If you would like to see my previous long rant about the Kindle, please click here. Otherwise, please just accept that I am a hypocrite and that things have changed, ok?

A year or two ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of ever getting a Kindle. To me there was nothing better than the sight of a freshly-stocked bookshelf, the scent of a newly open book, nothing more sacrilegious than putting all of that into eBook format and losing everything good about the world of literature. I watched people in my university seminars struggling with their Kindles as they tried to navigate Dickens and Shakespeare without page numbers and I smiled smugly to myself. These people think they’re so cool, I thought in my pretentious mind full of amazing literary analysis. When they’re really just contributing to the end of bookly (yes, I did invent this word) beauty and sanctity.

Oh, the irony.

Because now, having received my own Kindle just under a year ago, I can honestly say that I’ve never read so much in my life, and I’ve never enjoyed reading so much. Maybe it’s the end of my English Literature degree with all of its tedious prescribed reading lists, maybe it’s all the free time that I’ve since gained. But getting a Kindle has honestly revolutionised my reading habits for the better. I have my books at the touch of my fingertip, I carry my small Kindle everywhere I go and read it whenever I can – the current battered state of my Kindle case can attest to that. When I’ve finished a book I can instantaneously start the next one, and to be honest, I can buy it at a much cheaper price than ever before.

Moving to Germany certainly also had something to do with it. I had no room to pack the million books I wanted to read, and my Kindle was utilised everywhere in every way possible: on the tram, on the bus, in waiting rooms and as bedtime stories. In short, I’ve gone to the dark side and at this moment, even now back in the UK, I couldn’t imagine going back.

Of course there are going to be moments in my life when I will want to buy physical copies of books – for aesthetic or for emotional reasons – and I shall certainly do so and relish the materiality of such a thing. But as of yet, when all I’m thinking about is travelling and moving about, when portability and accessibility is more important to me, and when I’m thoroughly enjoying being able to read more than ever before, I think I’ll be sticking with the Kindle.

And if that makes me a huge hypocrite/bad lit graduate/horrible human being then I’m truly very sorry.*

*I’m not.