To sit alone in the lamplight with a book spread out before you, and hold intimate converse with men of unseen generations – such is a pleasure beyond compare.” – Kenko Yoshida

Hi all.

Thanks to a dear and loving husband who knows just the thing to thrill me, I’ve enjoyed reading books on my Kindle for almost a year now. I love my little literary machine. There’s a Team Kindle/Team iPad battle going on since Apple released its new supercool gadget. I got to play around with the iPad yesterday, and found that I quite love it. But the two machines have completely different purposes as far as I’m concerned. Will I get an iPad? Yes. Will it replace my Kindle? Nope. There’s room in my heart for both. That said, I thought I should send some Kindle love out into the universe right now, so I put together a little list of what I love about my reader. Please bear in mind that I didn’t write this list to knock the iPad, but rather simply to share what I love about the Kindle.

10 Things I Love about My Kindle:

1. As an avid reader who currently lives in a space-challenged condo, my slim little Kindle’s got plenty of room to house all the books I love.

2. My Kindle screen looks just like a paper page out of the book (sorry iPad, but my eyes quickly got tired on your lit-up reader app).

3. Lots of the classic reads are free downloads. While I haven’t started on it yet, I’m proud to say a free copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War patiently awaits me on my home screen.

4. My Kindle leads to fun conversations with strangers. I take it with me everywhere, and someone–usually a fellow book lover–always approaches me to ask about how it functions and whether I like it. This is always a fun exchange of words.

5. When I travel, I get to take my historical novel along with my current nonfiction read. Without my carry-on bag bursting at the seams.

6. I’m never puzzled by any author’s lingo because my Kindle has a user-friendly dictionary built in.

7. It weighs nothing! And it fits in my purse.

8. I get to highlight stuff in it, and type in little notes wherever I want and dog-ear pages that I like.

9. I get to read samples of books for free before deciding whether I want to shell out the bucks to buy them.

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly:

10. The Kindle was made with hardcore book lovers in mind. I meet people all the time who have zero interest in reading books. Not zero time; zero interest. I always think two things to myself when I meet such people: first, I think ‘how is that possible?’ and then I think ‘how sad.’ I am blessed to have had parents and older siblings who helped instill a great love of books in me at a very young age. It’s a quintessential old-fashioned way to stimulate your mind without being wired into something. I don’t want to read a book, and close it up so I can check email. I don’t want to read a book, and then close it up so I can check facebook every ten minutes. I don’t need to surf the web or download music or stream movies while I read–if I want to read, chances are I’m looking to shut out all of that. For me, a book is sacred quality quiet time. That’s what I think is so brilliant about the Kindle–it found a way to modernize the collecting and reading of books without adding a thousand modern distractions to the medium. That is, in a nutshell, why I love it so much.