This summer I spruced up my website again. This time it was inspired by the cover of my June 2022 release (still to be revealed to readers). Two of my favorite colors are mauve (pretty much all of the “pink” shades and tones are favorites) and teal. The changes I made to my website went beyond the color scheme. They included a change in the look of my blog. And that has caused me to do some reading of old posts.
I wrote my first blog post in January 2002. There are currently 3,063 posts in my blog, even after losing a couple of years worth (August 2002 – October 2004 are all gone) when I moved from one platform to another. In the earlier years, I blogged many more days of the month (daily and even more than once a day at times). In recent years, I have blogged with much less frequency. But there is still a lot to be found in nearly 20 years of blogging.
Going back through posts, I have seen that I can sometimes return to similar topics, especially during my reading through of the Bible. I’ve even reused the same title for similar posts on the same verse.
But what caught my eye a couple nights ago was a post about my very first Kindle (2008), followed by one about Whispersync and immersion reading (2013).
My first Kindle was such a surprise to me. I didn’t think I would ever want to read on a device. I love print books. I’ve loved holding print books. Why would I want a “machine” in my hands? I bought my first Kindle because I knew I could send documents to it, and I thought it would be what I used to proof my own manuscripts but wouldn’t read other books on. That changed fast.
It was funny to read that I couldn’t buy all the titles I wanted for the Kindle back then. Now it is such a rare experience that a book isn’t available on the Kindle that it shocks me. I’d forgotten that I used to have to clip a reading light onto the cover of my Kindle so I could read in bed. I’m so used to the built-in lighting of my Kindle Oasis (no glare makes it so easy on the eyes) that it seems like it was always there.
One of my first comments in this post was about my disappointment that not all of my Christian fiction was available in audio. That has really changed. While not all of my books are out in audio even today, there are definitely fewer of them without audio than used to be the case. Audiobooks have been one of the fastest growing segments of the book market in recent years so catching up with audio isn’t really a surprise.
But mostly this 2013 post was about Whispersync, which was rather new at the time. I sometimes buy both the Kindle and the audio versions of the same book (especially when there is a really good deal!), and the ability to always have both versions in sync is wonderful. I love it as much now as I did back at the start.
One thing I haven’t used much in a while is the Immersion Reading feature (reading the text on Kindle while listening to the professional Audible audio version at the same time). That’s because it isn’t available on my Kindle Oasis. I need to read on a Kindle Fire or use the Kindle app on my iPhone or iPad. I own a Kindle Fire but I use it primarily for watching videos. I own an iPad, but I use it primarily for work-related tasks. But reading this old blog post reminded me how much I love that immersion reading feature (it highlights the words as the audio plays), and that I really should use it more often. Particularly for more difficult books, i.e. the Last Lion three book trilogy about Winston Churchill by William Manchester. In all, those books add up to over 131 hours of listening/reading. I’ve been meaning to read the trilogy for years, but the sheer length of the books intimidates me. Maybe, with this reminder, I’ll get to them using immersion reading.
Kindle books and audiobooks from Audible have become such an ingrained part of my life that I can forget it wasn’t all that long ago when neither were around. I’m grateful for them both. They have made my reading life so much richer.
What am I currently reading and/or listening to?
- At Love’s Command by Karen Witemeyer
- The Passion Translation New Testament by Brian Simmons
- New Morning Mercies (devotional) by Paul David Tripp
- A Student’s Guide to History by Jules R. Benjamin (college textbook)
- How to Do Biography: A Primer by Nigel Hamilton (college textbook)
How’s your reading life?
~robin
Robin Lee Hatcher
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