NO FAN OF KINDLE

My wife is a Kindle lover, keeps one in her lap all the time.  Even reads and listens to the television, which makes no sense to me.  I have a Kindle but have never used it much, and I know what spoiled it for me.  When you spend as much time as I do peering at a computer screen, seeing words in digital display gets old.  I like books, real books, the kind with words on paper, and I'm not likely to change much.  Most of my books are available from Amazon in Kindle form, but my wife is responsible for that.  She's the computer guru around here, and that's a good thing for me.  I'm a digital retard . . . and proud of it.

Back in the sixties when the stereo craze kicked into high gear, I bought a system and enjoyed it.  But I couldn't buy the really good stuff back then because I was a poor college professor just getting started.  I loved photography too, but I didn't get a decent camera until the 1980s.  When I closed in the two car garage and turned it into a big sewing room for my wife, I saved a small space there for my camera collection.  Some of my collected vintage cameras are still at the shop across town, but I've got about 200 of them on display in my stereo room.  Yeah, a room packed full of stuff I couldn't afford to buy back in the old days - big speakers, nice receivers, tape decks, and a really nice turntable.  And there's one little CD player, the only thing back there that's digital. 

Something was lost when the world went digital, especially in regard to audio equipment.  Digital is much easier to work with, turns out fine music, and it's more affordable than the vintage stuff was when it was new.  And, it's sterile.  It's too clean, too perfect, if you get my drift, which means it lost its personality and character.  Music that is great despite some imperfections is much better than music that's too close to perfect.  I'm sure that claim doesn't make sense to the modern generation, but lots of music lovers will tell you the same thing.  The same is true concerning literature.  Kindle is great if you're a digihead, but it's an abomination to a real book lover.  It has no character, or at least not nearly the character a book has.  I own thousands of books, and just one Kindle Fire.  I can download many times more books on that gadget than my house would hold in books.  That's progress, an advancement in technology . . . but it's not my thing.  And I won't apologize for it.