Those of you with a KINDLE...

I love my kindle. If it goes wrong you contact customer support, they call you and arrange for it to be repaired at no cost to you. Customer support are really helpful too (my brother's got damaged after years of use and they replaced it with a reconditioned one). I have a nice hemp and leather cover for mine which makes it a little like holding a book (nice feel to it) and protects it too.

I read so many books that it was either a Kindle or a TARDIS, and I believe there's only one of those left in the universe and I don't think The Doctor is ready to part with it!

i too love books, reading them, holding them, and keeping the ones i've read on a shelf. but i love my kindle.
the Kindle can fit thousands of books, the battery life is great. I use it at the gym because i don't have to struggle to keep it open when i'm on the machine. it has a built-in dictionary, so if there is a word you do not know the definition of, you just bring the cursor to it and it provides a definition.
no monthly plan needed, and if you buy a book on Amazon, if you have the wi-fi version, your kindle is updated automatically over the wi-fi. it is awesome.

I bought the cheapest Kindle ($79) and I absolutely LOVE it. I had stopped reading during my commute because I didn't want to carry heavy books. Even in bed, those big books can be a real pain. Now that I've got the Kindle I find myself reading much more often. Stephen King's latest jumbo offering weighs just a few ounces now...

i'm a book-lover too, and i LOVE my kindle. i never liked to carry around books, because i get upset if they get bent or smushed or otherwise damaged, which they WILL if they're in my purse. kindles are lightweight, and you can get covers for them so that they don't get damaged, and they begin to take up a predictable amount of space in your bag, unlike a book, which may change sizes often as you move on to new ones.
i have the regular kindle, the $79 one. i chose it because i felt it was the most book-like. with the next one up, the kindle touch, you flick your finger across the screen to turn the pages. i found that annoying, and also i felt that to push the buttons on the side of the regular kindle's screen was more of a tactile experience, more like turning real pages. with the kindle fire, it's more like a basic tablet. it's back-lit, it has a shiny screen, and you can go on the internet and stuff more easily. (you can go online from the other two, too, and all 3 work on a wifi connection rather than a pay service like a cellphone would, but it's harder on the two more basic models, especially the $79 one, because of the way you input text, and there are no colors on the display). i felt that a shiny, back-lit screen was the least book-like thing possible.

I bought the cheapest Kindle ($79) and I absolutely LOVE it. I had stopped reading during my commute because I didn't want to carry heavy books. Even in bed, those big books can be a real pain. Now that I've got the Kindle I find myself reading much more often. Stephen King's latest jumbo offering weighs just a few ounces now...

lil I am also reading this book right now and yes books like it in their hardcover version can be a real workout for the arms when you enjoy to read in the bed.

if you're reading in bed, laying on your back, with the kindle* held above your face, and you drop it, it doesn't hurt as badly as your average hardcover!

*test was conducted with the lower-end model

LOVE LOVE LOVE my Kindle! I have the one with the keyboard - it was $99. I can read library books on it, which costs me absolutely nothing! No fee to keep it going, unless you count the cost of purchasing books if you don't use the library. Love using it while I do cardio too - much lighter and easier to use/hold. Check it out at amazon.com

You don't have to give up on books if you have a Kindle. I still read books from the library and I have 2nd generation Kindle and a Kindle Fire. I also listen to audiobooks. I like the older Kindle ( as opposed to the Fire) because it is lighter and thinner and I don't have to worry about accidentally touching the screen and making something happen.

Posting from my kindle fire right now! Love it! Its lighter and.more portable than, say, an ipad or a 3 pound book. It can fit in my purse or my school bag, and the battery life is great. This was a gift, but it was $200, which is a little pricey, but if I had bought it for myself, I wouldn't regret the purchase. Amazon has a library of sorts, where you can rent a book, free of charge, for a month. You can only rent one a month. You can also get a good sized sample of a book if you aren't sure you will like it. All in all, a great purchase!

I am old fashioned and love to have and hold books in my hand. I actually love to turn a page as I read (so exciting). I also love to keep them afterwards as mini-trophies (yes I'm crazy like that) on my book shelves and I also think they look pretty as well.

For xmas I was gifted "The Pillars of the Earth" (yay!!!) (900+ pages - boo!) and the darn thing is HEAVY!!! I ride the train to and from work so I've been dragging that thing around for the past 2 days and I so envy the other people on the train that have those book-reading devices.

So I ask you Kindle lovers...how do they work? Are they expensive? Do you pay like a monthly fee to be able to keep the thing working? If so do you purchase an "internet" package like you do with the smart phones?

Let me know....

Thanks!

I'm like you, I love holding a book. I've thrown around the idea though of getting a Kindle...I just have a nagging thought in the back of my mind that says "What is the internet shuts down one day or we have some major electric crisis and now your entire life (calendar, books, music, movies, etc) are all stored on your electronic, internet-attached devices?? Or iTunes goes under? HMMM???"

Yea, I'm weird, but I keep getting scared about buying one and then never having the physical copy of the book.