Happy Leif Ericson Day

Every time I fly, I think about the kindle. Normally, I love real, tangible books that smell like the forests they came from, as if stories grew on trees. I'm a book fiend. I love the bookstore smell, the rustle of pages, the different fonts on different pages, all the sensory benefits to a physical book. In a pinch, they can also be used as self-defense against large bugs and small mammals, but it had better be coming at you with poisonous mandibles and quoting the Necronomicon if you use one of my precious tomes. ( Not afraid of bugs. Not enough to risk ichor stains on beloved books anyway.)

My point is that a book is a full sensory experience and my main beef with the kindle is that you lose that. However, traveling by air makes me reconsider, especially in the weenie airplane I traveled in today. It was a a Cessna Propeller plane, and just ittybitty. Lugging a backpack holding my weight in books into a plane the size of a large couch makes me reconsider the benefits of a kindle. Assuming the weird-ass books I like/love/need are available on a kindle, I could frolic in and out of planes with my hands free and standing upright. If there was a way you could draw on one, say a kindle sketchbook, it would be the perfect travel toy for me. Cuz I fly a lot and for a long way.

And I bet I could still stun a Goliath Birdeater with it if he got uppity.