Why I love a Kindle

Published: Mon, 11/22/10













Why I love a Kindle

Share 

I bought a Kindle about 6 months ago and absolutely love it. Kindle is Amazon's reading device. It is, in some ways, similar to Apple's IPOD, although roughly a third of the price. It is just a reading device. IPOD is more like a scaled down laptop. In fact, it is priced like a laptop. I researched the IPOD, Kindle, and Barnes and Nobel's Nook and decided on the Kindle. Current cost is $189 or $139. See www.amazon.com for details.

 Here are a few reasons why I am so fired up about my Kindle:

  • Book at about half price. You average price of a new trade book is $9.99. If you buy very many books, the Kindle will quickly pay for itself in savings on book prices. Where you don't save money is old books that you can get used on Amazon really cheap. I bought one the other day for Missy that cost $.01. They make the money on shipping, I am sure. That was $3.99. Often, these same old books, if they are available at all, are $9.99. Occasionally you can get some books really cheap, even free I started a Facebook group to pass along information about free books. What I have learned is they don't stay free long.
  • Any book, any time. I pastor out in the sticks. There is no Internet access. We barely have running water and electricity. I usually work on my sermon all week long, but reserve some time on Saturday night to really go over it. (In the Disciplemaking Teacher seminar I talk about why it is a good idea to start your preparation early in the week.) On several occasions, during that Saturday night brush up time, I have found and purchased a book that had a story that really made a message work. I love being able to buy books any time, anywhere. The technology, called whispernet, (I guess because it is really quiet; come to think of it, I don't remember it making any noise.) It piggybacks on the cell service, and, like cell service there are some places you can't get it. But, it is generally available anywhere. I have a second generation Kindle. The new ones are Wi-Fi, which I assume to be faster, but you have to be somewhere where there is Wi-Fi. They have a with and without 3G, which is what allows you to get books anywhere. I would definitely spring for the 3G. Unlike IPOD, you don't pay a monthly fee; you only pay the cost of the books that you purchase.
  • Search. I am doing a 21 week study through the book of John. This week will be in chapter 5, the story of the man healed at the pool of Bethesda. From the main screen, I type Bethesda and hit search. It is not terribly fast, but it doesn't take too long to search the 225 or so books I have purchased so far. (Warning: this is where you don't save any money. It is so quick and easy to buy books that I have bought a lot of books--more than one a day since I purchases it my Kindle.) Soon enough, I come up with this quote from Lee Strobel's book, Case for Christ:

John 5:1-15 records how Jesus healed an invalid by the Pool of Bethesda. John provides the detail that the pool had five porticoes. For a long time people cited this as an example of John being inaccurate, because no such place had been found. "But more recently the Pool of Bethesda has been excavated-- it lies maybe forty feet below ground--and sure enough, there were five porticoes, which means colonnaded porches or walkways, exactly as John had described. 

This will be a side-bar in this week's sermon. It is great to be able to search every book I have to find who has written on a topic.

  • Copy and paste. This is just a tad clumsy, but it is my number one feature I love about the Kindle: the ability to copy and paste short excerpts from books to include in sermons and my lessons, Good Questions Have Groups Talking.  Warning: I have  real ego sentence coming next. The use of the Kindle makes it possible to provide incredible lessons!  Why? The lessons I am writing now include excerpts from world-class writers. The  number one complaint I hear about literature is that it is not deep enough. It is too repetitive. Same old stuff. The lessons I am writing now includes quotes from the nation's best Christians writers--people like Beth Moore, John Ortberg, John MacArthur, Tony Evans, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell and many, many more. Add Kindle's ability to copy from new books to my already expansive library of WordSearch books and you can see why I am so excited about the lessons I am writing these days.

I just finished a series on apologetics. I bought and used the following books as resources in the series:

  • The Facts on the Bible,  John Ankerberg, John Weldon, and Dillon Burroughs

  • The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger, Lee Strobel

  • The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection, Lee Strobel

  • The Case for the Resurrection, Lee Strobel

  • The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, Lee Strobel

  • Evidence for the Resurrection, Josh McDowell A Ready Defense The Best Of Josh McDowell

  • Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, William Lane Craig.

  • I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek

  • More Than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell

  • Mere Christianity. Lewis

  • Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1. Josh McDowell

  • Know Who You Believe, Paul Little

  • Know What You Believe, Paul Little

  • The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, Lee Strobel

  • The Reason for God, Timothy Keller

  • The Case for the Creator , Lee Strobel

  • Defending Your Faith: An Introduction. R.C. Spoul

  • Faith and Doubt, Ortberg

Can you think of any better resources to provide quotes from in a series on apologetics? If you use these resources, do you think anyone will accuse you of not being deep? Without a Kindle it would be virtually impossible to search all these books for appropriate quotes to include in your lessons. I love being able to provide world-class information to the subscribers of Good Questions Have Groups Talking.

  • Great for travel. Of course, everyone doesn't travel as much as we do, but when you do travel, it is great to be able to bring one small device and have your entire library with you. And if it breaks, I found Amazon has great customer service. I dropped one on a hospital visit a couple of months back. I called Amazon to see what my options were. I told them exactly what had happened and they said as long as it fell from under shoulder height that it was covered under warranty. They sent one next-day, Saturday delivery to my hotel in Zachery, LA. All the books are re-downloadable. You can't lose the books you have purchased--not as long as Amazon is in business. You could drive over your Kindle and although the Kindle itself would have to be re-purchased, you just download all your books and you are good to go. You can have up to five devices so that you and your wife could share the same books.
  • Odds and ends.  There are a few others cool features on the Kindle that are of lesser importance, but still worth mentioning. 
    • Font size. We have a lady in our church with really bad eye sight that bought a Kindle for this feature. You can get the letters an inch tall if you want.
    • Read to me. The book will actually read to you. You can be reading a book, hop in the car, have it read to you out loud (it is a little machine like but better than I thought it would be). When you get to where you are going the Kindle will be on the right page.
    • Clumsy browser. The Wi-Fi version might work better, by 3G is so slow this is almost useless.
    • Games. I know nothing about these.

Like more information, head over to www.amazon.com or your local Best Buy to hold a Kindle in your hand. If you love to read, I don't think you will be sorry.