Kindle Politics

As Kindle users will know, and as I have recently found out, it’s a strange yet accepted development that Kindles often represent a person’s (or bag’s) outlook on life. In much the same way that fashion is an outward expression of personality and character; the contents of one’s kindle are an important, albeit invisible, proclamation to the world of cultural preference.

                Thus it was that, on receiving my first Kindle last week, I spent an evening downloading eBooks to fill my library. Maybe it’s the general lack of popular fiction available for free which leads one to download literary classics, the like of which one would never dream of purchasing, or maybe it’s simply the fact that they are free that makes me so eager to over indulge in intellectual literature. I caught myself tutting and rustling whenever a book I searched for demanded payment. ‘Ridiculous’ I shouted angrily as I was prompted to pay 79p for the first Lord of the Rings. This from a bag who one day hopes to sell his literary works!

                Either way, despite the abundance of free reads on offer, I found myself being surprisingly picky in my choices. I know I can download up to 50,000 books, but I consider a library of this size altogether inappropriate for my needs as a bag. How many books do you actually end up reading anyway? My modest library of twenty-four free eBooks I chose for their artistic and literary greatness. I like to think that should anyone browse my Kindle library unexpectedly, I should not be embarrassed by its contents. Consequently I have Leo Tolstoy rubbing shoulders with Rudyard Kipling, Dickens alongside Oscar Wilde, and Byron flanking Victor Hugo, although obviously in a well-ordered alphabetical list.

                I feel proud of my library and completely at ease, that should someone steal the device, the first thing they would think upon entering the files would not be how to access my credit card details, but to marvel at my choice of fiction.

                So it was with some smugness that I pulled my kindle from my blue depths on the packed commuter train, only to discover that I had nothing easy to read except The Dummies Guide to a Little Bit of Everything, and even then it took me the remainder of the journey to navigate through the contents page. Regrettably, until I can bring myself to fork out 79p on the Lord of the Rings I will have to make do with Don Juan and be satisfied in the knowledge that I am intellectual!