What's a Digital Reader?

What’s a digital reader? You’d be surprised just how many electronics store employees have asked me that very question.

Before we get to analyzing literature, there’s something I have to explain.

I have a very extensive book collection. I’ve been buying books ever since I made my first dollar. I cringe when I think about all the money I’ve spent on books over the years. I’ve also been very lucky; I grew up in a region of the US with the most amazing public library resources. Yet I still bought any books that became favorites. For me, it’s more entertaining to read a book you’ve already enjoyed in the previous years than read a new book that is just okay.

So my main problem in the past has been that I own too many books…and the problem kept getting worse, not better. I kept running out of places to put them all, so then I started buying bookcases. Unfortunately, there came a point that I had bookcases in every room of the house, and it wasn’t even my house, but my parents’ house. Their place has been the one constant in my life, since I personally have moved more times than I can count.

So I started stashing books in the closets and in the attic, where it wasn’t so obvious. Out of sight, out of mind, right? But I didn’t want my books to get ruined with all the humidity, so I started buying plastic containers for my beloved books (think Monk…I also hate when paperback books have bent spines).

This helped temporarily until one day my mother opened the door to a seldom-used closet in the study and found that the wall behind the closet door was covered in Buffy books from floor to ceiling. I really didn’t think she’d ever look behind the door, but apparently, that wasn’t the important point.

It was time to face my problem.

And then, as fate would have it, I was flipping through channels on my TV and happened to catch the episode where Oprah is introducing this amazing little gadget called a digital reader. It was so exciting! All your books in this one little rectangle the size of a paperback! No more hardback books falling on my head as I tried to read while lying down! (You’d be surprised how much that hurts). No more extra weight from books in my suitcase when I traveled! And best of all, they took up NO space! It was the perfect solution.

So like any good little nerd, I Googled and did an online search on which digital reader was best for me. The two most popular at the moment are the Amazon Kindle and the Sony. After conducting my research project, I decided the Sony Digital Reader was the right choice for me. I knew I’d be traveling abroad a lot, and the wireless downloading application for the Kindle only works inside the US. Also, I was told that the Sony supported a larger variety of file formats, including PDF. I could put all my medical textbooks in there. I was sold!

Then I looked at the price—$300 !!!

The book lover in me keep saying: “Think of all the books you could buy for $300!” So I put off buying one…until my circumstances changed. I’d be moving to a God-forsaken island in the middle of nowhere, and I wouldn’t be able to bring my beloved books. I can live without a lot of things; I can make sacrifices. Really, I can. But what if I suddenly got a craving for Jean-Claude? Or I had a bad day and needed the wit of MaryJanice Davidson to see me through? What would I do then?

So I marched myself over to Circuit City. Turns out that they had closed for good sometime when I hadn’t been paying attention between the holidays and exams. Then I tried Best Buy. And you know what they said to me? They said, “What’s a digital reader?”

The thing is I live in a city that didn’t have Starbucks until after I came back from college a few years ago. So imagine that if Best Buy, the largest electronics store in town, didn’t have it, what were the chances some other store would have it? I tried anyway, to no avail.

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t order one online. I was very tempted, but I have this personal rule that I don’t order electronics online. It’s left over from my days as a pro seller and buyer on Ebay and living some experiences that are hard to forget. So now I don’t order electronics online. Ship to store is okay, as long as there’s an actual store where you can return it if something goes wrong.

Anyways, the date was approaching for my departure, and I still couldn’t find a digital reader. I kept going back to Best Buy over the months because the manager kept telling me that it was coming soon. Each time I went to the store, I had to give the employees a definition of a digital reader. Each time, they looked at me like I was crazy.

Then one day after I had given up hope, I found it at Target. Yes, TARGET of all places. Who would have thought?

Of course, I bought one. Here it is:

My Sony Digital Reader has 173 books on it at the moment. I’ve already put an 8GB SD card in it because I’ve run out of memory on the device itself. There are still so many other favorites I need to upload. I’ve also put my all my mp3s on there. So now my reader has books and music. I never thought I’d say this, but my iPod is now obsolete.

I’m currently living happily ever after on a tropical island with my digital reader.

Eugenia

PS. As of the last time I checked two months ago, my local Best Buy in the US was still promising the reader would be out soon…who knows? Maybe by the next time I go home they’ll have the next generation out…I hear they’ve got touch screens and built-in lights now…

Help! I'm stuck on a deserted island!

If you were stuck on a deserted island with only your digital reader to entertain you, what e-books would you take with you?

That’s not a hypothetical question. I really want to know.

Yes, that’s me, stuck on the tropical island pictured on the right with nothing to do except revisit my favorite Paranormal Romance novels on my Sony Digital Reader.

I know what you are thinking…but it’s not like I can spend the entire day outside on the beach, even if it is only one block away…one day on the beach and I’m already beet red and my skin’s peeling for an entire week. Plus I have these medical school classes to attend, and for some weird reason, they’re mandatory.

So between the dry medical texts and my adventures avoiding skin cancer, my main form of entertainment is reading, particularly Paranormal Romances.

I know you might not understand how a person with several college degrees that has attended universities ranging from prestigious ivy-league schools to ivy-league wannabes to state schools that can’t possibly begin to compete with the former (or with the latter, for that matter), could possibly be interested in something so…trivial as Paranormal literature.

It’s all Buffy’s fault. And possibly Angel’s fault, too. I could just blame Joss Whedon’s wit and genius in general.

First, there was Harry Potter. In my defense, I was an avid reader B.H.P. (Before Harry Potter). And then there was more: I discovered the classics. No, not those classics. I fell in love with what I consider to be the Paranormal Classics: Anita, Sookie, Acheron, Betsy, Aisling, Bella & Edward, etc.

Unfortunately, I’m the kind of person with a vivid imagination who doesn’t like to wait for the next installment in a series. I’ve also been gifted (or cursed, depending how you look at it) with the superpower of lightning-fast reading abilities.

So I’m always looking for something new to read. However, I’m very picky about the quality of my reading material—it has to strike me as interesting, because once I start a book, I always finish it. Always, no exception.

And I never cheat; I don’t ever skip to the end of a book to read the ending. I just can’t do it. Even when I went through my Agatha Christie phase I never peaked at the end. The fun part was trying to figure out who had done it, and if I looked, I was cheating myself out of the whole experience. Hence, I read the entire book from beginning to end, sometimes in one sitting, depending on the length of a particular book.

The truth is that I spend so much of my time escaping to these fantasy worlds that sometimes they invade my everyday life. It doesn’t happen very often, but when I have to wait too long between books in a series, and I’m emotionally invested in the characters, sometimes my imagination runs wild. I have no choice but to daydream endings for books with cliffhangers, and a couple of times these alternate fictional realities end up as stories on fanfiction sites under the name Eugenia Hope. I've written fanfiction stories about Anita Blake and Harry Potter, in addition to some original works. The problem is that I can think a lot faster than I can write…and the rigidity of the writing never matches the adventurous quality of my mind.

I’ve decided to do this blog to try to pass the time writing about those classics I’ve enjoyed so far, and hopefully, many more to come. If you have any favorites, please feel free to post a comment and recommend them!

I appreciate any constructive criticism you may have, but when posting a comment, please remember to be respectful of the books and the authors you are discussing. Any comments regarding movies or TV series are welcome, as long as they pertain to the literature and you have read the books. As a golden rule, most books are better than their Hollywood portrayals, so bear that in mind as well.

I hope you enjoy this blog, and I wish happy reading to you all!

Eugenia