I heart the reading

Resolution win = book recs for you!  But first, the way I read books has changed a little bit because for my birthday, my husband went and got me one of those nifty tablet thingies...I'm assuming mostly because he saw how many books/magazines I hauled around the country during our extended Christmas 2010 travels, and I think he was very VERY concerned about what would happen on our Costa Rican honeymoon if my bag was overweight due to books.  Seriously.  So I'm now at least semi-on the e-reader bandwagon.

I will never, ever stop loving real books.  I love them.  But here are some good things about the e-reader...

1. I can get new things to read RIGHT NOW.  You know, provided the tablet is charged and I have an internet connection.  But generally...RIGHT NOW.
2. Portability, especially when traveling.  One tablet weighs way less than the hardcover set of Hunger Games, a back-up paperback, and four magazines.  Promise.
3. Look up feature.  If I come across a word I don't know, I'll just highlight it and look it up in the dictionary.  Vocabulary win.
4. I was having trouble thinking of pros, but Craig says: "duh, you can play games on it."  I said I have a computer for that.  Whatevs.
5. Craig also says: "no paper cuts."  I'm not sure the last time a book gave me a paper cut, but I'll give him this one.
6. Craig says: "a few raindrops hurt a book.  Tablet, just fine."  Actually what he really said was something about it being more impervious to water (impervious!), so I put it in Erin words.  I tried to counter this with "ok, but if you drop either one in the bathtub, they're both goners!" - he just sighed at me.

Not so great for the following things...

1. Borrowing/sharing/lending/loaning.  It's just much easier to swap paper books with your friends.
2. The aforementioned "needs to be charged" business - can be really inconvenient sometimes.  Craig has some nifty converter in his car that lets me plug it in, which saved me life during our Christmas driving.
3. Screen glare - not usually a huge issue since I can adjust the brightness, but it's not perfect when I'm outdoors.
4. Durability.  Paper books do perfectly fine when you drop them on the ground.  The tablet...well, there's now some boo-boos on it and a small scratch on the screen.
5. Speaking of the screen...it's ALWAYS dirty in SOME way.  I can't wipe the fingerprints off a thousand times a day.  And that bothers the OCD in me.
6. Minor, but you know how you have to shut off electronic devices for take-off and landing?  Yeah, you can keep reading a real book.

Doesn't cut straight pro or straight con, but worth mentioning:

1. The shopping experience has really changed.  I love nothing more than going to Half Price Books for an hour and perusing the shelves, checking out back covers and finding bargains and things I might otherwise never have found.  It's a little more organized to shop on the tablet...but just not the same experience.
2. The reader apps aren't quite the same, and I have to give NOOK a thumbs-up over the Kindle on this one...mostly for the nerdy feature than turning a page feels slightly more like actually turning a page.  Yup, that does it.

So now...I just read both kinds of books.  Paper and electronic.  And it works.

Oh, and in the interested of being an organized reader and keeping up with what my friends are reading and finding cool new books, I'm also now on goodreads, which is a fun website that lets you add books you've read and rate them and organize them on bookshelves and add a bookshelf of your "to-read" books and what you're currently reading and it's just cool.  Do it.  If you're a nerd like me.

Book notes from my 2011 reading list.  Here you go.

AWESOME, read these immediately if you haven't already:

The Passage (this one is a beast and kinda crazy/scary/weird, but I really got into it and blasted through it MUCH more quickly than I thought I would) by Justin Cronin
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

GOOD, put it on your list:

The Unnamed and Then We Came To The End, both by Joshua Ferris
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson

DAMN, THESE WERE LONG, but mostly I'm glad I made it through them in the end:

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

FOODISH, and definitely good for my other foodie people out there:

The Sweet Life in Paris by David Leibovitz
Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

NICE AND FLUFFY for the gals.  Or the guys.  No judgment:

The Blue Bistro by Elin Hilderbrand
Jill Mansell books:  Take a Chance on Me, Rumor Has It, Miranda's Big Mistake (probably never would have read these without their $1.99 price tags and prominent placement on NOOK list, so possibly score one more for the e-reader)

WAH-WAH:

Songs of the Humpback Whale by Jodi Picoult.  Normally I really enjoy her books, but this one...nope.  One of her earlier books that you can definitely skip.

Go forth and read!!