Sunday, November 2, 2014

#BookBlogWriMo - Day 2 - How I read

How do I read? Any way that it is possible, well pretty much.

I've been a big reader pretty much since I learned how to read and my parents are largely to blame for that. They taught me a great respect for books, and I grew up wanting to have a library of my own as an adult, just like my parents had. While I don't have an actual room specifically for my books at the moment, I am well on my way to having my own personal library here in Germany, and I have almost as many books in boxes at my parents house waiting for our return to the states. Every time I move, I come to the conclusion that I have too many books, but I don't feel it strongly enough to actually get rid of any of them. I really can't bear to part with any of my treasures.

I was born in 1983, so I'm on that borderline between being a Gen X'er and a Millenial. I've grown up with technology and my parents contributed greatly to that as well. While most of my classmates could only play Oregon Trail on the rare occasions when it was allowed at school, I could play it at home every evening on my family's Apple II GS, back when floppy disks were actually floppy. When the first Nintendo was released, we got one and it came with that useless robot that spun tops or whatever (I don't even remember what the robot was called, but we had one!) Super Mario Bros. 3 is still my favorite video game. My father was largely responsible for getting internet servers for our small town back when everyone was using dial-up. That server originally had 4 ports and it wasn't uncommon for them all to be busy. My parents got a second phone line just for internet so we didn't have to worry about not receiving phone calls or having to disconnect to make one. I got my own personal digital camera when I was a junior in high school after telling my parents how great they were from my experience using one for pictures for the school yearbook. That camera came with like a 4 kilobyte memory card. My digital camera now has a 16 Gig memory card. My parents have encouraged technology every step of the way. In spite of that, it took forever for me to get a kindle (of course I was already married when the first kindle released in 2007, so asking my parents for one would have been a little silly.) The first device I used to read kindle books on was my iPad 2. My husband bought me the iPad just before a marriage retreat trip because I had a book I desperately needed to read for book club that had yet to arrive from Amazon. I told him I wanted a kindle, he wanted me to have the versatility offered by the iPad instead. That iPad now belongs to my 5 year old because I upgraded to an iPad 3 about a year later. A few months later, my wish for a kindle was finally granted because my husband had picked up a Saturday CQ shift for another soldier and it pissed me off. He swears he didn't buy the kindle to mollify me, but the timing is incredibly suspect. I just wanted the simple kindle touch, but he got me the 3G version "because it has more memory and you can download books anywhere even if we don't have internet access," my husband said. I think I've used the 3G ONCE to download a book. I don't use my kindle touch for any of my blogging books.

An iPad 3 and a kindle touch are not the only electronic devices I have for reading though. My husband bought me an iPad mini on a whim because it was on clearance at the PowerZone (the military version of Best Buy). I asked for and received a Kindle Fire for my birthday last year to use specifically for the blog that Courtney and I had just recently started. I use it about half the time for reading review books for the blog. When the kindle Paperwhite came out, I just HAD to have one because I would be able to read in the sunlight and in the dark on the same device. My husband bought me one for mother's day this year. Of all my devices, the Paperwhite is my favorite, and the one I use the most for reading. My husband spoils me with all of this technology in the hopes that I will stop buying paperbacks. That, however, will never happen. - Katie

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