Before we made the big move to Japan, I bought myself a Kindle from Amazon. Frankly, I was starting to panic over my potential loss of reading material. You see, by training, I'm a youth services librarian. Specifically my interest has been teens/young adults, although with an infant of my own now I'm increasingly interested in books for the wee ones as well! The point is, I tried to envision myself living in Japan and finding a reliable source of good young adult novels and just couldn't see it happening. I figured if I did manage to find a good source of paperback novels then that would be a bonus, but I wasn't coming over here with no access to the latest and hottest YA books.
I spent hours researching the Kindle. If you've never seen one in person, they are very light, and easy to read. I even looked for a bunch of sample titles that I thought I might be interested in reading and found that maybe 50% of them were available in a Kindle format. I thought this would be the perfect solution for me the traveler and avid reader that I am. Besides, I saw the purchase as an investment in my own professional development while I'm currently not actively working in my profession.
The hitch is that since I've been using the thing, the results of my title searches show that on average about 20% of what I'm looking for is available on Kindle. I have no idea what my old list looked like. Twit that I am, I forgot to write down the names of the titles I had originally discovered. This means that I am now religiously visiting Amazon's website and clicking those buttons to "tell the publisher I'd like to read this on Kindle." Keep your fingers crossed for me that this technology will take off and we'll see more digital books especially for young adults.
By the way, if you haven't read any YA fiction lately and are remotely interested in science fiction or medical thrillers, I highly recommend The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. I'd bet large sums of money (if I had such money to bet) that this book will be an award winner and may in fact win numerous awards.
Thanks for the comment on my blog! :)
ReplyDeleteI would love to get a Kindle myself. I have gotten away from reading in recent years and that seems like a good inspiration to get back to it. With a little one at home, it's so hard to find the time. I literally have a stack of magazines almost to my knees that began in March 2008 (when my son was born) that keeps growing. I should probably just give them away to a dr. office somewhere.... :)
Yes.. I was reading some time back that they sold out a few times I tried to get one... Sorry I missed a few of your posts = (
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