I am one of the small (but growing) number of people who are really into ebooks. I thought I would share the story of how I got started.

Today reading ebooks is a daily habit for me. Whenever I have that spare 5-15 minutes, I immediately open MobiPocket Reader and continue with my latest ebook (I’m currently reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman).

I started seriously reading ebooks almost 6 years ago, when my daughter was born. As many parents know, newborns can be both a blessing and a curse. Obviously I had to take my turn waking up in the middle of the night to nurse the baby. My girl was a ‘sleeper’ – i.e., she would cry, drink her milk, then sleep halfway through. With babies, you have to make sure they finish and burp them when they’re done. This process could take anywhere between 15 minutes to more than an hour.

That’s when I started reading ebooks. I didn’t have a night light and couldn’t switch on the lights without disturbing my wife. With my Palm Pilot Pro at the time, I started reading ebooks to keep myself from sleeping and also to keep from getting bored. The backlight wasn’t very bright, and the resolution wasn’t great, but the stories kept me engrossed. Pretty soon, I was reading regularly even without my daughter crying for milk!

There are many reasons why I love ebooks, and these are some of them:

- No matter how many I carry, the total weight will never be more than my Palm Treo 650.
- I can expand my vocabulary easily, with an integrated dictionary on MobiPocket.
- It’s unobtrusive : at night, I can easily turn down the backlight.
- I’m not limited to just books : there are magazines and of course web clippings that I can download for later. Plus, there are plenty of ebooks available, ranging from free to commercial.
- I never lose my page, with bookmarks, search and notes.

Filed under: Mobile World

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