...but I barely use it. I mean, I love the idea of it, and I was thrilled to get one for christmas last year. Trouble is, I rarely get the time to read these days. I don't ever go on holiday, or commute - which is where I can see the kindle coming into its own - so it just sits by my bed staring at me reproachfully.

Other problem - money's a bit tight at the moment, so I'm only getting books when other people buy them for me (i.e. for my birthday). But you can't buy someone else a kindle book as a present... which means that, for my birthday, I got a ton of physical books. Great, but my kindle sits unloved.

I don't love it. It's a tool.

I like being able to get the Guardian and Observer every day for £10 per month. I was impressed that I could still get them in the US when we were on holiday there last month.

I like being able to read said newspaper without the hassle of trying to turn pages in cramped spaces on public transport.

I haven't tried getting it to read to me. I might give it a go this evening. I'd feel a bit silly on the train.

I probably read twice as much now as I have done in the last 10 years. The kids are a bit older and self-sufficient now which helps when you want to grab a few minutes here and there. I also travel regularly for work staying in hotels so it's wonderful to be able to forget where I am by immersing myself in my Kindle.

It's also extremely convenient because often I stay in hotel rooms where the lighting is poor for reading. With the Kindle I can adjust the size of the typeface to counter this problem. I also enjoy using the dictionary feature and have found my enjoyment of many literary books or classics has increased significantly through being able to fully understand what is being written by instantly accessing the definition of a word or phrase.

I'm far more conscious of packing my Kindle wherever I go whereas in the past I'd regularly forget to pack a book or, as reflects my reading habits, pack the wrong book of the 3 or 4 I have on the go at any one time. With the Kindle I can dip into whatever is in my personal library, be it novel, poetry or blog/journal to suit my mood. I have a mobile wifi device so I can normally access what I want wherever I am (e.g. to buy a new book or access a blog/review).

The Kindle seems to have reinvigorated my love of reading and in doing so made the reading experience more of a necessity now than it has been for many years. And that's not just reading e-books. I'm currently reading Julian Cope's Japrocksampler in hardback (kindly lent to me by Grant, the North West Massive's indispensable Social Secretary) along with 2 other e-books so the regained reading bug is voracious irrespective of format.

...thinking it would be cheaper to get my book-a-holic wife a Kindle. Whereas before she had to actually go to a shop to buy A book, now she downloads books by the virtual ton whenever she wants. Costing a fortune.

Keeps her quiet though.

on my iPhone and iPad and it's perfect for reading on the little train journeys to and from work or when out for a solitary stroll or drink on a nice day. I always need to be reading something and the Kindle app and Instapaper app mean I always have something at hand.
I prefer the Apple option as to have a Kindle on its own would not work for me as the books I seem to want to read are hardly ever available which is why loading up the Instapaper app is necessary to have in tandem with it.

(I've been writing a Kindle conversion website of late, in case anyone's thinking of self-publishing.)

Pros
Lovely screen with crisp text, works in bright sunlight, battery lasts forever, lots of free out-of-copyright books to download (Project Gutenberg is your resource here) and dead easy — worryingly so, sometimes — to acquire books from Amazon. Also useful for displaying homemade PDFs, as long as you get the page dimensions and text size right. Obviously, it saves you carrying lots of books around and I'm probably reading more books since buying it.

Cons
As someone who's worked as an editor, the formatting restrictions of the .mobi format can be very annoying. Some make sense in the light of the myriad of reading devices, but some are just shite.

As a reader, I think you have to acknowledge there are some things that it's very good at and some things that it isn't. For text-based pages that you read in a linear fashion (such as novels and biographies), it's great. However for non-linear books, books that rely on page layout and illustrated books, then it's not so great.

My biggest gripe is lousy conversion and the big publishers are as guilty of this as the indies. Poor typography — even given the Kindle's limitations — and diagrams that are unreadable on the small screen.

Lack of ePub support is also annoying.

" Last night I discovered that it can actually READ my books to me in the voice of none other than Professor Stephen Hawking!"

I trust that your Kindle makes you Fitter. Happier. More productive?

I've no idea how or why this posted twice!

Industry watchers may remember the brouhaha that kicked off when Amazon brought out this feature (although it isn't new).

Basically the Authors' Guild objected that Amazon wasn't paying for audio rights and demanded that publishers be able to disable it, if they chose to (Amazon ended up caving in).

Now, a seasoned thesp doing an audio book is one thing, but for anyone who's listened to a robot voice read out text for any length of time, it becomes jarring very quickly. It's a feature only intended for the blind, partially sighted and masochistic.

Reading in bed always used to be a feat of minor weightlifting with heavier tomes such as history books and biographies. With the Kindle, this is no problem . Light and easy to read in most lights.
I'm not sure I read any more than I used to though. I used to have a groaning pile of 'books to read' but now I just have them stored in my Kindle.
I'm still not convinced about the pricing strategy though. I was in my local Waterstones today and they've rolled out their new pricing structure which replaces the old 3 for 2 thing with individual book reductions. So, I could get 'Moon Over Soho' by Ben Aaronovich at 25% off ( £5.99 ) whereas the Kindle Store price is £6.99.

This is my first post here and I'm delighted to espouse the values of Kindles. The wife got me one for Xmas last year and it's become essential ever since, it's saved a whole lot of storage space because I'm not coming home from Waterstone's or Eason with bags full of books anymore ... or at least not as often.

My eyesight's a bit haywire at times, especially at the end of the day*, so being able to increase the font size is a godsend.

Plus, it's brilliant for my commute. I suspect I'll also be reading it tomorrow as I wait for a gig to start, as I'll be on my own (unless any more of the Massive are off to see Roddy Frame in Manchester, in which case look for the middle aged biddy reading her Kindle & come and say hello)

(*for close-up work only - don't worry all you North West drivers!)

Top tips?
- You can email PDFs to your kindle (username@kindle.com), which I find helpful as I have lots of PDF based stuff to read for work.
- There are free books ( and less than £1 books)available on Amazon - admittedly you get what you pay for, but still.

I'm camping in the middle of a field in Wales (where i am tonight). I hadn't bought a newspaper for about three years. Been subscribing to the Guardian Kindle edition for about three months now. Love it! Trouble is don't get time to read much else.

I like Neal Stephenson, and it is delight to get his latest in a version that is not about half a foot thick.

My GLW swears she will never buy a physical book again (but she does not buy into the idea of collecting things and is happy to read a book once and recycle, whereas I want to put it on a shelf in case I ever want to read it again).

as you don't have to fill your bag and consume a big chunk of your baggage weight allowance on books.

But I do still like the feel of paper. And it won't stop me buying hardbacks to feed my history passion. And the bath issue can't be avoided!