Similar to many, I was a huge bookworm during elementary through to middle school, often reading upward of five books each month. Reading came so easily to me; it was something I always looked forward to during my downtime. As high school and university rolled around, my reading habits turned downhill, and as my time restricted and social media consumed my life, I regarded reading as a “chore.”
A few months ago, I set a goal to get back into reading, but I seriously lacked the motivation to do so. This was until my friend bought a Kindle and told me it “changed her life”. I was hesitant to indulge in any sort of e-Reader; I’m a sucker for hand-held paper-bound books with pages that I can physically flip through. However, she was persistent in her case that e-Readers were the key to enhancing the reading experience.
Weeks later, I caved and bought a second-hand Kobo Mini e-Reader on Facebook Marketplace for a fairly reasonable price. It was around the price of two paperback books, so I thought if I did not enjoy using it, I would read at least two books on the device to get my money’s worth.
Two months have passed since I have purchased my Kobo, and I have thus far read 7 books. Evidently, the Kobo has also “changed my life”, and I have been able to garner motivation to read more books in these past two months than I have in the past year.
Among some of the many perks that I love about the device, here are five main reasons why you should get an e-Reader:
- Accessibility
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e-Readers can store multiple books in the device’s library at a time, so you can cycle reading between various books whenever you want. Many e-Readers can hold around 6GB of storage, while 300-page books are around 2.6MB. This means you can store over 2000 books at a time on your device, giving you a pocket library of an assortment of books you can quickly access.
- Portability
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The pocket library on your device is also extremely portable and great for someone on the go who doesn’t want to lug around various heavy books while travelling. Its lightweight and small aspect is also amazing for those who like to lay in bed to read. Not sure if I am the only one who gets tired of prying the pages open of a physical book, but this is not a problem with an e-Reader, where I just need to hold the Kobo and press the screen to flip to the next page.
- Highlighting/bookmarking
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Although you may not be annotate direct notes onto the e-Reader (although, some models allow it, such as the Kobo Elipsa or the reMarkable 2), the device allows you to highlight certain passages or save tabs on specific pages that you can refer to later on, saved directly on the device. An added bonus – e-Readers have built in dictionaries in them, so you can define a word without having to go through the hassle of searching it on another device.
- paper-like look
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If you do not like staring at and reading screens all day, or like me, you find reading off a screen to feel somewhat “inauthentic,” E ink e-Readers are the way to go. The device “prints” each page and emulates the look of genuine paper, consistent with the experience of reading off of a physical, tangible paper book. Additionally, you can change the font size and type to your preference – almost as if you were manipulating the “paper” itself!
- Environmentally friendly
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Through the purchasing of e-Books, which consume little resources, you are reducing your carbon footprint and saving a bunch of trees! To put it into perspective: printed books result in the emission of almost four times the amount of greenhouse gases than e-Readers.
I now use my e-Reader nearly every single day – it has completely changed the reading game for me. Its sheer convenience naturally appeals to me, and I no longer feel like it is a chore to read. For the first time in almost a decade, I feel like the same bookworm kid that could not put down a book, reborn again.