I discovered Project Gutenberg in 1997 or 98. I think the first book I read on my computer was Alice in Wonderland... or maybe it was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I read both, early on and it was the combination of two of my loves: books and computers!

I bought a Palm handheld device, at some point. I loved that thing! I could read old Gutenberg books, or buy new books from Fictionwise (now defunct). Plus I could play Sudoku and an awesome pinball game.

Eventually the battery went out. Instead of fixing it, I bought an Amazon Kindle. Which I'm still reading today, even though it has a couple of micro cracks in the screen and is slow as dirt. :)

When I bought the kindle, the deal I made with myself was that I would only have one (bought and paid for) book at a time. If anything else came up while I was reading my one, I would get the free sample.

This worked brilliantly for years!

I have still bought more than I can read of the dead-tree books. But my digital collection has remained manageable. I had tons of free samples, but just the one book I'm currently reading.

Until recently.

I signed up for this stupid Daily Deal thing at GoodReads. And, as I mentioned before: "A curse on those Daily Deals. The book is 2$! Today Only! and I meant to read it some day, anyway."

Lordy. And, the bought-but-unread books are piling up on my Kindle as well as in real life. But at least I'm not paying 10+$ for these books I might not ever read! *giggles*

The kindle, with some dead-tree books I've read recently.

Static8 > Journal > 6 apr 2017