Kindle has changed my reading habits

Reading on a physical book and reading on a kindle give different experience. Those two things feel different when open the next page, highlights the text, holding it while reading, and so on. On this post, I wanna share with you what experiences that kindle will give to me compared to physical book.

I like reading

Since I was child I like to read books, most of the are academic and novel. But more I grow up I rarely read book regularly since I’m getting busy with academy stuff. Recently in the past year I started building my reading habits again as I realize the importance of reading books and the knowledges I will get from reading books. With reading books, I get more point of view, my mind is open widely to any information that useful for my life. I started buy some physical books, most of them are self-improvement books. Some of the books that I bought are : The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck (Mark Manson), How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie), Time of Your Life (Rando Kim), Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell), Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons (Yuval Noah Harari), Bumi Manusia (Pramoedya Ananta Toer). All of them are in Indonesian language.

But, the more books I buy, the more space I need to store that books. Unfortunately, my room is not that spacious to store those books. But there are many books that I planned to read in my book wish list. Then I found about kindle in social media and try to watch some reviews on youtube about the plus, the minus, should I buy, how to use, and finally I consider to buy one.

What has changed since I bought a kindle?

Kindle bring so much fun when it comes to reading compare to physical book. The most thing I like is with kindle I able to read books anywhere, anytime. On cafe in the night, on bed before sleep, while vacation. Kindle doesn’t depend on lighting condition, whether it good or bad kindle has own lighting to adjust and it not reflected when reading under the sun for example (not like regular tablet or smartphone) because its technology called e-paper and e-ink. It basically a screen which try to be a paper, no glossy, and battery saving.

The next thing I like about kindle is it can carry many books in a single lightweight thin device. So I can easily switch my read and didn’t have to carry two or more physical books. It save space also to store a kindle vs store many physical books.

Sometimes when reading, I want to highlight the text I like. With physical books I need to bring pen or highlighter to carry around, and I’m the person who don’t want to see my book ‘dirty’. I don’t even fold a single paper in my books haha. While on kindle, I can simply touch the text, hold and drag and it highlighted and synchronized to my goodreads account so I can easily open it again whenever I need.

Buying a book in kindle is the fastest thing I know, I just go to the shop, select the book, and just click to buy, and the book automatically sitting there in my kindle library waiting to read. And the price is considerably affordable compare to local store here. For example, I bought Atomic Habits (James Clear) on amazon store arround $11 that’s around IDR150.000. But the price in periplus on the day I wrote this is around IDR290.000 on their online store. That’s almost 50% discount.

Having kindle mean I become less worry about the maintenance, for example with physical books I have to very careful when put my books, does it wet that can make the paper wet and torn, because once it broken I can’t read the content again. It make we so worry.

Does the kindle have any drawbacks?

Nothing is perfect, right? So does kindle. For at least 3 months since I use kindle daily for my reading purpose, I found it weakness that may for people who enjoy reading with physical books will not find themselves like to read with kindle.

illustration of reading book (credit)

Kindle have to charged. I mean it’s an electronic device that have a battery to be able to use. Although the battery life is excellent, with my usage I recharge it every 3-4 weeks thanks to its e-paper screen. But it will need recharge, not like paper doesn’t need to charged at all.

The feeling is different when switching pages on kindle compared to switching pages on physical books. On kindle is more like the feel I’m switching to next screen, I can’t feel the texture of the paper on my hand, sometimes it add some enjoyment on reading book experience.

There’s no color you can find in kindle because it only provide black and white. Any images on the book will displayed as black and white only. So, it reduce the fun again especially when reading a comic books that contains a lot of images.

So far I enjoy having a kindle to read. It become my friend when I’m bored. I can carry it anywhere to read and its lightweight. Because I read for the content of the book not its cover/physic. I think I won’t miss reading on physical book again, for now. Do you prefer reading on kindle or physical books?