It Does Have a Weird Name Though

When I was back in America I decided to buy a Kindle after seeing Dave have one last year. For those who don’t know the Kindle is a type of electronic book reader. I can buy books from Amazon and then download them onto this device so I can have a bunch of books with me without having to carry them around. At first when I heard of this device I didn’t see why it was really worth while. They’re not cheap, a new second generation one coast about $300, and they really don’t do anything besides read books. But when I was in Vietnam with Dave and Ken I really saw the advantages of one. Dave just carried around one little computer while about half the weight in my backpack came form books. On top of that there were other advantages. It was actually hard to get many books in China. Changzhou basically doesn’t sell English language books and even in the places in Shanghai that do they only have a limited selection. Amazon will ship books to China but it tends to be pretty expensive. Also a bunch of books, including a lot of the interesting ones are banned in China and thus much harder to get.

The Kindle gets around all these problems easily since I can just download books form the internet. Also new books are cheaper on the Kindle. Most books only cost about $10, which can be half of a new hardcover book. Reading books on the kindle also isn’t like reading them on a computer. Your eyes start to get tired on a computer after a while since the light being sent from the screen is being interfered with from all the other light around. A computer screen is also constantly refreshing or redrawing it’s self tens of times a second this creates some flicker even if it’s hard to notice when just looking at a screen normally. The Kindle works differently it basically can be thought of as a really advanced Ech-a-Sketch. The Kindle draws the words on the page but then it just holds them there not refreshing the page until you go to a new one. The kindle also doesn’t give off any light you need another light source to read it like a book. In the end this makes reading off a kindle much more like reading a book than a computer. The Kindle does have some other problems though, the technology is still coming along so the type doesn’t have as much contrast as the black words on white paper that are in books. There also can be some glare if a light is directly on it. The biggest worry is also that it can break. Dave actually broke his at the end of last year when he accidentally put his elbow through the screen while on a train. I’ve been using mine a lot since I got back to China and I really like it. I doubt I would have gotten it if I just lived in the US but for traveling it’s been great.