Books & Kindling

Once upon a time I went up North for work and my baggage went AWOL. 

Work trips last 12-14 days on average so I usually pack about 4 books to keep me occupied and my reading up. So when my bag containing all my stuff doesn't make it to camp, all my books are gone too. If I wasn't such a nerd it wouldn't have been such a problem, but alas.

Whilst I sat twiddling thumbs a little, a friend suggested that I use my iPhone (which I in all honesty use for a lot of things) to download some ebooks.

I'm not a massive ebook fan. I try not to be judgey - I've given ebooks a go before, borrowed a kindle for a few weeks and tested the whole thing out. As much as I liked the convienience of being able to carry 50 books around with me at once in a compact little package, I'm so old fashioned it really wasn't the same to me. 

I love books; I love the way they smell, the way they feel, they very concept of turning pages and popping in bookmarks. Digital books just didn't seem the same to me!

So downloading ebooks onto my phone wasn't as simple to me as it probably would have been for someone else. But in the end I did, and was almost...shocked.

The convienience started to wear me down. Suddenly having 15 back up books on my mobile was super easy, like a massive safety net. I felt better. 

(Just a couple of the books I downloaded to my phone).

And even now that I have books most of the time I still keep the ebooks on my phone just in case. But the real kicker is that I've been thinking about getting a real ebook reader, like an iPad or kindle, despite how resistant I've always been before.

Being able to access a my books at any given time is a tantalising temptation I'm finding hard to resist, but the problem is I have such a backlog of books the thought of having to re-buy all my books in digital form seems a bit ridiculous. Especially when I buy so many books all the time that my to-be-read bookcase (yes, three shelves double stacked) is brimming at maximum capacity.

(Yes - that is my to-be-read shelf. Double stacked). 

And so now I'm in this odd space where I almost want to buy myself an iPad or kindle just to carry all my books around, but the only solution would be to download the books I already have. It's a bit of a catch 22 situation in all honesty; deal with the situation and issues I have with carrying so many books around now, or buy an iPad or kindle and deal with the issue of having so many actual books I need to convert across somehow.

On the bright side, an eReader would be tax deductible. 

Sam xox