Rachel

Gather round people, let me tell you a story....

So when e-readers were first introduced, I completely refused to even entertain the idea of ever owning one. Reading from anything other than an actual book was ludicrous to me, I despised the entire idea and couldn't comprehend why anyone would want one.

Then I decided to go travelling in 2011. I had $20000 saved, was booked to leave in July and had no set date to come back. I was off to Europe - travelling around by myself, taking with me a gigantic blue backpack that had no room for books. For the first time ever, I was facing the possibility of not having access to books for an indeterminate period of time, which, having spent most of my life up until that point with my nose in a book, was pretty panic inducing. Forget the fact I was going to Europe, I still needed books with me. So left with no other choice, I begrudgingly accepted the Mother's offer to buy me a Kindle as part of my 21st birthday present. About a week later, I was off on my solo adventure.

I could now branch off and go on to tell you about how difficult I found solo travelling, but it's all a bit sad and pathetic really and only highlights how desperately I need to start putting myself out there more, get out of my comfort zone, whatever blah blah blah.... But that's not really the point of this post so I won't (I'll just mention it like this instead. It's easier anyways).

I decided to do what's called a Busabout tour. Essentially, you travel by buses to set cities in European countries. There's a designated hostel they'll drop you at, you can either stay there or at a different one and you can choose how long you wanted to stay. It sounded so much better than some dumbarse Contiki or Topdeck tour, so it was a no-brainer.

I initially flew into London and that's a long arse flight. 24 motherfucking hours. Naturally, I read a lot on the plane. There was a lot of bus travel involved with the Busabout (duh) so I read on those journeys. I'm no party animal and incredibly socially awkward anyway so when other people in my hostel room were going out at night, I was reading in bed or somewhere else in the hostel. When I went wandering, I'd often find some place to sit after a while and read for a bit. And when I couldn't be fucked going to look at some other centuries old church, or boring as all hell museum, I'd find somewhere quiet and read. I ate lunch and dinner alone a lot of the time, but it was ok, cos I had my Kindle for company. I'm sure this sounds incredibly loser-esque but basically, my point is: that Kindle saved my damn life. I could not have done any reading at all without it.

Anyway. The picture above is my Kindle, obviously. It just suddenly carked it about a month ago, screen now frozen forever on a quarter image of John Steinbeck's head and right ear. After my initial confusion and anger at it dying for no bloody reason, I was quite upset and sad. And so, I just thought I would quite like to share the story of exactly why.