My Teenage son, a Kindle and Everlasting Peace

Kindle Front

I have a teenage son, and like all teenagers, he has very different ways of doing things. One passion that we have in common is the love for reading. In the beginning it was all fun and games, but as time went by, managing our repository of books as we invariably ended up reading the same books at different times of the same day became a big sore point. Everything from bookmarks to sorting on the shelves was a pain! Enter the kindle and all that changed! Big Time!

Kindle Front

It was one of those fateful and eventful decisions that went on to change a lot of things. I gave him a kindle and a Kindle Unlimited Subscription for a year and told him to buy other e-books from his pocket money. Initially, he was a little averse to moving from paper books into e-books. The usual rants about the feel missing and the connect going away happened. It took him a few days to get used to the E-Ink display refreshing very differently from the LED based screens that he is used to. After the settling down period was done, the real advantages of using the Kindle came to the fore in a big way!

Kindle On The Table

Many big benefits to the move were noticed. The first and most important one was the fact that his eyes were at peace with the display and not strained by the “blue” light problem that is now infamous with the LED based displays we see on phones and tablets. Since the Kindle works on lighting the screen rather than flooding light into your eyes, it is not harsh to the eyes and prolonged reading is just like reading a physical book.

The next major benefit was the fact that even if we read the same book with the same kindle at different times of the same day, the ability to have separate bookmarks was a boon. The arguments over moved bookmarks and folded page corners ceased to happen. Both of us went about reading peacefully at our pace and never really stepped on each other’s toes anywhere. Nice to have that when you share your library with a teen who reads twice as fast and twice as much as you!

The biggest and the most obvious benefit was the fact that we could quite literally have a thousand books in the space that we needed to store one book on the shelf and hey, no trees are getting cut as our library increased in size! Beat that!

There are many times when he just carried the kindle into a presentation or seminar and used it for reference, the operating protocol was made easier by the fact that he was carrying 15 books and the weight on his shoulders was negligible.

The fact that the battery runs for weeks on a single charge makes it very energy efficient and ideal to carry around when travelling. There are other nice benefits like the possibilities of long book chats with my son about a common book and sharing our highlights and thoughts from it. Many dinner table conversations became extremely intellectual and thoughtful.

Before the Kindle, the stress and mess of two people sharing a library physically was time consuming. Now, It’s My Teenage Son, A Kindle and Peace of Mind! With the added benefit of my peers thinking that I am reading “young” literature, thanks to my kid!

Try it, you will love it!

About Shakthi

I am a Tech Blogger, Disability Activist, Keynote Speaker, Startup Mentor and Digital Branding Consultant. Also a McKinsey Executive Panel Member. Also known as @v_shakthi on twitter. Been around Tech for two decades now.

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