This is my first attempt to back to "non-review"
posts. For a while I was doing the
Sunday Salon posts but sooner than I thought it became more of an obligation
than something fun and I stopped. Although I will probably be sharing this post
in the Sunday Salon Facebook page, I don't think I will be back posting every
Sunday.
My Kobo
In little bit more than a year my reading habits have
changed considerably. The first reason was me buying an e-reader. How did this
change my reading habits you may ask? Well for starters I stopped NEEDING to
have a big bag to carry a book or NEEDING more space in the metro to read,
since sometimes I would not be able to open my book it being so crowded. With
my Kobo I can now read (comfortably) even when I'm standing in the tiniest
corned available. I could do so with some paperbacks, but is was way less
easier, and the fact that I can pass the page with just one touch beats having
to use both hands and more often that I would care to admit losing my balance
because I am no longer holding to something which sometimes lead to letting my
book drop and loosing the page altogether...not great.
Having my Kobo also changed the way I read scientific
articles, and I have to say I'm hoping here PubMed will go out of the Beta
version of their epub version of articles and make this version available for
most of the articles. Yes I realize I can always upload the articles in PDF in
my reader, but the reading experience is completely different starting with the
fact that I can change the font size to something a bit more accommodating to
my (often) tired eyes.
Finally, this opened a whole new library to me: OverDrive.
Very early when I moved to Canada I got my library card and boy have I used it.
Last year, as I mentioned on a prior post, most of my reading material came
from the library and this included OverDrive. This has made a lot of books
available faster to me, even if I am not in the city the moment they became
available...and that is just awesome.
Audio books? Me?
And then I made a mistake. I reserved Cinder on OverDrive
because I was going on a long trip overseas, was limited on luggage space and
so I wanted to fill my Kobo with fun, light reading books. I got the e-mail
telling me that the book as available...and lo and behold: it was an audio
book. This, I told myself, is not what I wanted! I'm not an audio book person.
My boyfriend casually said: well, is not like you can shift your attention a
lot being on the plane, so you could give it a try and actually KNOW if you are
or not.
So I did, I don't remember what movie they had that day...but I
remembered loving the book. I was lucky that I had a good narrator the first
time and that it wasn't a heavy book that needed more expertise on
"reading audio books"; but the bottom line was that I was hooked. I
was already into podcasts and 2 of them kept offering deals with Audible. I
figure I could give that a try and 11 books in less than 6 months I love it!. I
started listening to them while doing mechanical things in the lab (wracking
tips, putting away boxes, washing cells)
and know I have moved to listening while doing experiments I feel
comfortable with since I've done them several times...except when I have to
calculate something, I just can't do both things at the same time.
Recently, my
boyfriend and I started to listen to books together in the car...this takes a
bit more of patience than I expected because often we would arrive to a point
full of action, but we would have arrived our destination. Right now we are
listening to a non-fiction so it is not that bad.
Badges!!!
Lastly something this 2 (the Kobo and Audible) have in
common is that they give you badges as you read!!!. Yes, I know, I am 28, I
shouldn't get so exited about this...but I do. It makes me happy when I get a
new badge and it pushes me to read at different hours, different subjects, to
share my reading.
Has your reading changed this last year? How? I would love to hear about it :)
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