Joe Oliveto has over a decade of experience covering tech, physical media, and entertainment. His work has appeared in such digital publications as HuffPost, Thrillist, Yahoo!, Time, Elite Daily, Cracked, and numerous others. Along with collecting physical media, his hobbies include hiking, reading, going to concerts, and attending repertory film screenings throughout NYC.
I don’t make much of a secret about being a fan of physical media. Yes, that includes physical books. Thanks to used bookstores and library booksales, I have literally hundreds of volumes of paper books taking up valuable real estate throughout my apartment. Seriously, I live in the kind of space that would turn Belle from Beauty and the Beast green with envy.
However, as much as I advocate for the benefits of physical media, I also proudly own and use my Kindle. That’s because there are some situations in which having a full library of digital books in one slim device is far more convenient than toting around a collection that would rival the Shawshank prison library. Consider the following examples:
A Kindle is ideal for traveling
Paper books can take up a lot of luggage space
Like many of you, I imagine, I can’t travel without reading material. Yes, I like to have a book on hand to pass the time during a long plane or train ride, but even if I’m out exploring most of the day, I like to indulge in some reading during breaks when I’m on vacation.
I also enjoy weekend hiking trips. Sometimes, after a day of wandering the woods, curling up with a book in my motel room is just about all I have energy for.
The problem is, a book can take up valuable luggage space when traveling. If I’m hiking, a book can also seriously weigh down my backpack. Prior to owning a Kindle, I’d often have to schedule my reading plans around trips, ensuring that whatever I happened to be reading while I was traveling wasn’t too large to justify bringing along.
That’s not an issue any longer. With a Kindle, I can easily pack virtually all the reading material I could want while traveling, without having to worry about finding space. That’s the kind of benefit impressive enough to make a physical book devotee allow for an exception.
A Kindle is helpful when you live in a small space
I can’t justify keeping physical copies of every book I want to own
Finding storage space for physical books isn’t just an issue when traveling. Living in a major city, I have to make do with a relatively small apartment. Even if I owned a house, like most average people, I wouldn’t be living in the kind of estate that has endless space for paper books.
This isn’t always a problem when I feel comfortable giving a book away after reading it. That said, as a book lover, it’s often the case that I prefer to keep a book I enjoy. As with movies and music, books can (and often should) be experienced multiple times.
That can present a very practical problem when a book is quite large. Finding space to store all the books I may want to return to in the future is far from easy if I’m only buying physical copies.
That’s one reason why I often consider opting for a Kindle version when a book I’m interested in is upwards of 500 pages long. If I end up liking the book so much that I want to keep it, the Kindle version will be much less cumbersome than a physical alternative.
A Kindle is pleasant for reading in the park
Outdoor reading is easier when your book consists of a small device
The general point you might get from this rundown is that a Kindle is very helpful when the size of a book makes carrying a physical copy less-than-appealing. To add another example, imagine you’re heading to a local park to read.
Carrying a large book is already less convenient than bringing along a slim e-reader in this scenario. On top of that, a Kindle can be very useful in this situation if you want to run errands or perform any other out-of-the-home tasks when you’re done with reading. Completing those tasks is easier if you don’t have a physical book to carry around with you. Yes, you still need to technically carry your e-reader, but it’s much more compact than most paper books are likely to be, making it less of an annoyance.
A Kindle has uses even for physical book lovers
You don’t need to reject the advantages of an e-reader just because you appreciate paper books
You don’t have to sell me on the ways physical books are superior to their digital counterparts. However, I’m also not of the opinion that you need to ignore all the circumstances in which a Kindle can be a valuable device when reading from a paper book is inconvenient.
Once more, it ultimately comes down to a matter of storage. A genuine paper copy of a book is always nicer to own. That doesn’t change the fact that there are times when an e-reader is easier to, well, read from. These are just a few examples of such scenarios.