On Reading My First eBook

I'm reading my first eBook for pleasure. I downloaded Craig Cliff's A Man Melting a few nights ago, and am proceeding to read it via Kindle's program for PC.

And I hate it. I hate that I can't turn the pages, that I have to use the Highlight tool, that I can't scribble little notes in the margins,that it tells me what percentage I am through the novel - like I'm back in college, counting down the number of pages until I can stop.

I hate the formatting (because there is no style! It is lifeless!), I hate how staring at a glowing screen is making my eyes go cross-eyed, and how my fingers mechanically hit Ctrl + t when I need to look up a word I don't know. My mind turns off instead instead of savoring this new word for my vocabulary, enjoying not knowing what it means and pondering what it might mean, not stretching my memory to see if I really do know what it means.

I balk at the aspect of having an eBook most particularly because of having to read it via my computer. Maybe having a real Kindle would change my experience, but I loath reading it on my laptop. I stare at a laptop for eight hours a day at my internship. The last thing I want to do is get on my laptop again to enjoy reading a book.

Accessing the book, though, was a breeze and I cannot complain one whit. Mr Cliff is from New Zealand, and although his book is available in NZ and Australia, but living in the US makes it a little difficult. With one click, I got the book instantly. Perhaps getting the novel instantaneously is worth not having it in paperback-form. Enough talk about the technology, though.

The novel so far? Spectacular.