I bought a Kindle last night, close to midnight.
I'd been thinking about it for a while. Initially, I swore I'd never get one for the petty reason that someone I didn't like was singing its praises. And it is true that I like the physicality of books. Then this summer a good friend who travels a lot (she's a musician) told me how much she loved her Kindle and I decided that I'd get one before Laine and I go back east for a week of seeing people, driving around upstate NYC, and hitting Rhinebeck. Normally for a trip this long, I'd be packing about four books, two of which would get read on the plane there and back. I'd probably end up supplementing this initial stash with some other books bought along the way. But with a Kindle I can pack all the books I think I want to read onto something that weighs about half a pound and takes up less room than your average trade paperback.
Even though I got the pricier 3G version, if I figure that the difference between buying a hardcover of a new book and the price of the book for Kindle is about 12 bucks and between a trade paperback and the Kindle version is about 9 bucks, I'll have saved the price of the device in eighteen books or so. If you factor in the books that I can get for free from places like the Gutenberg Project, it's even faster.
I don't feel elated. I feel guilty.
I'm not delusional. I know that it's not just me that's killing brick and mortar bookstores. I was still buying books when Stacey's and Black Oak went out of business. I was the faithful customer of Athena's Books in Marina, when it closed.The one or two sf books I buy a month is not going to keep The Other Change of Hobbit in business. But it feels like I'm betraying some idea about books and book buying.
The Kindle gives instant satisfaction. I can read things on it that I don't even think I can buy out here in the world (like some odds and ends of Louisa May Alcott's lesser known fiction, don't ask). But I'm never going to have the experience with it of wandering into a store and discovering a new author, the way I found Gene Wolfe years and years ago in Portland. This device isn't about the browse or discovery or surprise. You have to know what you want on it before you can get it.
Maybe that's what I'm mourning in advance. Maybe this is just nostalgia and that useless looking back. Still I'm going to be a different sort of reader from now on, not necessarily a better.
