Precious is not changing.

John gave me a great graduation present--a Kindle Fire. (For clarity, I'll call it the Fire and a normal Kindle, Precious. 'Cos that's its name. As in Lord of the Rings "Precious." Not that depressing movie.) My husband ordered Fire for me a month ago and I impatiently awaited it, swapping excited texts with my BFF about it at least weekly. My one hope was that it would make underlining easier. Faster and without freezing my device.

I also wanted to dispense with the devices that populate my purse. I can't leave the house without my phone, my Kindle, and my iPod. I've thought about duct-taping them together, but the adhesive...anyway. I realized I'd still need my phone, but I really thought I could dispense with the iPod, especially since I buy my music from Amazon to begin with.

I am, as I said on FB, a loyal and devoted Amazonian. I distinctly remember reading the story in Wall Street Journal and immediately signing on. At that time, I was keeping QPB in business. Remember QPB? Quality Paperback Bookclub? Whatever happened to them? And who could have predicted Amazon would deliver my books, yarn, shoes, frisbees. Well, Jeff Bezos would have predicted that, of course, but not me. So, it surprises me to have to say that I am not in love with my Kindle Fire. I don't even plan on keeping it.

I'll list my likes first. It's a shorter list.

1. Underlining is infinitely faster.



2. Apps are fun.

3. Being able to see the pictures in your books is cool.

Dislikes, in the order that I found them.

1. You can't name it. It's called Julia's 2nd Kindle. I'm sure I can remedy that by going to the Amazon site but I don't like it that I can't just press that and change it to "Sweet Cheeks" or "Clive."




2. Amazon Prime members get free streaming movies, but the only free Clark Gable movie available is "Band of Angels." Which is the worst Clark Gable movie ever. In fact, it may be the worst movie ever--with anybody in it. It was so bad, Clark and the director, who had been BFFs, never spoke again. I bet Sidney Poitier pretends he didn't make it. (I told you this is my list of dislikes in the order in which I found them.) (And, to be clear, The 5th Element or any Luc Besson movie is the worst movie ever. But I digress.)


3. It's too heavy. One of my favorite things about Precious is how easy it makes the act of reading, particularly in bed. That's my commonly cracked joke: I don't know how books caught on in the first place. They're cumbersome, unwieldy. I did find a free movie I wanted to watch, so I stayed up all night watching "Best In Show" for the thousandth time. Keeping the thing propped up or held up was an annoying challenge. And that's just a 90-minute movie. I stay up all night reading *a lot.*

4. That on-off button is in a stupid place. I turned it off more than once because it's right where you put your hands. I guess they expected people to hold it sideways.

5. There's no way to organize your content. I may have 1000 books, as Sandy likes to say, and, yes, there is enough memory to download them all into "Favorites" but once they're in there, there's no way to organize them. I had my 1000 books in 33 folders on Precious (Folders with names like "The Queue," which is what I'm reading right this minute. "Brit Lit" is, well, you know.) I worked hard to create those folders and put all those titles in those folders. That way it really is like a library in my purse. I use "archives" as, well, archives. The place where books that I finished go. Because it's "archives." See? The carousel can't be organized, favorites can't be organized...

6. There's not enough memory. Precious has 3 GB for content and I have 626 MB free, so yeah, I have a couple of books. And, as I mentioned, I like having access to them as if they were on a shelf. I looked it up and Fire has 6 GB, enough for 10 movies, OR 100 apps OR 6,000 books OR 800 songs...see how I'm saying "or"? When you're thinking this is going to replace all your devices and you have 2000 songs and almost 4 GB of books and all four seasons of "Schoolhouse Rock"...well, pretty soon, you've only got 1.5 GB left. And that's after you've removed there terrible 4th season of Schoolhouse Rock and only downloaded your Christmas music playlist.

7. The screen is shiny. I've been reading in all kinds of environments and the experience on Fire is not like the experience on Precious. You don't lose yourself in a book when you have to keep tilting it to avoid the glare. But I have been told there are anti-glare covers. But what's the point of developing e-ink technology if you're not going to use it?

8. You're tethered. You have to have WiFi to use it the way I want to use it. Since I don't have enough memory to download all my songs, I can't use it in the car the way I use my iPod. You can download movies to watch later, but it uses up your memory. I've said all this before, so...what's the point of developing the WhisperNet if you're not going to use it?

9. It doesn't have the same battery life as Precious. After it was passed around all day Thanksgiving, it was dead on the drive home. It does charge in the car, but Precious would have been rarin' to go and only needed a book light to entertain me all the way home.

10. I can't type on it. I was going to get a stylus to make it easier to type, but since it's only going to be an at-home device, that's really not an issue. So I won't even bemoan the fact that I can't text with it.


11. Kids books on Fire aren't all that. Kids books should be books, anyway, so I only put that here to be whiny.

I know that Amazon will upgrade Fire and eventually it will be what I want it to be, but it will not be $200 anymore. For the time being, I'm going to stick with Precious.