because it makes me the least dizzy.

I also checked out the Kindle store on the Kindle. As a die hard, "buy it for the cover" book buyer, I found the black and white monotone pictures very unappealing and was far less likely to investigate a book further without the lure of attractively colored covers. I also noticed that a lot of the "most popular" books in the Kindle store weren't the traditional bestsellers, but a bunch of books that sold a lot because they were either free or only $.99. That threw me for a loop too. But it was very easy to buy a book (or in my case, a free sample of a book) and it loads right onto the device, which is pretty cool.

Overall, while I eventually figured out how to use and navigate the inner workings of the Kindle, I never really felt comfortable using it. So, for now, I think I'll stick to my color, touch-capable phone or iPod while reading on public transportation, and paperbacks for the rest of the time.