Thursday, August 16, 2012

The world we live in

I have become increasingly addicted to my kindle.  This is a very guilty pleasure for me.  After all, I have a lot of access to free books.  I visit the library almost every day.  I started out just purchasing book club books on my kindle, leaving the library copies for the other members.  Then I started buying kindle books to travel, and checking kindle books out from the library (we have a small collection).  It has progressed to the point, now, where I'll buy a kindle book because I don't want to drive to the library.  You know, the library I visit almost every day.  I recently checked a book out, then bought a kindle copy when I found myself facing a long bus ride without it.  After all, when I check a book out, I only have one copy of it, not one on my phone, one on the ipod I leave in the nursery, one on the kindle...you get the idea.

I can only imagine how my customers who do not work at the library or have a vested interest in increasing circulation behave.  It's hard to deny that anything less than instant gratification is hard to deal with these days.  I imagine telling my son about video rentals.  Can you believe that we used to drive to the video rental place, pay $4 to rent a video for two days, then an additional $4 when we failed to return it on time? Unfathomable.  When we heard a song we liked on the radio (radio?  he asks) we would drive to the music store and purchase an entire CD so that we could have it.

I wonder what we used to do when we found ourselves stuck with a few minutes of time, say, waiting in line at the store.  As I pull up a book on my iphone, I can't imagine.  I'll be sure to buy more kindle books for the library next year.

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