My Elizabeth has mentioned gathering the rest of the family together to give me an e-reader for Christmas. I would really love one as holding books is difficult for my arthritis-riddled hands; an e-reader would also mean not needing a flashlight to read by in bed--which bothers Keith to no end.
One afternoon I recently stopped by our local Barnes and Noble and started playing around at the Nook display. I was impressed by the clarity of the reading experience, by the ability to be able to read in any lighting, and by the highlighting and notetaking capabilities (especially since I am notorious for underlining and scribbling all over my books). The fact that Barnes and Noble has a million books available, 90% of those free, also impressed me. I played around with the Nook, and although I found some components frustrating and slow, I liked the overall experience.
So then the question became this: Nook or Kindle?
I downloaded both free readers for the Nook and the Kindle onto my laptop as a first step. At the beginning of this process I was leaning fairly strongly toward the Nook. But I found it very difficult to download the supposedly free B&N Classics; instead, most of them were .99 cents or $1.99 each rather than free, as I had been told at the Nook counter. The books took a long time to download and then the PC version was not very sophisticated: no different fonts or colors were available to view the books. The B&N Classics series is very nice with links to end notes and great introductory material. But only a few books are free and then only for limited times.
Today I went to the Kindle site and downloaded 48 classics in one hour, all for free. I was able to adjust the viewing of the PC Kindle reader to sepia which is easier on my eyes than white on black or black on white. The pages turn more quickly and the sheer number of free classics is mind-boggling and impressive. The free classics are easy and quick to locate and download, and I only looked at the first fifteen or so pages of free classics available--there are many, many more pages I have yet to peruse.
The only books I want to purchase are the four Twilight Saga titles and the ESV Bible, preferably the ESV Study Bible. Other than those, I really only want free classics. So at this point, I'm leaning quite heavily toward the Kindle. It's also ten dollars cheaper than the Nook at $139 for the Wi-Fi version. In the Kindle Store, the Twilight books are $8.99 except for the fourth and Bree Tanner which are both $9.99; the ESV Study Bible is $7.99.
Through Barnes and Noble's NookBooks Store, the prices for the above books are identical to the Kindle Store. But the Barnes and Noble Classics are now $2.99 each, versus the free classics available through Kindle.
So if any of you have either the Kindle or the Nook or have used both, I'd love to have your opinions as well. Any and all feedback is extremely welcome...and needed.
Booklovingly yours,
No comments:
Post a Comment