subject: E Books: The Storage Savers [print this page] I love booksI love books. And magazines. I love to read: Whether it is Agatha Christies pompous but intelligent Hercule Poirots murder solving skills
or Louis LAmours gun toting, cow punching, dashing cowboy sagas; could be John Grisham and his courtroom drams or Paulo Coelhos Alchemist and his philosophy.
I have loads of books, all stacked up on my shelf; and in my wardrobe; and on the mantelpiece. No, I am not a hoarder. But Ive simply run out of space to keep my books. I was close to desperation. I could not and will not, stop reading; or stop buying books. I could not pass by a book store or departmental store that sold books, without going in, to just see what new books were on the New Arrivals shelf. Id tell myself that window shopping didnt cost a cent; but I could never resist the temptation of buying at least a couple every time.
But at the rate I was racking up the body (book) count, soon I would have ended up sleeping in the lobby of my apartment building. Not a very appealing thought.
Thats when my tech savvy friend Dylan suggested e-books. At first I was horrified, and went eeeew, because I was very much a print, paper and pen person. Would you believe, I did not even have a computer at home? It was unavoidable at work. But I could do very well at home without one, thank you. Now my friend, hes just the opposite. I dont ever remember seeing a book at his house. Now hes a total geek. Computer, laptop, smartphone, iPad, you name it, he had it: an absolute gadget guy.
And he did not give up on me. He patiently explained how reading books on the computer was not only possible, but enjoyable as well. And, most importantly, it would un-clutter my dinky little apartment! Well, what do you know! So the camping whole night outside Books-A-Million for Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows was for nothing?? Shame!
I saw the logic in what he was saying. So I cleared out my apartment of all my books except for a few treasures; these were collectors edition classics. The rest, I donated to my old schools library.
Next I needed a computer, which Dylan helped me with. In fact I just went along and flipped through the glossies while he was haggling with the sales guys. Taking his suggestion I called the Time Warner Internet guys for a connection. Cable internet, according to him, was way faster than DSL. Well, I was a total ignoramus and all these terms and alphabets meant nothing to me at the time.
The first thing I did was check out the sites that you could buy books from. I found to my delight, that there were plenty: ebooks.com (of course), BN.com (Barnes & Noble), Amazon (they are everywhere!) bookfinder.com, etc being the most popular. Reading e books helped me avoid crowds, the winding lines, the possibility of the book being out-of-stock; I can also download them whenever I feel like it.
And the most awesome thing was, there were plenty of sites where you could read books for free! Wegivebooks.org and publicbookshelf.com are some of the free libraries for books you can check out. Darn, I should not have renewed my library membership!
There are also sites where you can read magazines: magatopia.com, usmagazine.com and so on. You also have electronic versions of your favorite magazines like Cosmopolitan, called e-zines. Super amazing, you can also read the NY Times on your computer. Is that cool or what!
I also started using my awesome internet connection to gather information on stuff, to connect with old friends and classmates, and yes, family too. Aha, I know what DSL means now. AND why cables a better bet than that. I also got super stuff like free firewalls and anti spam and anti virus. Whats best, it hasnt burnt a hole in my not-very-deep pocket. Im actually enjoying the e-revolution in my life!
