A Better Mouse Trap?

I guess I'm as into reading maritime literature as any man alive. I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I read certain salty works like Melville's Moby Dick, Raphael Sabatini's Captain Blood, London's Sea Wolf, and Conrad's Lord Jim. Lots of times I was onboard a vessel of some description at the time, either one I owned or one I was working on, stealing a few hours away from life's routine to go a'yondering, as Louis L'Amour (who wrote more than a few yarns of the sea) once described the practice of simply going someplace, whether in physical reality or a properly imagined one, for no particular reason other than to see what you might see. Heck, I remember reading my first Clive Cussler ditty (Raise The Titanic) by candle light on an old Seabird yawl I owned for a while. I was tied up at a rough-and-tumble marina in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida. Right on the edge of the ICW. I can almost feel the pages today and smell the perfume of outboard-motor (for docking purposes), mildew, brackish water, and melted wax.

So, considering how smitten I've always been with the pure, tactile romance of books and reading, would you ever think I'd buy a freakin ' electronic book? Well, let's just say the part of me that digs technology prevailed upon the romantic part and here I am with am Amazon Kindle in my hands.

And I gotta say--what a wonderful device. Recently, I decided to re-read Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and, while laying in the V-berth of the Betty Jane, on the spur of the moment, I downloaded (it took about a minute) not only Treasure Island but all of Stevenson's works for about $5 and began reading right away. Books for sale on Kindle are both fast and CHEAP!!!!!!!!!

Moreover, when I used to travel to do boat tests in the pre-Kindle days, I typically carried along a few inspirational books that I regularly enjoy reading each morning. Only trouble was the darn things had a tendency to weigh me down whilst I pulled my roller through airports en route to the tests.

But guess what! Just about all of these books are in the Kindle library so I've downloaded what I could and substituted a couple of others. So these days, instead of packing a passel of physical books around with me, I just drop the Kindle into the Filson computer bag I've been carrying to tests for about 15 years now and I'm good to go. Figure I save myself about five pounds of extra weight.

By the way. If you buy a Kindle of your own, remember to also buy a slip-on sock to protect it from wear. I got one that matches my Filson and is padded for extra protection. As I recall, I bought it off the Kindle website.