First Kindle musings

Santa ushered in my first era of e-book reading this year with a Kindle, and I have many thoughts on how that is changing the context of reading. First and foremost is the dramatic change in the pacing of reading. Not in the sense that my reading speed has increased or decreased, but that the fractions of time in between reading--i.e., page turning--significantly change the pace of storyline. With no *pages* to turn, reading loses the smooth page-to-page transitions that one encounters when completely absorbed in a book. Rather, there are now page clicks that give a sense of timing, rather than continuity. That timing needs to be learned, and Kindle challenges you to do so at the risk of losing the continuity of the story. This is fascinating because we don't need to learn to use books and turn pages. With Kindle, reading almost becomes a multi-tasking event with your thumbs and mind, which ultimately, I think could become valuable in the long run. I don't exactly know how yet, though.