New Amazon Kindle

I don't know about you, but the increasing cost of living over the last couple of years have made it much harder for me to indulge in my favourite past-time, reading. I'm a voracious reader and go through at least a book a week, and it all adds up. Then when you throw in the increased pressures of working longer hours and using more public transport, buying paper books and carrying them around can be yet another inconvenience... but it's one we don't have to put up with any more.

I never thought I'd go for an e-book, or electronic book reader. To me they all seemed too expensive, and  I hated the idea of reading from a screen. I was shocked to find the Amazon Kindle changed all that for me. First the price: A Kindle costs just £89.00, including delivery! That's just a couple of hardback books, and when you consider that the average price of an ebook is around £5, if you read as much as I do, it'll pay for itself in no time just in savings on books.

Those book savings should be enough to justify the initial outlay for the Kindle, but it's the reading experience that really makes it worthwhile for me. The Amazon Kindle doesn't have a screen like a laptop or phone - it uses really ink, which means it looks very similar to paper, and you can read for hours without eye-strain, and there is no glare, even in the sun!

750,000 Books Available for Amazon Kindles

Amazon are proud that over 750,000 books are available for the Kindle, and rightly so. Because you can store thousands of books on your Kindle, there's no worry about running out of space, even with that colossal library at your fingertips. And it really is at your fingertips, because you go from reading a free sample of a book to having bought and downloaded the thing in 60 seconds thanks to the Amazon Kindle's WiFi or 3G capabilities!

It really is as simple as thinking of a book and pressing a few buttons, and it will appear in your hand. For anyone who has a busy lifestyle, it's a godsend! Try it youself!

The Fear Index for Amazon Kindle

The Fear Index, by Robert Harris, has been described in the Evening Standard as follows:

"Like all Harris' books, this one is readily enjoyable as a suspense story... But what makes Harris' thrillers so much more rewarding than those of his rivals is that they all... come out of his deep and expert interest in politics, broadly conceived--which is to say, in power, in how power is taken, held and lost; how some people are able to dominate others; how wealth and status, fear and greed, work... The Fear Index... is ultimately a study in the total lack of morality of those who manipulate the markets . . . in its own carefully conceived terms,The Fear Index is certainly another winner."--Evening Standard

This little book was a nice surprise, I felt it had elements of Michael Crichton's Prey in it, and a distinctly science-fiction twist that was enjoyable in the context of financial markets. I enjoyed it and for £4.79 for the Kindle, it's a steal.