Why I Love My Kindle Fire

I am probably the last person anyone would expect to own a Kindle. My house is full of big, beautiful books with that delicious old book smell. I have hundreds of my own, hundreds of Colin's, hundreds in the loft from a University friend of my sister, loads from my parents who downsized when they moved into sheltered accommodation, hundreds from our childhood and dozens that belonged to my grandparents. I love books, I have bought them and I have been gifted so many! We could probably open a respectable library if we had a big enough outbuilding. (Something about the size of the average barn would do nicely!)

There simply comes a time when you have to downsize. We moved from a large house to a small bungalow and the amount of material possessions (mostly of little or no value) that we have accrued over the years means something has to give. My fear was that it would be the ceiling with all those books in the loft! I have a problem with books though.... however grim and tatty, however well read they may be, I find it virtually impossible to let go! I would have sent them to eBay auction to raise money for a cat rescue, but these days nobody wants books they have to pay for and the postage has gone up so much (simplified, Royal Mail calls it) that selling would entail a financial loss.

I have to give them away, and it hurts.... So I asked for a Kindle Fire for my birthday!

All photos on this page by Photahsiamirabel except for intro image by Colin Mason, which is used with permission. Please do not copy!

This is a joy and I am going to love it. I have Amazon Prime membership, so every month I can borrow a new book for free and there are so many lovely books to buy!

Buried in books! Help me out with a Kindle!

Here you see our kitchen table, fortunately a very strong solid pine table from the 1970s! This table has survived many years of use and abuse, but the sheer weight of books could be its undoing. Whilst it hurts to get rid of the books, someone will benefit from a charity shop sale I am sure. Although my bookworm tendencies make it hard to give them all away at once, I am slowly boxing them up and giving them away!

My Kindle Fire makes it possible to replace many of these books. Some of the classics are even free.

You have full web access....

One of the reasons I went for the Kindle Fire was because of the internet access. Dual band wifi is reliable and although a little slower than my laptop, it is functional. It is possible to type on the screen, but I have bought a stylus to avoid my clumsy fingers slipping onto the wrong image. I have to say, one of the reasons this old hermit invested in a Kindle Fire WAS to get used to this "appy clappy" touchscreen way of life we are fast developing. I may be a dinosaur, but I don't want to be fossilized quite yet!

I can surf the net, buy things on Amazon or ebay, use Facebook, check if my lenses are OK on Squidoo, tweet out to my many followers on Twitter if I feel like it, like and repin as many cat pictures as Pinterest cares to throw at me and generally have fun in transit just so long as I am signed into a wifi hotspot.

Oh, and of course all my things are out there on the cloud, including all these lovely dragons...

Games and Apps on the Kindle

I am not a very "Appy Clappy" kind of girl. In fact hate apps with a vengeance, but there comes a time when you have to cease being a boring old curmudgeon. Through my Kindle Fire, I have access to hundreds of the darn things anyway. There are games and apps for everyone and many of them are free too. I content myself with mahjong. It comes with tinkly Celtic/Chinese fusion background music which is oddly relaxing and when it thinks I can go no further it even shuffles the remaining tiles.

The sound quality is good for such a small device (I checked out my album on it) and the HD screen is really great. (My photo does not do it justice for clarity due to handshake) I love playing mahjong on my Kindle Fire.

You can buy just the Kindle of course, but the accessories are useful.

Using Skype on your Kindle Fire

Another selling point for me, with friends and family worldwide, was the Skype app. You have free computer to computer calls. I connected my account to my Kindle really easily - I also invested (last time I was in Canada) in a Skype to landline package because no way can I expect my elderly mother to use a computer now. It enables me to phone home "for free" from Canada and most other countries and probably also saved me 75% on my international phone bill.

Space for living!

All the nooks and crannies we have filled with books! Here a Victorian bureau hosts an overgrowth of books. I have boxes in the kitchen, under the bed, in the garage, in the loft.... Think of the pretty things we will have space for once the books have been "thinned out" a bit. Wish me luck!

A chance to have your say about books and e-readers....

Will the Kindle ever replace books?

Can the Kindle replace that packrat tendency?

There will always be a place for books in my home - nice books, books with sentimental value, books about art because I am not convinced Kindle does the large format image rich books all that well yet. I love the feel of books and I love to curl up with them or even loll in the bath which is probably not good for you or your Kindle. However, all those dire old paperbacks with their yellowed pages are going to be LONG gone. Just give me a few more months.....